Keeping Tabs

There's this guy in the Facebook - whom I met in a Twitter meeting (in Costa Rica twitters tend to organize twitter meetings randomly and for different reasons: Sunday breakfast, Saturday coffee, NFL games, pizza tours and so on) - who's an architect and who constantly posts pictures about these vanguardist spaces. I know these places are beautiful - or are supposed to be beautiful - but I wouldn't be caught dead in any of them. They are just so... "stylized", so "conceptual", so "planned" that they seem to be sterilized. I mean, it's cool to have a pretty home, a nice, clean and organized home, but to live in it some "organic", some "motion" is needed, and these are given to the space by the human component, the mobility of it, the changeability of it. I don't advocate for messiness or chaos - I dislike it! - but I do advocate for human touch, for comfort, life and eclecticism. Now, my question is, is that the way people also stand regarding organization and planners/agendas?

BTW, recently I discovered that people call their agendas "diaries", as in the part where the daily/weekly planning goes. They are sometimes also called calendars. Could this be a peculiar regional wording? I ask because for me a diary is a journal, a book where you write what has happened, or your thoughts, but not where you do your planning and add your appointments. That for me is a planner or an agenda. The calendar for me, on the other hand, is the... well, the calendar, the one you hang from the wall or stand on your desk and has the days of the month and is usually decorative. Diary is the past-present, planner is the present-future and calendars are the present and long-term future.

Anyway, I thought I would write a little bit today about a feature of planning (in an daily planner, no pun intended): keeping tabs. Lots of people normally consider their agendas as something that works only forward, something to write appointments down, addresses, and then hope you remember to check it. Worry not, it still works for that, but as it happens it also works for keeping track of things. You don't need for that some expensive planner that would set you so far back into debt that you could consider yourself a slave for the bank. Actually any planner would do it: the one you get from your company at the end of the year - if your company is in the habit of giving away planners - or the one you get from your friends for Christmas (planners are surprisingly a very popular Christmas present), or the one that comes with your favorite magazine or a new subscription (this is rather popular in Hungary, but not in Costa Rica, which is sad).

You can keep tabs for anything you consider important or you want to keep your eyes on. For instance you could use it to keep a record of your weight, so you note it on a corner of the given day so you can compare later on your progress. You can also note in the same manner the number of hours or extra hours you pull at the office to then check that calculations when you get paid. Depending on the type of notation you are making, you can then have a monthly or quarterly summary of these, depending on what works for you and what's your goal with these. Just, you know, don't keep tabs of things that aren't important for you. You can also keep simple counters, like keep tabs on the number of days you've done some exercise, or went to the movies, ate out, bought new shoes, posted letters... you name it.

There are two types of tabs I like keeping tabs on. One is a "future" type of tab, and it's related to To-Do's, such as my List of 13, or project Checklists. In these cases I write down the items of the List on a larger, usually ruled Post-it and stick it on the deadline date. I also use a post-it flag or tab so that I can easily find it. It also sticks out, so just as I grab my planner I know I have to check it. That way, as these lists are kept present in my mind, I'll check them often to see what remains still to be completed, and also  by looking at the date, I know how much do I still have to complete that task. In this case the tabs actually work like paper alarms. Who said only electronic planners have alarms?

The other type of tabs I keep are "past" tabs. These can be used for things you've done, you are waiting a result on, and you want to keep an eye on. Online orders or mail orders (do those still exist?), a reply you are waiting for - say from Customer Service or the mechanic -, the returning of something you lent to a friend and so on. These might not need a post-it (unless you are into it, and you enjoy using post-its undiscriminately), so after you've made your notation in your planner, you stick a tab that would remind you to look at it and know you have to deal with that. This way things don't go away into oblivion, but you remember that you took your watch for fixing two weeks ago and you haven't heard from the store yet.

If you are in charge of bills, or you have bills to pay, you can also note in your planner not only when you must pay them, but also make a note the day you paid them out and tab them - though tab only the last one (say, by using the same sticky tab and moving it from the previous date when you paid the bills, to the latest). That way if you suddenly can't find your bills or are not sure you paid them you can always go to the tab and check how much time has passed. How you customize the tabs is entirely up to you. Tab the dates when the bills are due, or your subscriptions, so you have the silent-but-colorful alarm there reminding you of it, it's all up to what you like and what works for you. And it doesn't even have to be tabs if you don't like them (some people don't like them because they consider them too colorful or that they give their planners a cluttered feeling, or because they may fray, bend and/or discolor, looking messy), then try out paper clips! Trust me, paper clips stand out. If you like, use paper clips on the top of the paper to simply attach something, and then paper clips on the sides to mark events, or the other way around, depending on the layout of your planner and whatever works best for you.

Lots of people like to share their organizers and planners online, and I'm gratefull for that, because that way you learn tips to use in your own planner, but at the end of the day your planner is yours and the only person's needs and criteria is needs to fit is Yours.