5 Tips for Staying Organized with your Planner
I love my Simplified Planner!
With Labor Day upon us and the busyness of a new school year and fall activities just around the corner, having a system of staying on top of all.the.things is key.
If you’ve been around here for any length of time, you know that I am a diehard Simplified Planner fan. I personally think that Emily Ley, founder of Simplified, is not only an organizational genius but also an incredible woman, wife, and overall human being. If you don’t follow her on Instagram, you need to. Her positive attitude and life hacks will keep you coming back for more.
That being said, now that I have been a Simplified Planner user for a full two years, I feel like I have really established a system that works for me. I took some of what I learned in a blog post or Youtube video from Emily Ley (I can’t find it now but basically it was how she uses both a digital calendar and a paper planner) and combined it with a few other lessons I’ve learned from my dad and brother (both of whom are also planner gurus in their own way). Fun fact, my dad used to teach time management and Franklin Planner classes back in the day. It’s literally in my blood, people.
Today I want to share with you 5 tips for how I use my planner. I hope they are helpful to you as you seek to better stay organized and on top of things in the season ahead.
Utilize the monthly spread. I feel like a lot of people don’t use this part of their planners as much as they could. It is one of my most used and loved tools in my planner though! Mine has a “Notes” column on the left that I write down tasks that need to be done every single month. They don’t necessarily need to happen on a specific day, but I do want to make sure I get them done. Some tasks that I include here are more household focused such as wash the sheets and bedding, mop the floors, go over our monthly budget, and plan a date night. I try to pick a task or two from this list to complete every weekend. Then by the end of the month I know my whole house got cleaned at one point or another too! I also include things in my business that I know need to happen monthly on this page (I am my own boss and work from home), such as do customer care follow ups, send out this month’s trend report, etc. All of these things are in the column to the left of the monthly calendar. I also write in things like birthdays, vacations, etc on the actual calendar.
Use sticky tabs on the monthly spread for more flexible appointments. I do a lot of online events for my business, but sometimes life happens and events need to get moved. For these events, I write the person’s name and the time on a colored, translucent sticky tab (like these from Amazon) and put it on the day of my monthly spread calendar. This allows me to simply move the event to another month/day on my calendar if needed, without crossing out and messing up my calendar. Sometimes I also put blank ones on specific dates of this page so I know exactly which nights I still have open/available to work too.
Put all scheduled appointments, meetings, and events in your digital calendar first. Yes, you read that right. I use my Google calendar too, and I truly believe that it is the hybrid of the two that works well for me. Now before you stop reading right here and now, please hear me out first. Anything that is not THIS WEEK, goes in my digital calendar first. A dentist appointment in six months? Google calendar. A birthday party in two weeks? Google calendar. Re-occurring Zoom calls on Tuesday mornings at 10:30am? Google calendar. Everything goes in the digital calendar first. This is for a few reasons. 1) My husband has access to it. 2) If I’m at the actual dentist office and didn’t bring my planner in to schedule my next appointment, I can just pull it up on my phone. 3) If something changes, it is easy to move. Everything goes in the digital calendar first. Here’s where it gets good….
Prioritize time on Sunday nights or Monday mornings to write your tasks and appointments for the week into your paper planner. This only takes a few minutes but really helps me to feel more prepared, equipped, and less anxious about the week ahead. I look at both my digital calendar and the monthly spread in my paper planner to make sure I don’t miss anything. I love that the Simplified Daily planners have both a column for “My Day” (meaning meetings, tasks, or appointments that have actual set times), as well as a column for “To Do” items (such as follow up with Michelle, water the plants, and call the doctor). Because my work and schedule is flexible, I use the To Do column more than anything else. I write down both personal and work things in this area because so much of my life and work is combined. But it really does provide such a nice guideline for my day and helps me know what to do when I’m sitting down at my desk for the afternoon or have 30 minutes in between conference calls. Sometimes in the morning I will highlight the top 2-3 tasks on my To Do list that I need to prioritize first for the day. Those are non-negotiables that must be done before I wrap up my day.
Check off anything you accomplish (doesn’t that feel great?!) and put a little arrow next to any task that needs to get moved to the following day. Then write those unfinished tasks on the next day in your planner that you know you’ll have more time available to work on it. Some people think it is a pain in the booty to re-write tasks over and over again until it gets done. I agree. It is annoying. BUT, that is what encourages me to use my time well. I can easily see what I’ve been putting off that I really just need to take care of because I’m sick of re-writing it everyday. And sometimes that is all that needs to happen for me to actually get it done. ;)
A few other random things that help me too… If you get a Simplified planner, DO THE PREP WORK. There are some very helpful tools and resources in the front that will set you up for success. They aren’t there by accident. Put in the work. It will help, I promise. Sometimes it also helps to do things on certain days, such as water the plants on Tuesdays and do laundry on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Anything to remove the “to dos” from my brain and feeling like I have to remember all.the.things is so beneficial to my overall mental health. Write it down. Put it in the planner. Get it out of your head and onto paper so you have more mental space and energy for the important stuff, like spending time with your family or reading a good book.
So that’s it! The in’s and out’s of how I used my Daily Simplified planner, in addition to my digital calendar. I hope this was helpful to you and inspires you to get organized so you can live your best life and focus on what’s important.
Do you have other tips and tricks to share? I’d love to hear!
Want to purchase the Daily Simplified Planner that I referred to in this post? Use this link to get $10 off your first order! Click here.
