Video Transcript
00:05
Hi, everyone; hopefully, you have a wonderful start to your week. My name is Shevonne. And if you don’t know, I focus on talking about productivity, time management, organization, work/life balance. In general, everybody’s work/life balance is different. So I try to cover topics that will make you think of what works and what doesn’t work for you. And you can make tweaks here there were ending the year.
One of the things that happen during this time is you start thinking about how you’re a year when and how you want your future year or years to go, and you start thinking about that. But if you don’t have an action plan to go along with that, it doesn’t matter what goals you set for yourself, New Year’s resolutions, whatever. If you can’t have an action plan that will back those bigger goals up. Who cares what you plan. So I wanted to talk about one of the main tools that you can use to plan your year, plan your month, plan your week, and that is a planner. Planners are something that I’ve been using for years, and strategize how you want your time to go. And it helps you keep on task. And there are different types of planners. So I wanted to go into each one. And one thing I do also want to mention is that I have a cheat sheet that I created just for this to help you find the planner that makes sense for you. So go ahead and look at the description below.
You’ll see a link there and grab the free planner guide.
Paper Planner
The first planner is the paper planner. There are so many different paper planners out there. You can’t find a paper planner that suits your needs. There are monthly planners, weekly planners, and daily planners; you can even pick, if you want it to be horizontal or vertical, you decide what your planner should look like. I personally like the Erin Condren. So I’ll go ahead and show you mine, I decided to go ahead with a weekly planner, but that wasn’t working out for me. So I chose a monthly planner. So this is mine; you can customize it, go ahead and plan your time.
02:22
One of the reasons I like to is that I plan for the next month at the end of each month. And one thing that I do is look at my bigger goals. And I look at the month to see what I have to do during that month to reach that bigger goal. And so the planner helps me get down and dirty. I even use this pen; it’s like a flexion because I got a rocket book, test it out. It wasn’t for me. But one of the good things that happened was finding these pens, the Flexion. I love that it’s just like a pencil you write and you can erase. So I do that a lot. And so I’m able to like a sketch out arrays and figure out what I want my month to look like. And there are so many other ones. There’s the Happy planner, the Focus planner; I know I’m missing a few. But you can go out there and find the planner that suits you if you are someone who still loves that pen and paper feel someone who likes to scribble and doesn’t have to worry about typing here and there on a computer, which is why I love a paper planner to start with. And then one thing I also do is that I had this big one because visually, I can see it. I have this weekly planner I got from Amazon. And then, while I’m at my desk, I apologize for the lamp.
I don’t know why it looks like that. But while I’m at my desk, I can see what is happening that day. And so that helps me make sure that I reduce how much I procrastinate. Everyone procrastinates a little bit. We’re not robots, so I tend to procrastinate sometimes or stare into outer space. But at least this helps me keep focused on what I need to do. So if you need to like scratch outdo this, that do that. Or if you’re very creative, that’s the other thing about the paper planner. If you are very artistic or I love using stickers and like making my planner my own, then a paper planner would be good.
Digital Planner
The other type of planner is a digital planner. And so those are fairly new. They’ve only come out like a few years ago. So if you are a heavy tablet user and have the smartpen to go along, like if you have an iPad and then have the Apple Pencil, then I think a digital planner would work well for you. If you don’t need the feel of the paper and look very similar to a paper planner, you can select what view you want to have for your planner. You can have the monthly, weekly, daily views. You can go on there and then create your plan for that time. They also have the same thing as paper planners. They have stickers you can draw as well. I haven’t used them that much in this because right now, I’m trying to be very budget-friendly. I do want to get a new tablet. But being that I am trying to do things like sell the house, buy a new home, relocate, and even create a digital course, that is not a priority for me, even though it is one of the things that I want to in the future. But if you are someone who has one of the most updated tablets, and you have a smartpen. You should consider a digital planner if that helps if you don’t need paper, and you don’t need the extra bells and whistles like notifications, collaboration with other people. So a digital planner would be good for you.
Project Management Tool/Task Management Tool
The last one is using a project management tool, task management tool, or even an online calendar to create your plan for whatever time you want to plan for. So there are tools like Asana, Trello, Taskade, Todoist, and Google Tasks and Reminders. All those types of tools that you can use to create your plan. However, one thing about those is that you do lose the ability to have that one-page feel and sketch out your plan. But you also get the bonuses of notifications; you get phone apps and widgets. So those are the things that are great about using those more robust tools is that you can plan your time and have those additional features that will help you get those types of reminders. Also, you can collaborate with others if you are working with a team and/or virtual assistant.
For me, I start on paper, because as I said, I still I’m obsessed with stationaries and writing materials. So I start on paper. And then I do use Google. I’m still trying to decide between Asana and Trello and see which one works for me right now. I am focusing on one, but they’re both great. But you definitely can think about what type of person you are and what kind of planner would make sense for you because there are so many out there. And the good thing about it is, as with anything, you don’t have to stick with one. You can mix them up if you’re like me, who wants to start with paper, and then switch to the online tools that are more robust than if you are not set on one, and you have to stick with one. But the one thing is that some of the planners are from 20 From January 2022 to December 2022. So you probably want to start thinking about which planner you want and start ordering them now because if you have them customized, like my Erin Condren one, it does sometimes take a while unless you have an Erin Condren store nearby. Oh my gosh, we have one here like 1015 minutes away, and I was able to create notebooks, and you can even customize your calendars there; a lot of us don’t have those types of stores near us. So you want to make sure that you give yourself, especially with the holiday season, maybe two to three weeks to get your planner, so you’re not sitting there getting to January and then realize you need to get the planner. You then have to wait till February to get it. So that’s the only thing some planners have different timelines. So if there are student focus planners, those usually go run from August to May or June, and then you can pick like 18-month calendars. But one thing I will say is that it is sometimes hard to find those customized timelines, especially for some of the planners if you like a certain one. So try to think about which planner you want and go with that. One of the good things about digital and online tools is that you’re not stuck on those timelines. You can go ahead and buy them at any time. That’s one of the perks of getting those other tools other than the paper planner but download the guide. Let me know which planner you prefer. If you do, mix it up as I do, and we’ll talk soon. Bye!
