With Christa, the Christmas Elf with a Plan – 23 December
It’s hard to believe we’ve reached the next to the last End of the Year Planning Tip from Christa. Tip #23 says that it’s time to begin migrating the rest of our important data from our current planner into our new planner. And it looks like she’s getting ready to migrate back to the North Pole. She’s packed up her sleeping bag and yoga mat. She’s packing those tiny packages she was busy wrapping last week into sacks to give to Santa when he picks her up.
If you missed any of Christa’s tips so far, you’ll find Tip #1 here and can go through them in order.
Migrating Important Data into A New Planner
A few days ago, we took the first steps and entered important dates into the calendar pages of our new planner. And hopefully, your new goals have been documented in your new planner. Now it is time to transition information for ongoing activities that will carry over into the new year.
Hopefully, work and personal life slow down enough with the holidays to allow you to transition easily without needing to juggle with updating both calendars while you are transferring all the information. Lists and smaller bits of information can easily be copied over into the new planner. Lists can be cleaned up and de-cluttered so that you are starting the new year with a fresh view.
But if you are like me, you might have entire sections of notes about a particular subject. And the whole section carries over from year to year. This is how my planner got nicknamed “Linda’s Second Brain”. I store knowledge in my planner sometimes. How do we transition large chunks of data? Our options depend on the type of planner being used. Let’s talk about bound planners, loose leaf planners and then digital planners.
Transitioning Data Between Bound Planners
If either or both your old and new planners are book-bound or spiral bound, transferring important data is usually a manual process. If you need that information carried over, you are going to have to re-generate it in the new planner. It is possible to add pages to a spiral planner if you have a special paper punch. You can’t add a lot of pages unless you are removing pages, as well. The diameter of the spiral wire limits the number of pages you can add. If you add too many the pages will not turn smoothly and the planner will not lay flat. One such paper punch is the We R Makers Punch Board Kit. It can be set up to punch pages for both double-wire and single-wire spiral bound planners. It can also punch pages for disc bound and multiple ring binders in many configurations of rings.
For book bound planners, it is possible to insert a page by using a thin strip of strong, but thin double-sided tape. It does tend to add bulk near the binding and can make the planner not close flat, as it normally would.
If you prefer bound planners but also have sections that are essentially your own handwritten “textbook” on a subject, there may be an alternative. You could use a separate journal for those notes. Then you wouldn’t need to re-generate the information in a new planner. It does, however, require carrying two (or more) planners/journals depending on your needs.
Transitioning Data Between Loose-Leaf Planners
If both the old and new planners are loose-leaf and of the same style binding and page size, you could remove the pages from the old and insert them into the new. If the old planner is bound and the new is loose-leaf and of the same size, it might be possible to transfer the pages directly. Carefully remove the pages from the old planner and cover the edge removed from the binding with place washi tape. Use your paper punch on the pages and place them in the new planner. Otherwise, it’s a manual transition.
Transitioning Data Between Digital Planners
When I say digital planners, I am talking about the digital planners that are PDF or image files loaded into a note taking app (like Goodnotes). I am not talking about digital planning applications, like ToDoist or Trello. These are apps that you enter data into the app, and it stores the information as record in a database.
The information entered in a note taking app is stored digitally as either a text box or an image depending on how it was entered and the app. You should be able to “cut and paste” either of the types of data from one calendar file to another. It may also be possible to extract entire pages as images and import them. However, any text boxes would be lost and no longer editable.
If you are going from paper to digital, you could scan the paper pages and import as images. But you would not be able to edit the information. If you are going from digital to paper, you might be able to print the pages or extract the information and set it up to print on pages to fit your paper planner.
Since you can have multiple documents in the note taking app, it would be easy to have separate journals by subject for notes.
Archiving
I do archive my old planner pages, but don’t have 40 years’ worth of old planners. I did a purge a few years ago and extracted what I considered to be the “good stuff” and got rid of the rest. Lately, I wish I had kept more. I wish I could share a picture of that fat little overstuffed “Linda’s Second Brain” planner. And it would be interesting to map out my planner journey as far as formats and layouts preference evolved and changed as my life evolved and changed.
If you do archive, move any pages you didn’t transfer directly to the new planner into your archive system. But if you don’t, don’t. If you use a digital planner, you may wish to archive a copy off your device and out of the directory the app uses. Whether or not you care to archive your digital planner, you should periodically backup your file(s), in case of accidental deletion, file corruption, or other digital gremlins.
Summary
Migrating the important data from your current planner to a new one as the year ends, is a critical step. You need to try and find a time when your activity in the old planner has slowed down. You don’t want to be actively updating the old planner in the middle of transitioning the data to the new planner. Moving remaining entries on lists to new lists provides a fresh start for the new year. And small pieces of information can be manually copied over. Carrying large sections of notes or project plans might be a bit of a problem. This is especially true for bound planners or if you are changing between planner types – bound, loose-leaf, or digital. If this is a concern, a separate journal for this type of data might be a good alternative going forward.
Whether or not you archive your planner and for how long is a personal choice. It is advisable that you backup a digital planner file periodically in case of file damage or loss.
Just one more tip from Christa. I wonder what it will be.
Happy Planning,
Linda
Tell me what you think …