Planner Planning

I have recently started trying to downsize the stuff I carry around regularly.  I bought a new sling-bag that I love.


And a folding cane in the hopes that I might be able to fold it up and stick it in my bag now and then on good days.

Unfortunately, my current day planner is a smidge too big for my new bag.  I seriously need this planner.  I have a week across 2 pages section and a month across pages section that are absolutely vital for recording appointments, work schedule, migraines, and notes.  The daily pages get notes about meds I take as needed so I can keep track of when I can take the next dose plus have an idea of my med usage over time.
I especially like having a year or 6 months worth of stuff in the planner, it makes it much easier to show patterns of symptoms or note when medication dose changes or whatever happened.

It also has all my primary doctor contact info (business cards), plain note pages, and a pocket for stowing loose paperwork.

It measures 7" x 8.5" x 1.5" - kinda big and heavy, as it's faux leather, zips shut, and is the six-ring binder style.  The interior pages themselves are about 4" x 7"  Finding a new smaller, lighter cover seems like an obvious choice, but I'm having trouble finding one that isn't over $20-40 (I'm cheap).  I'm not sure if the binder rings from the one I have or another old one could be scavenged to make an new binder myself.  If anyone has any handy links about that, do please let me know.

So, I've been exploring other options.  DIY sounds fun, but I would prefer relatively little effort or lots of tracking down of supplies.  Something that I can get soon would be really nice too.

I've considered a hipster PDA, but the lack of easy flipping back and forth and longer-term organization would be a big problem for me.  It needs to be fairly sturdy too.  And I'm not confident plain paper will work or that my printer can handle index cards.

I've also looked at the PocketMod - nifty planner folded from a single sheet of paper.  I suppose I could print lots of them and bind them somehow.

I'd really like a super easy way to just print, fold in half, and staple a bunch of regular 8.5 x 11 paper, but haven't had much luck finding that sort of thing.

I have found some fill-in date (so I can start it when I want) planners that are adorable, but I'm not sure I want to make the leap.  But they are seriously adorable, so I wanted to share.

Vintage Typewriter Style

Stick a Bird on It!

Write Every Day

Flowers!

Attempts at time management

As I've mentioned before, I want and plan to eventually open an Etsy shop and see if I can get it going.  Unfortunately, time management is pretty craptastic when you're not only chronically ill, but also unpredictable from day to day.  As in, I have no idea how I will feel from day to day, whether I will get to sleep at a decent time and sleep well or whether I'll be awake until 4AM or will wake up with my brain refusing to function or in so much pain I don't want to do anything but cuddle with the heating pad and whichever of my boys (Tom or Oreo) is convenient at the time.

It's also really, really hard to get out of the mindset of "I'm sick, I should rest."  This might sound contradictory, as I frequently complain that I've overdone it, but the two do sort of go hand in hand.  It's challenging to find a happy medium when the goal posts move all the damn time.  It's also sort of hardwired into people and animals to behave in certain ways when they're sick - to slow down, sleep more, become more sedentary, etc.  Unfortunately, I can't really do that and function.   But it's hard not to.  And it's been very hard for me to set a schedule for myself because I don't know how I'll feel or what I'm really capable of and because it's hard to set a sort of floating schedule.  At some point, I'm going to have to just go ahead and start doing stuff at 1 AM if that seems like the best time for me on that day.

All that said - I've taken the plunge.  I'm experimenting with Remember the Milk as of last night.  I have it set up (I hope) to give me recurring reminders for basic household tasks (like dishes or dusting, etc.).  I also have set up dates by which I'd like to do certain things like actually open the Etsy shop and get things made in preparation for various upcoming holidays.  I'm hoping this is an achievable goal.  I'm also hoping I won't be really upset if I don't manage it.  :P  Anyway, the idea is that I'll look at my to do list with the dates and be able to say, "okay, I feel up to doing X today and it needs doing in the next 3 days, so I'll get started."  I'm also going to have to work on chopping up tasks into smaller bits.  I can't sit in a regular chair or stand up and bend over things for longer than about 15 minutes before I'm in agony. So, until I find a better chair or some other solution, I'm going to have to set a timer.

I also need to quit spending as much time as I do online.  That will be a hard one.  Since I don't go out much and don't really like phones the internet is where I manage most of my human (mostly, I think) interaction.

Anyway, that's the goal for the next few weeks  - to try this stuff out and see how it works.  Wish me luck!