SO059: Planning Seasonally

Summary: <a href="http://www.simplifiedorganization.com/so-season10">Season 10: Planner Pep Talks</a><br> The episodes in season 10 are excerpted from a live workshop I gave in February 2018 about how to make sure your planner and planning is not a waste of time. Hint: it’s more about us than about the planner.<br> Get access to the whole workshop, the chat replay, and more here:<br> <br> <br> <br> <br> So, we go through these different seasons where we’re using time differently, we need to think about time differently, and put together the plan in a way that matches how our life is flowing. So, if you have a baby, or if you have primarily toddlers, then the way that your time flows, the way your day flows, is unique and it’s a thing. So, don’t try to fit your life into a planner, fit the planner to your life.<br> So, maybe your time chunks are morning and afternoon, and that’s it. Still, you get three things per time block, and if you hit those things you’re good. And the things can’t be “clean the whole house” – that’s not one thing! We have to evaluate our expectations and what’s realistic. “Clean a drawer” is one thing. So, the important thing is looking at how your day flows and putting together a planner that reflects that is tricky, but thinking about it in that way, I think, helps us see other possibilities rather than just trying to print off (even mine, including mine) someone else’s planner template and then just trying to paste that into our life. But, to look at all the different templates that are out there and then say, “I like this about that one, I like this about this one” and try a few and maybe, for your interval, where you have six weeks of focus on certain projects – maybe a project for an interval is to figure out a planner that works for me. <br> And, so each week you can try out a new thing. But, you’ve got to give it at least a week before you know whether or not it’s working for you. And, you also, as you evaluate have to honestly evaluate is the planner not working for me because it doesn’t match the way my life flows or the categories that my brain thinks in, is it not working for that reason, or is it not working because I wasn’t looking at it, because I wasn’t working the plan myself. Was the problem the planner or was the problem me? And, going through and just honestly doing that evaluation, it’s not the sort of condemnation, sort of thing, like if the problem is you (because sometimes it is, sometimes it’s me – a lot of the times it’s me) and when you realize that, it’s not a guilt-fest, it’s a well-what’s-getting-in-the-way? Is it my attitude? Is it my habits? And, how can I change my attitude? And, how can I change my habits, because those are things that we do have control over and we can change. And, just being aware and trying things out and being intentional is the first step, because that’s when we notice what’s going on in our heads, it’s when we notice what our habits are, and that’s really the first step – is paying attention and noticing.<br>