The Simple Way to Start Using a Planner
As a busy mom, I’m always looking for home life hacks to make things easier. Using a planner helps keep me focused and organized. Here are some productivity hacks and planner ideas for you to try!
If you’re like me, you’ve probably started roughly 10 different planners in your lifetime. Each time maybe it lasts a week, maybe even a month, but eventually you grow tired of writing the same kind of things each and every week. It’s not long before you give up on it completely.
Sound like you? No judgement, this was me too! Until I found a way to make my planner work for me specifically.
I think that’s the key, not everyone needs the same type of planner, or needs to be tracking the same type of things. It’s an extremely personal thing. Just because someone else is tracking every single glass of water they drink in a day, doesn’t mean it’s your cup of tea (or water).
So here is my list of simple ways that I use my planner. Keep in mind these are just what worked for me. I hope these just spark some inspiration for you on some ideas that could help make your life easier. And if not, keep researching until you find the planning ideas that work for you!
First, why plan?
Planning is a great way to track appointments, to-do’s, contacts, birthdays, goals, projects, budgets, work out routines, etc. Really, there are endless ways to plan.
For me, the reason it is the most helpful is that it allows me to get stuff off of my mind, and into a place that I won’t forget it later. It’s a similar concept to a brain dump, but maybe a little more structured. If you’re someone who struggles to keep their head clear or gets anxiety easily when thinking about all the things they have to accomplish in a week or day, writing things down is a great way to relieve some of that anxiety. This releases valuable space in your brain to focus on other things, or maybe relax a little.
I also love the goal-setting aspect of planning. If I don’t have a specific goal written out, it’s very unlikely to come to fruition. I use my planner to set yearly goals, then cascade them down to monthly or even weekly goals. The magical part is, I actually see progress towards these goals when I do this. Something about writing things down makes it more real, and more likely to get checked off the list.
Materials “Needed” for Planning
Really, there are no required materials to plan well. You could totally get by with a simple notebook and pen (although you’ll have to do a little more manual setup work to make it functional, but still totally doable). For me, I wanted a planner that was already set up and ready to go.
- This is the Planner I went with. It’s by Tiffani Beaston and Plan Chicly (If you don’t watch Tiffani Beaston on Youtube, you’re really missing out! She’s got great content on mom life, cleaning routines, meal planning, etc. and she’s extremely down to earth and motivating!). This post is not sponsored at all, I just really love the product and think it is a beautiful and functional planner.
- Pens (or pencils). You can get really crazy and get colored pens from amazon. Most of the time, I just use black pens.
- Stickers. Again, these are not required but I found they made the planning process a little more fun. These are the ones I got and they came from Dollar Tree (so only $1 a piece). Super affordable, and still good quality stickers!
5 Simple Ways I use My Planner
- Yearly Goals
In the beginning of the year I like to set my intentions and goals for the year. I usually will take a few pages of my planner and map these out.
The planner I use has dedicated sections for this which makes it super easy. Like I said in the beginning, writing things down for me makes it much more likely to actually happen. And thinking about what you would like to see accomplished in a year is a great way to live more intentionally and not let the time tick away.
Honestly, this is the main reason I was able to start this blog this year, because I wrote it down. And somehow it happened! - Monthly Planning
Once you have yearly goals, try to space them out throughout the year in a reasonable and attainable way. For example when I started this blog, my January goal was to write 3 blog posts and get the “bones” of the website up and running. This is a smaller, attainable goal that I can accomplish in a month and is a great first step towards reaching my yearly goal of starting a successful blog.
Other things to plan monthly are the usual: appointments, things that must get done, trips, etc. The blog I use has a great monthly spread for each month, and also a section for goals and habit tracking for the month. These are also great sections to fill out to help break down those goals and make them happen!
- Weekly Planning
Next, break down your months into weeks. At the beginning of each week, I’ll map out the key things that need to get done. Again, this is the normal appointments, to do’s, but also the steps towards those main goals that I plan to take in the week.
I also like to map out the meals I’m cooking, to make it easier to grocery shop.
It’s also fun to incorporate stickers if you’re into that. I find it just makes the planner look more pulled together.
- Helpful Lists
There are some key lists that l like to include in my planner as well. This way they are super easy to refer back to when needed. One example is my Costco list.
We love shopping at Costco and get SO MANY of our food and household staples there. My problem is, I often don’t remember what all I need when I go there. To fix this problem, I started writing down every thing we use that we buy from Costco. It took me a while to get a complete list (honestly, because it took me a while to remember everything), but eventually I ended up with a comprehensive list of everything.
Now when I’m planning a Costco trip, I look at my master list and see what we are running low on. This really helps prevent us from missing things (and potentially having to go back to Costco and spend another $300…)
- Meal Planning
Another helpful list I like to have is my meal rotation list. I like to meal plan each week. I love trying new recipes, so everything I find a good recipe that I want to make again, I’ll add it to my meal rotation list. This way when I’m planning next weeks’ meals, I can quickly look at this list and choose the meals that work best with my week. Sometimes I’m working in the office and I need quick and easy meals to throw together after work. Other times I have more time to devote to cooking and can make more involved meals.
And that’s it! Hopefully this gives you some inspiration to start planning yourself. And if these methods don’t appeal to you, don’t give up. Keep researching and you’ll find ways that are plan that are useful to you.
For more productivity hacks, see this post on the morning routine that changed my life. Or this post on how I (try to) keep my house clean.
