I'm more of a pen and paper kind of girl
A little over a month ago, I felt pretty confident that I could become the type of person who improves her time management skills through Google Calendar scheduling. In fact, I even shared all about it it with you here. If my habit-tracking YouTube videographer buddy Matt D'Avella loves it, I'll probably love it too.
No joke, this purple time block that I added for the sake of showing you what my calendar would look like is the only thing that I digitally tracked since that November morning.
About an hour in to this sad attempt, I had already realized that I absolutely don't have the patience to constantly be updating anything on my phone all day every day, and if I'm going to put in that kind of effort, it's going to be toward something that is making me $$$.
I should have already known that I'm more of a pen and paper kind of girl.
For the last decade, I've been using the same Mead-brand planner to keep track of my to-do's and events, and for the most part, it has done it's job quite well. It's successfully helped me coordinate three years of graduate school assignments, all of the jobs (20+), half marathon training plans, budget tracking, student loan payoffs, thousands of volunteer hours, and some social life stuff too.
However, going into a new year and a new decade, I'm excited to try out a different type of planner - one that provides clearly laid out spaces to creatively track progress toward weekly, monthly, and annual personal and work projects.
With my new Passion Planner in tow, I now have a more helpful format to get me thinking about who I want to see, where I want to go, things I want to learn, and what I'd like to prioritize. I like starting the month off with a laid out plan because even if it doesn't go exactly as expected, it has still set me up with a soft road map that feels a bit more thoughtfully coordinated (instead of the roughly planned chaos seen above).
The Passion Planner allows for a lot more creative design too, with blank drawing spaces, bullet journal pages, and guided reflection pages, which I really like. Although I'm not especially artistically gifted, I do look forward to being able to see where I put my time and effort based on my new color-coded tracking system.
orange = fitness
purple = travel
blue = friends/family
red = relationship
yellow = personal development
brown = health & wellness
pink = community involvement
green = financial
black = career
gray = spiritual
As a very visual person, I really like the daily view with the hour breakdown so that I can easily see what my day has in store, how I'm using my time, where I can be more/less productive, and if I'm reaching my mini goals each day.
One of my 2020 goals is to incorporate more keyboard playing into my week so that I can play at least one new song by the end of the month. I also want to start adding in time for home-cooked vegan meals with Nick on Tuesday/Thursday nights. With this hourly layout, I can easily map out my practice and cooking times each week, which is something I was really missing with my old planner.
If it's not written down, I'll let all accountability go out the window and turn on The Office for the 732nd time.
Honestly, a life without clear intention for me is just a lifetime of three-hour naps on the couch and that ain't much to write home about.
Reader buddies, are you trying out a new planner for 2020? Tell me about it!