Make a note in your Filofax: paper diaries are better than phones

I was an obnoxious child. This is the only possible explanation for how I ended up not merely owning but loving a Filofax when I was about 12 years old. It was the mid-1980s, they were all the rage and I was determined to ape the yuppies in the wine bars of the City by walking around the corridors of my school clutching a bulging personal organiser.

The attraction was not the diary but all the inserts you could clip into the leather-bound ring-binder. They were the forerunners of apps on a smartphone. I had a map of the world with time zones and international dialling codes, a calculator that doubled up as a ruler (my gosh, I felt swanky unclipping that during maths lessons), an address book, graph paper and, if my memory is correct, a chart of wine vintages, detailing whether 1982 burgundy needed laying down or drinking. No wonder I was bullied.

In my defence, quite a few other pupils had Filofaxes. What can I say? This was the era of Thatcher in her pomp, the Lawson boom and they were the accessory of choice for aspiring masters of the universe, even 12-year-olds. Filofax was floated in 1987, just after British Airways and just before BP, and was valued at £12 million.

Then, of course, Black Monday happened. Shortly after, the Psion Series 3 arrived, then the Blackberry, then the iPhone, swiftly followed by apps — maps, calculators, contacts, games and even wine vintage guides, everything a Filofax did but quicker, cheaper and with the information seamlessly updated rather than requiring an annual purchase. Surely a third of a century on from its heyday, Filofax is long dead, isn’t it?

“It really drives me nuts,” says Susan Graham, managing director of the parent company, when I express surprise that it still sells about 150,000 folders a year. “We didn’t go away.”

It didn’t disappear, but it’s fair to say it is far smaller than it once was. In its peak year of 1986 it sold 6.5 million. However, it has just launched a feature that it hopes will secure its future for the next few years at least: “A revolutionary new digital reminder app.” This allows people who own a Filofax to carry on using their physical diaries, but now they can also use their smartphones to scan a QR code on the page of their diary, which opens up the phone’s camera, which takes a picture of the physical calendar entry, adding it to the digital app. Please note, the app isn’t sophisticated enough to convert your handwriting into a digital entry. It simply uploads a photograph. But it does mean that when you are in the gym, or out to lunch — without your Filofax, but with your phone — you will be pinged a reminder of an upcoming meeting.

To call this revolutionary is a stretch, at best. It sounds to me like the horse dealers of Detroit in the 1920s, long after the launch of the Model T Ford, suggesting that your four-legged friend be fitted with some motorised hooves.

In any case, Moleskine, Filofax’s rival in the luxury diary business, has had something called Moleskine Smart for quite a few years. This involves a special pen, converting your handwriting into digitised diary entries, although the pen is very expensive and relies on Bluetooth, a form of technology that makes pigeon post seem reliable.

Yet we should not dismiss these stationery companies’ attempts to stay relevant. A distinct minority of people prefer a paper diary over a digital one. I long ago ditched the A-Z (which most Londoners once kept in their bags), so, too, an address book and calculator. But I have clung on to my paper diary for the simple reason that I just can’t remember any event if it is entered into a digital calendar. Something scribbled into my diary, even if it’s barely legible, means I tend to turn up on time, as long as I remember to glance at my diary occasionally.

There is science to back this up. In 2021 the University of Tokyo took a group of volunteers and got them to read a fictional conversation between characters discussing complex plans. Then they were split into three groups. They had to enter these fictional appointments into either a smartphone calendar, a digital tablet or a paper diary. The second half of the task involved them, after an hour’s break, having to recall all the meetings.

Those using paper were far quicker at converting the complex schedules of the fictional characters into calendar entries (11 minutes, against 16 minutes for those using a smartphone) and they were slightly better at recalling the events. “Our take-home message is to use paper notebooks for information we need to learn or memorise,” Kuniyoshi Sakai, the neuroscientist who led the research, said.

The distinctive strokes and underlinings we make using paper and pens, even the position of the note on the page, help to anchor it in our memory. All digital entries look identical and therefore equally forgettable.

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Nostalgia never goes out of fashion, which is why wired headphones are now all the rage in the way that vinyl was a few years ago, but there is something beyond the desire for retro driving the resilience of stationery. People appreciate tactile things in a virtual world.

Filofax needs to improve the first iteration of its reminder app and to truly digitise a physical diary in a seamless way. For all the heft and functionality of a physical diary, sometimes, just sometimes, a digital alert is useful, too.

If it can crack this conundrum, maybe it can survive for a few decades more. It might even be time for that other great 1980s executive desk accessory to enjoy a comeback: the rolodex. Now that was a status symbol hard to beat.

Harry Wallop is a consumer journalist and broadcaster. Follow him on X @hwallop