It’s red. It’s leather. It’s about two inches thick on its best days. It has rings. It is too big to fit in my pocket.
I am describing my daybook: my planning/organizing/time management companion. It’s a throwback to the 1980s when planning systems first became popular, and Filofax and Franklin were the top-of-mind options. I formed my planning habit of keeping my contacts, to-dos, appointments, ideas, and doodles all in one place within easy reach back then.
For me, there’s something luscious about the feel and sound of paper; how my pen or pencil grabs the surface and creates a tangible drag as I write. Then there’s the physical action of flipping pages, which to me is much more interactive than scrolling over a digital screen. I can add pages or remove them, tear or fold them and use both sides of the surface.
I replace the filler set every year but have used the same binder. This year I designed my own filler pages. I bind up prior years and archive them in boxes. Occasionally I go back through them. Events and people long-forgotten come to my recall. I have a record of things accomplished and things left undone. I can easily see my history.
My tradition of keeping a daily record and planning my days ahead of time was learned from my parents. My mother kept a calendar and my dad kept a journal. Bits and pieces of lives that I knew well were handed down to me on paper. Those recorded comings and goings remind me of the people I came from, as I suppose my daybooks and sketchbooks will remind my progeny in the same way.
I have an iPhone and use the Evernote, FCTasks and Calendar apps regularly as back-up to the more creatively-contrived and personable daybook. To jot something down is quicker for me than keying it in on a touch screen, and I commit fewer typos in the process.
In thinking about the archival issues, I suppose that with our technology few people really consider how they will leave their legacy, or even if they think about it at all. What do they have to hand down that is personal and stable enough to last for years and years? With technology renewing and upgrading constantly and rapidly, access to older technologies disappears. Paper, at least for now, is the timeless and more tangible option.
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