planning Archives - Page 3 of 22

How to Plan When There Isn’t Anything to Plan

As the pandemic keeps pushing on, it may seem like there’s legitimately nothing to put into your planner. When everything shut down and plans stopped, I seriously considered just chucking the whole thing into the bin and trying again in 2021. But here are a few ways I’ve found to make the most of my planner when there really isn’t anything to plan for.

1. Document what you got up to. Rather than planning for the future, document the present/past. Document what you ate for dinner, video games you played, or other activities after the fact. That way you’re still getting to enjoy your planner and it’ll be a nice memento to look back on when the pandemic has passed.

2. Go heavier on the decorative stickers. Nothing to plan? Throw some cute stickers down and have fun with it. There are some days where I literally only made banana bread and couldn’t tell you what else I got up to. Time to put the massive collection of stickers to good use.

3. Transition your planner into more goal-oriented. Use your monthly views for benchmarks and deadlines towards a bigger project or goal. Use the daily/weekly pages to write out smaller to do lists and objectives. What better time to go after a goal when your schedule isn’t as heavy as it usually is.

4. Turn it into a gratitude or daily quote planner. Use the space to write a few sentences about the day, what you’re grateful for, or funny things your kids said.

We’ll be back to busy days and full schedules before we know it, so might as well make the most out of a somewhat empty planner to get creative.

How I Plan Out My Blog/YouTube Content

With over a decade of creating content online, I’ve tried my fair share of content planning. I’ve used tangible planners, Google Calendars, and pages of lists. Yet my current content strategy has been by far my favorite and the one I’ve kept up with the most. I use Monday.com, but you could probably recreate this in excel or another project management software. It’s about $8 a month to use after a free trial, but I would pay so much more than that (and I do for my other businesses). I set up my content into three different Monday boards to keep things organized and clear.

One thing to note with Monday, all of your sections within one board will have the same fields. Since all of my content exists on one board, there are fields I won’t fill out until they’re moved to certain sections.

Pro The first of the sections is Content Ideas. This is where I put any possible blog post or YouTube video ideas I may want to do. I think color code them based on topic or theme. That way if I want to add more variety to my content, I can just sort my posts by topic and choose from there. I also like to mark if it’s a YouTube Video, Blog Post, or both.

Then I have an area of content I’m working on or want to do next. These are all of the items that are coming up and I’ve assigned a publish date to. Monday.com has a ton of different integration options so I actually connected it to my Google Calendar. So when I set a publish date, it gets added onto my calendar so I can plan out when I’m going to film. I have a section marked “Good to Go?” to let me know if I have all the supplies in, materials I need, and notes taken. Then there’s a section for Content Created, if I’ve Published the post or Scheduled it, and if I have done Social for it. Once the post is scheduled or published it moves to the next section.

The last section is where all my finished content lives. It’s where I make sure I post social and include links to any pieces of content. That way if I want to share something in particular, I don’t have to scrounge around on the internet trying to find a particular post. This also makes it easier to do “best of” posts or combine different content together for an ultimate guide to something.

Now I still keep a log of the content I post in my planner, but it’s more for sentimental value than actually getting things done. I’ll add to my to do list to film certain videos or write certain posts, but the bulk of the organization and strategy exists on my Monday board.

How do you track projects or content creation?

How to Deal with Repeating Tasks/Events in Your Planner

Despite how life seems to be right now, it usually can get pretty repetitive. There are always events or things you want to track in your planner that happen over and over again. So here are a couple of strategies I use to deal with repeating tasks and events in my planner. Adopt one (or ALL!) of these to make your life a little bit easier.

Create font stickers for weekly meetings, reoccurring events, prescription pick-ups, sports games, etc. That way you’ll already have it written out in a cute font to stick into your planner for the next time it comes around. Add a small graphic to it if you have some design skills or clipart on hand so you’ll be able to quickly notice it when skimming your planner.

Designate a color to each of your family members, life categories, etc so you know which color belongs to what activity. Maybe you have a color for each of your work clients, or colors for working out, family, and social. Write down what you usually track in your planner, separate them into groups, and designate a color to them. I use color coding to make sure I’m not letting a part of my work/life slip through the cracks. If I notice I’m seeing a lot of one particular color, I make sure to check my color code key to see what other things I might be forgetting to work on.

Use a date dot circle from EC if you need to track something like sick days, vacation time, or for me when my cat throws up (I know glamorous). This is a great way to keep track of things that happen sporadically, but you don’t want to just let the world see exactly what it means. These can also be used to track if your partner travels a lot. There are so many different uses for them!

Generate a code/shorthand system so you aren’t constantly writing the same thing in your planner over and over again. Use people’s initials or abbreviate things so you can easily squeeze the information next to the date rather than taking up valuable planning/to do space.

