November 14th
We have received numerous requests to add monthly planning pages to our date books. People using weekly planners would like to see a month on two pages just prior to the start of the new month. Having the month in front of them is helpful tool for planning.
Management, product developers and printers at Quo Vadis have discussed adding this calendar feature for several years now, but get stymied at the same obstacles:
- Months don’t break evenly (a new month usually begins during a week); so a monthly planning spread would have to be inserted either after the month has started or before it begins. This would look awkward.
- 12 monthly spreads will add pages to the agenda. This would then necessitate another choice: get rid of all the notes and information pages, or, make a thicker refill. Those choices each present their own problems. Thicker refills can’t be accommodated by our current covers. Customers for the expanded formats would need to invest in a new cover. Larger books will also be more expensive to cover the materials and manufacturing costs. Deleting existing pages will bring protests from customers who value or rely on them.
I can offer at least a partial solution… Three weekly Exacompta Prestige agendas include monthly planning pages: Visual, Space 24 and Space 17. There are no Quo Vadis brand planners with this feature, but we do offer monthly planning pdf pages for many of the books that people can download from our website. The 2008 versions will be posted early in December.
I stick an Exaplan in the back flap of my Space 24 for extra monthly notations. When I used Prenote and President a Monthly 4 served the same function.
I welcome more homemade solutions and ideas on how to solve this challenge, and any comments on what you would prefer: monthly planning pages or notes & information.
November 13th
The French arm of Quo Vadis launched their own blog this July, a fact that I’d forgotten about until Wladimir’s recent visit. Much like this blog, it’s got information about Quo Vadis products, facts about the company’s history, and miscellaneous tips and trivia; if you can read French, I’d encourage you to check it out sometime.
The blog’s slogan: J’ai rendez vous avec ma vie, or “I have an appointment with my life.”
November 9th
Writers, it would seem, have cornered the market on time management angst: we postpone starting new projects, we worry that we aren’t writing quickly enough, and once we’ve finally finished, we wonder if we’ll ever be able to repeat the accomplishment.
In my opinion, the best productivity “secrets” are the simplest ones—and also the most difficult to follow. So I wanted to share one of the writing tips that I found online the other day; it’s advice we’ve all heard before, but it’s well worth internalizing:
Complete your most important (big, hairy, audacious task) first. Whichever activity you are dreading the most is probably the one you need to complete first thing in the morning.
Words to live (and write) by…
November 8th
Geralin Thomas, the president of Metropolitan Organizing, is a big fan of Quo Vadis’ Minister planner. She is currently featured on Fine Living, a site dedicated to enjoying life and living it well.
When time permits, go to Fine Living and click on “Everyday.” Scroll to “The Essentials” to read her column, “Your Calendar is Your Friend.” Geralin shares some excellent time management and time saving tips.
Also, please check for details on the show, “Time Make Over,” which premiers this month on Fine Living Network. Geralin will appear in Episodes 103 and 104 (The Shedrick and the Damare families, both based in North Carolina.)
November 6th
Karen just received a customer query we thought would be worth putting online: how does Quo Vadis measure its planners? (You can find the dimensions of each format on our website.) So in case anyone else has been wondering… The measurements are of the closed planner, minus the cover.
Happy planning!
November 3rd
Yesterday, Karen, Nicole, and I had lunch with Wladimir Tarnoff, Quo Vadis’s global marketing manager, visiting from France to run his third(!) New York City Marathon. We talked about all sorts of new products and ideas that Quo Vadis has in the works—I’ll be posting more about them in the upcoming weeks.
In the meantime, we wish Wladimir best of luck on tomorrow’s run!
November 1st
When I was a girl I would constantly mix up these observances (probably because I went to public and not parochial school!) They both involved remembering dead people in some way, but beyond that I was lost. I also figured the holy day coming smack up against the fun of Halloween had something to do with competing against this old pagan holiday.
November 1st is the day Roman Catholics and Anglicans remember all the saints known and unknown. It was officially designated by Pope Gregory IV in 837 A.D. , although dedicating a specific day to them had been a Christian tradition since the 4th century.
I decided to honor the day by remembering not one of the popular saints like St. Francis, but some obscure saint on the rolls. Like any good Catholic needing a quick religious answer I googled “obscure Catholic saints” to see who I would draw. I took a quiz to decide…
“OK, now you have a beautiful garden. Who would you pray to to keep out the moles?”
“Your answer: St. Giles”
“The correct answer was St. Ulric”
“St. Ulric was born in 890 and died in 973. He can be represented by a bishop holding a fish, or giving the fish to a beggar, or even giving a goose leg to a messenger. Remember to pray to him on July 4 to keep your yard independent of moles.”
The 4th of July will be an easy day to remember. I hope he works for Japanese beetles, too…
