Do you love your planner? ... Or do you have a love/hate relationship with it? Are you struggling to find reasons to make it an integral part of your life? Check out this next installment of reasons why using a Planner or Bullet Journal can simplify your life.
8. Using Paper and a Pen
Taking the opportunity when it comes up to spend some time with paper and a pen, to get a break from my laptop and desk and spreadsheets. You can plan anywhere, in the car, at home, at work, on holidays…anywhere. I love the feel of paper and the tactile process of planning, using a paper-based planner makes planning really relaxing and enjoyable if I’m in the car waiting for one of my kids, such a different experience from using a computer or other electronics for planning. Maybe you are a paper planner lover too and appreciate the analog experience.
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9. A Hard Landscape or Brain Dump
Utilising a Hard Landscape of Brain Dump can be really empowering and motivating for your planning routine. If you struggle with planning or get a bit overwhelmed, not sure what to put in your planner or avoiding it altogether or not feeling like you are getting things accomplished my favourite thing is this a Hard Landscape.
I think I got that term from David Allen’s book Getting Things Done. Literally, a ruled up a page with dots of bullets down the side, then simply record everything that is in your head, just get it out of your head onto paper. Then don't feel stressed about moving those actions into a monthly or daily log, or a calendar. The key to making this easy to do and empowering is just to work down that list, over days or weeks or whatever, and mark things off as you do them. Or, cross a line through it all if you have cancelled or deleted that task, make a backwards arrow if you have decided to tackle it in a few months, or half a cross, like one diagonal line, if you have half completed it… etc.
The idea is not to spend too much time processing this list and moving it around to fancy Collection pages or agonising over it. Simply use and work from this one spread in your planner now for however long it takes, to feel like you have your mojo back and celebrate you are progressing and accomplishing things.
10. Failing often and in a forwards direction, this is progress!
This is a well-used phrase, but I actually live by it and take it to heart: fail forward. I love the ability to fail, fail often, but always fail forwards. This is essentially the ability to be flexible and experience freedom in your planning, with minimal structure, or no structure, the basic freeform to do what you need to in life, try things out, and fail at things, in a forward motion. This is the permission to try things and get better, through learning and failing, just keep moving in the direction that you want to move. I feel it bullet journalling for me absolutely support that in my life I use my planner the way I need to, I love that if it doesn't work, I’ll try something different, always moving in a direction, don’t stop altogether.
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11. Cash Envelopes to organise money each fortnight
Cash Envelopes and the actual system is pretty well-known, just do a search on YouTube and you’ll see hundreds of creators talk about it and how they use it in their life. If you love to plan and you love systems, perhaps you use cash envelopes. I have a Personal size Filofax at home with envelopes inside, representing different categories that I save for each fortnight. Some of these categories are Pet Care, Beauty, Kids Clothes, Car Maintenance, Medications… there can be so many and it depends on what suits your family. Each fortnight I add cash to each after I take it out of the ATM, and once it hits a threshold I have decided, I don’t add any more cash until we start using it, ie making haircut appointments for the kids, then I’ll start saving incrementally again.
I also have categories in my purse, I just have the cash separated by pieces of plastic that I added a washi tab to the top of each with the description. This is the cash that goes with me everywhere, but my folder stays at home. My categories in my purse are: Food (just basically random groceries), Coffee (takeaways coffee on the go), Cars (petrol for our two cars), Miscellaneous (which is my discretionary money, my husband has the same), Events (things I know are coming up or events that arise we didn’t plan for) this category usually has the most left each fortnight and I roll that back into the next fortnight’s income and re-distribute it, Takeaway (that’s pretty self-explanatory). If I pay using my credit card for something, I just take the cash from that category and stash it in the back of my purse, for when we get paid again, and that cash gets rolled back into the credit card to pay that purchase off. I like to have lots of small notes at home so I can do this easily - changing out larger notes from my purse and getting myself change.
12. A Flexible System
I love the flexibility of a Bullet Journal. Lots of people like to work to a structured Agenda-style, with time blocks and hours set-out during the day, that’s great. I'm not that sort of person I like to work a little bit more fluid I like things to be flexible and freeform. Today I didn't write a to-do list in my Bullet Journal, I already had a spread open and I had 4 days on that spread with some existing open tasks. I do this often, I think if I can see the open tasks, ie it is on the open spread in front of me and I don’t need to flip back to a previous page, I am happiest working directly off that open spread. Don’t create more work for yourself if you don’t enjoy the process of migrating tasks from day to day, every day. So instead of re-writing anything, I just worked through that list and marked them as complete as I did them. Then I did a small heading with todays’ date and wrote the task (once I had already completed it) with a little tick, which makes me feel great and acknowledge that I am accomplishing things. So your journal can be as flexible, or structured as you like, and what works best for you and your life.
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13. Being Creative
Bullet journaling can be as creative as you want it to be. love the creative side! I am a bit of a hobbyist, I used to teach scrapbooking lessons as a side job when my kids were babies. I have always, always loved stationery… I’m sure I am not alone in that obsession :) Nothing makes me happier or, or more meditative than sitting with papers and pens and stickers and planning out my day and work commitments. Using tools and materials that are tactile, I find relaxing, that I can just sit down with a cup of coffee and really unwind in my head and use amazing tools and things that feel, and with vintage papers, smell incredible. I am a firm believer when your planning is beautiful, you want to use it more.
1 comment
Thanks very much for the great info and inspiration, Rachel, it has really helped me to build on what I was already doing 😃.