My bag gets ridiculously heavy even on the best of days so I decided to move into a Filofax Compact Metropol at the start of term. My Smythson is currently sat on my shelf holding my 2014 inserts but unfortunately, I don't see myself going back to it anytime soon.
Here is a tour of the Compact Metropol and why it is set up the way it is.
The first page is a quotes page that I found on Google images. On the left and in the card slots are some A6 notepages from
Ruby and my Oyster card.
After this quotes page is a page where I've noted down the bus times. I commute to university from home (it's only about an hour on the bus at the most) and it's handy to know when the buses are as there are only four buses an hour.
The month planning pages follow this but I'm not finding them particularly useful if I'm honest. I've not really used them since the start of term and I'm considering foregoing them for 2014.
Here is evidence of a barely used October:
I have slotted in a flyleaf where I've put in a few strips of washi tape:
And onto the meat of the planner - the diary pages. I find that WO2P are actually working okay for me now that the term has calmed down and no longer subjected to countless 'Introductory' sessions. The planning space for to-dos is limited but as long as I am wise with that, it's fine.
As my course is a 'problem-based' one, I have a separate notebook for the problem-based-learning tutorials and then use a separate post-it note to write to-dos for those tutorials. The post-it note is stuck on the current page I am on in my notebook and I am finding that this works pretty well.
Another quote (again, from Google images):
And then a section for my to-do lists. I have gone through so many of these since the beginning of December!
And right at the back are a few sheets of notepages. This is where random bits of information are jotted down. In the next picture, I wrote down the netball fixtures for this season - but I've pixelated it out for safety reasons as I don't want everyone knowing who I'll be playing, where, what time, etc.
Overall, I've found that the Metropol is working pretty well for me. The rings are smaller and I'm not finding this too much of an issue; and with the organiser being made of PU, it is far lighter than my other leather binders. I also love the colour of it as it definitely brightens up my day when I see it!
I hope you've enjoyed this 'mini' tour into my binder and I hope I've explained (well enough!) about how it is working for me :-)
