I’ve tried quite a few different day-planning pages over the years, and this day-on-two-pages layout from Daytimer is my favorite. This is the “desk” size, or 5.5×8.5 inches (140x216mm), similar to an A5 sheet, but with a very different (an incompatible) hole layout from the Filofax A5 size. In this space, you get scheduling from early morning to late evening, an incredible 28 lines of to-dos, separate spaces for phone calls and expenses, and then 44 lines of open notes space. If you look closely, you can see that the notes page is faintly ruled in several columns. This is designed to record name of project, notes, and time in hours and tenths of hours. You can see the detail better in this product image I found on the Daytimer website:
This layout makes it ideal for the person who needs to bill their time; Thankfully I do not need to bill my time these days. When I was using these pages during the summer of 2012 I would either take purely free-form notes on the note page or leave the left hand column blank and take notes to the right, using that column to go back and annotate my notes in a different color ink for easy reference. If you had lots of meetings you could also put the meeting name in the left hand column and write notes using the rest of the page, then list the next meeting and its notes.
Currently, I prefer the portability of my personal size filofax and work planning load is fairly manageable, so I am using the smaller version of the Daytimer 2PPD, which uses a different format, as below. This works fine but if work gets busy I pretty quickly max out the task list. It is also a bit cramped to write on, with very tight ruling. The upshot of this product is that it is totally compatible with Filofax personal binders.
Daytimer pages are available starting any quarter, so January, April, July, and October start dates are all available. They come with tabbed monthly pages as shown.
I like these pages but I don’t like the paper. I have no clue why. I also wish Daytimer had more selection than just reference and coastlines. They used to have quite a few more designs to choose from.
I prefer the feel of Daytimer paper to that of Franklin Covey (which always feels weird to me… sort of an uneven texture) but it is absolutely terrible for any fountain pen use or even wet gel ink. I do see that they’ve thinned out their selection and their new website design is miserable, so difficult to find what you are looking for. Best to phone them up and ask, which seems totally absurd!
I really love this insert! It is way better than the Filofax Time Management one for my needs. The TM has been the best one I have found – until now!
I wish they sold this design unpunched, so you could punch it for a filofax A5.