May 4, 2016
It’s national PA Day today, so we’re raising a glass to some of the most highly organised people in the country – not forgetting all those EAs, office managers and VAs out there too. Let’s face it, plenty of us struggle to co-ordinate our own work, let alone manage a top company executive or a team as well.
I once worked (very briefly) as a PA for two company directors, during which time I forgot to book one of them a hotel for the night, yawned so loudly while they were having a board meeting in the room next door they had to come and ask me to be quiet, and on one occasion spilled my coffee all over a set of very important, signed documents. That was all a long time ago before I discovered that I’m far better suited to marketing, where I can indulge my creative side as much as I like and not worry about having to organise anyone else.
For those of you who are super-organised, for yourself and others, notebooks and diaries are, no doubt, an essential. To ensure you have the best tools at your disposal to be as efficient as possible, we’ve identified our Top Three Notebooks for Organisers and explained why they are so helpful:
1. Our front-runner has to be the stylish Brunnen Trend notebook. It’s packed full of features for the professional user. A contents section at the front, numbered pages, two ribbon markers and a set of post it notes and labels mean that if you need to cross-refer and work on multiple tasks or projects at once, it’s very easy to keep track of your notes. There’s also a rear concertina pocket with a business card holder, so you can always have your card to hand and store other people’s cards when out and about at meetings. Add to that sixteen detachable pages in the rear in case you need to scribble a note and leave it with someone, a pen loop to keep that pen to hand and a printed ruler on the first page (well, you never know!) and you’ll see that Brunnen have thought of everything. As well as its amazing list of features, the Trend notebook is eye-catching too, coming with a classic black cover with brightly coloured edge painted pages with matching elastic and pen loop. This notebook really does excel at being the busy professional’s best friend.
2. The Leuchtturm1917 Whitelines notebook is ideal for the technophiles amongst you. It has all the usual features you would normally find in a Leuchtturm1917 product that help you stay organised – a contents page, numbered pages, eight detachable perforated sheets, ribbon page marker and an expandable rear pocket. However, the real beauty in the book is that the pages are designed to work with Whitelines Link technology meaning that your notes or sketches can be scanned by using an app on your phone and uploaded to provide an editable, digitised version of your work. (The app is free to download from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store). The partnership of this great digital technology with the superb Leuchtturm1917 notebook means that you don’t need to spend time typing up notes again. You can grab your notebook when you need to make a to-do list, jot down some meeting notes or record ideas, safe in the knowledge that you can quickly and simply have a digital copy of them to share or store and edit. After all, we don’t always/can’t always have our laptops or tablets to hand.
3. Our final star of the organising show is the Castelli Tucson Weekly Diary. There have been many trends in diary formats over the years, but the latest one, for a combined notebook and diary, might just be here to stay. Often you write to-do lists or reminders of things to discuss with others in your notebook, yet these are not ordered chronologically or easily visually linked to the dates they need to happen. Well now instead of having a book for notes and another for appointments, meetings and deadlines, you can stop cross-referring between the two and keep all the vital bits of information in one handy place. The Tucson Weekly Diary has a week to view diary on the left hand page and a lined notebook page on the right. Meeting with a potential new supplier next month? Pop the meeting in the diary and as you think of matters to discuss or questions to ask over the coming weeks, simply jot them on the right hand side page corresponding to the meeting date, to have a comprehensive snapshot that reminds you of the day and time of the event and what it’s all about. During the meeting, you could also record any key issues or action points raised on the notes page to complete your essential snapshot. With overview year planners, holiday dates, conversion charts and world time zones recorded in the front and an address section at the rear, the features and format of this notebook diary really will ensure that no matter how busy you are, you’ll never miss a thing. It also doesn’t hurt that they are beautifully tactile and come in a dizzy array of stunning colours – function can come in style these days!
So there you have it. Our top three notebooks that help make managing professional life a breeze.
If you think that you and your colleagues could benefit from using these items, why not order a small batch with your company logo on, so you are all super-stylish as well as super-organised. Minimum orders start from as little as 25 units on these items.
Written by Ellie.
Who’s not yet an organising ninja, but getting there with the help of our notebooks.