I find that when I’m planning out repeating tasks I want to be able to notice them, but I don’t want them to be overwhelming my entire planner. I like to keep them small, simple, but still easy to spot when I’m skimming what my day looks like.

What are your methods to deal with repeating tasks in your planner?

Where to Find Free Artwork to Make Stickers

If you have a Silhouette but are pants at designing your own stickers, finding artwork can be costly and time consuming. If you’re using stickers for personal use, here are my favorite places to find artwork to use in my planner. If you aren’t sure how to make stickers on your Silhouette, I posted this video tutorial a while ago that could help!

To help my fellow DIYers, I post free art files in my shop’s Facebook Group at the start of every month. They usually fit the seasons or holiday themes of upcoming months. You can easily download the art files and print them out on sticker paper, add cut lines in Silhouette, or use them for other craft projects. This month’s release is Camping and Travel themed.

You can also go back in the group and find the posts from previous months and use those as well.

Another Facebook group I highly recommend joining is the Papershire one. She’s the one that inspired me to start doing monthly freebies and hers are downright adorable. I get excited at the start of every month to see what she releases next.

You can also get freebies from Creative Market every week. Sure they may not always be ideal for stickers or planners, but free is free after all. I get an email every Monday about new free items and go check out the site to see if anything sparks my interest.

Where do you get your files to make stickers and another DIY projects?

Erin Condren Daily Life Planner

It’s shocking that Erin Condren planners have been in my life for six years. That silly little girl back in 2014 didn’t know what she was getting herself in to! This year’s release has the planner that is the answer to ALL of my planner dreams. A coiled daily planner. It’s PLANNER CHRISTMAS!!

The daily life planner comes with two coiled planners with six months in each of them. You get to choose one of the covers, and get a code to go back and customize the other. There are two pattern styles this year (I swear EC wants us all to go broke and spend those stimulus checks!). I honestly cannot choose between layers and flowers which one I like more. Layers reminds me of a lot of Japanese art and since we had to cancel our Japan trip, I’m all about it. I’ll be sure to get some of the flower themed accessories on launch day.

The monthly view is tabbed once again after last year’s planner not opening to the month spread when you used the tab. The productivity page is after the monthly view rather than before. The daily pages are GORGEOUS with Saturday and Sunday sharing one page. I haven’t quite figured out my game for the spread yet, but I’ll share once I do.

The accessories. My god. You just have to watch this video to see the true beauty of them all. This launch could have come at a better time financially, but it sure does lift my spirits. Launch day is next week! What products are you going to get? Be sure to check the description for the video to see what other products will be launching.

Easy Ways to Memory Journal

If you’re anything like me then you have this weird desire to collect brochures, postcards, and bits and bobs during your travels. For so many years I’d just keep them in a box or an end table for a few months, get fed up with the clutter, then chuck them. A vicious cycle of collect, horde, toss, repeat. I had no interest in traditional scrapbooking, but wanted a way to turn these piles of memories into something more than clutter. There have been a few different renditions of my memory journal in the past, but I think I’ve finally found a style that I can stick with.

Erin Condren recently released a new collection of notebooks including a sketchbook option with blank pages. The metaphorically light bulb went off in my head and I scooped a few up in my latest EC order. The perfect blank canvas to document memories. The coils that come on the notebooks are quite small, so I took an old coil I had (I’m that big of a planner addict that I have just random coils) and recoiled it to have more room.

And the rest is pretty damn simple. Collect things…anything…during a conference or your next trip. Keep them all together and print off sticker photos of your adventure. Sit down and just start adding them into your book. It really is just that simple. I never have any spreads in mind or layout styles. I group like things together and use copious amounts of Tombow Adhesive Tape to paste everything down. If I have any booklets or brochures I’ll add tape to the back of them so you can still open them and view them in the book. One of my favorite parts about this style of memory journaling is being able to open things up and interact with the pages.

Conference lanyards are another clutter annoyance that I found myself holding onto. They’re such important parts to remembering a specific event, but I found that I just wasn’t doing anything with them. So for the last conference I got a lanyard from, I decided to cut it up (*gasp*) and turn it into a paperclip to mark that section in my journal. That way I still have the memory, but without all the unnecessary clutter.

I filmed the entire process of setting up the pages in this post and exactly how I created the lanyard paper clip in the above video. Check it out for ideas and to see just HOW simple this whole thing is. If I have anything left over after finishing up the pages, I feel way better about recycling or trashing what’s left. I feel like I’ve adequately documented the experience and feel fine with letting things go.

How do you document travel or events? Are you a traditional scrapbooker, hoarder of souvenirs, or have another method?