SITTING on the train the other day, I was intrigued by a man barking orders into some sort of electronic device.

“Do this, sort that, ring him, call her, book this, cancel that...,” he repeated over and over. When the call ended he smiled and told me that he wasn’t issuing instructions to anyone else, but to himself.

“I’m just organising my week,” he said.

His words struck a chord. I don’t think I have ever properly planned my week, despite my best efforts to do so. Only yesterday I found a diary at the bottom of my bag. Bought in January to help me keep on top of things, it had one entry, for a doctor’s appointment that very month. The rest was blank – a stark example of my intentions to be better organised falling flat.

I remember in the Eighties when the Filofax (I was amazed to learn that this organiser was actually invented in 1910) hit the streets with its ring-bound year planner, address book, road maps and atlas.

I loved mine, a small brown leather affair that I believed gave me a look of a successful person who was at the cutting edge of business. But, apart from sticking in a few telephone numbers, I didn’t use it. I just held it in my hand a lot.

Our desire to be better organised has spawned a whole industry, with the electronic Psion and a host of other button and touch screen diaries and address books.

Being a Luddite, the Psion was never going to work for me and I continue to steer clear of electronic devices. It’s hard enough when you’re hastily trying to scribble stuff on a note pad – it would take twice as long to key it into a computer. And, I often think, if computer-based organisers are so effective, why do so many people have monitors covered in Post-it notes?

I’m from the wing it school of organising. “Is that appointment today?” I often ask my daughters.

I can’t even properly make use of the most basic tools for putting my life in order. I scrawl stuff down on scraps of paper then forget where I’ve put them. Occasionally, I even revert back to the playground and jot notes on the back of my hand.

Of course, with any organiser you have to remember to check it and if I had one I probably wouldn’t. I am loathe to admit that text reminders on mobile phones, alerting people to dental or doctor’s appointments, are useful.

There may come a time when, like the man on the train, I will become so forgetful that I will be forced to adopt a machine as my personal assistant. But I’d have to remember what to tell it.