A place for everything and everything in its place! Here are a few Planner Best Practices that will help keep your planner free from clutter.
– – 1. Be consistent about what/where you document events
- Calendars are for time-sensitive events (not managing tasks). Think: birthdays, anniversaries, all day events, appointments, subscription renewals, coupon expiration date, vacations…
- Planners are the perfect place to apply the principle of “a place for everything and everything in its place”. Always record events in the same area of the daily box (i.e. birthdays are always at the top with the same kind of icon/sticker.) This helps your brain hone in on events without having to review every written item.
– – 2. Keep yourself grounded in time
- Cross off each day as it passes.
NOTE: Some people feel stressed and anxious when the whole box is “x’ed” out. An alternative is to only cross off the date.
– – 3. Track important events
- For upcoming events you especially don’t want to miss, experiment with writing the event vertically. (Just keep vertically-written events in the same area of the calendar day).
- If you want to remember the date of someone’s passing so you can transfer it to your next planner, write it in large letters so you’ll easily see it when you’re setting up next year’s planner.
– – 4. Keep ongoing goals on track
- A daily record of time-on-task can help you stay the course with ongoing goals (stretching, walking, cleaning, strength-training…).
NOTE: To help me stay focused on my goal of walking 500 miles/year, I recorded my daily mileage – and tallied the numbers at the end of the week.
If your goal is time-based, experiment with tracking your time using time circles. Quarter circles = 15 minutes; half circles = 30 minutes…
– – 5. Keep your planner open & ready to use
- Bookholders are brilliant for keeping planners upright! Keep it next to your computer.
- Create tabs so you can easily open the planner to the current month – or the notes section at the back.
NOTE: I have one tab that says “MONTH” and each month I move it to the next month. My other tab is for “NOTES” as my planner has a few pages at the back that I use for all my random notes (recommended movies, books, restaurants, flight credits, gift ideas…)
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