How To Use A Planner (even if you're highly creative, super disorganized and "can't plan")
The artwork above is from a page from the Year of Dreams 2023 planner, with ideas for how to use any planner and inspiration for coming up with your own way.
Everyone can plan.
There is no one particular way that you’re supposed to plan.
Some people who think they can’t plan actually just can’t follow other people’s rigid ideas about what planning is supposed to be. And that’s good!
Here's how I think about planning, as a creative person:
Planning is a way of bringing my creative dreams into linear time. Instead of "someday" it's "what teeny tiny step can I can with this dream THIS WEEK?"
Planning is a place merging my dreams and my current reality. Doctor's appointment Tuesday. Dream Project Wednesday.
Mostly, planning is a way of being more intentional about how I'm showing up in my life. How do I want to feel? Sure, I have things I NEED to do, but what do I WANT to do?
It's about making space for these questions, every week, about how I want to be living my life. I do a LOT of journaling in my planner.
Planning is NOT about finding the perfect system, and then using it perfectly, getting your shit together and keeping it together forevermore.
I think a lot of the time when people think they "can't plan" it means they can't do that. And that's fine. We're on a rock spinning in space. The economy is collapsing. The climate is collapsing. Most of us do NOT have our shit together right now.
Planning is a way of engaging creatively and mindfully with your life.
PLAYING with your life, even.
Some ways to use a planner, besides to-do lists and task planning:
- Fill in how you want to feel each day
- Fill in how you did feel each day
- Track progress on your projects
- Make a wish every day
- Record your favourite thing each day
- Keep a daily gratitude list
- Write an affirmation for the day
- Document your life
- Do a daily collage, drawing or poem
- Journal Hello Day! I hope you will bring me:
(start to play with these and you'll be coming up with your own ideas in no time)
I was asked such a great question this morning, about how to combine weekly planning with monthly planning.
Since the Year of Dreams 2023 has both - here are some ways to use both together:
Spend some time with the monthly planning kit each month to work out goals. Then each week draw on that to decide what to focus on.
Use the monthly planner as a habit tracker.
Some months you may not need a monthly plan. And some months you may not need weekly plans - like if you’re taking time off, just switching to a monthly calendar in your planner if you have less things to keep track of, instead of a page each week that will mostly be blank.
If I am planning something with a lot of moving parts, I like to print out a monthly calendar just to put that one project in it. Like daily blog posts or a promotion or something. I like to see it in writing like that, not on a digital planner, and the act of writing it all out helps me feel more grounded about whatever I am doing.
So some months I use multiple monthly planners, and some months I use none.
So I wanted to give both options for the Year of Dreams 2023.
Your way of planning should be as unique, creative and wild as you are.
It can be orderly or sporadic and spontaneous. You can be consistent or inconsistent. Messy or neat.
This is why the Year of Dreams 2023 is so plain and flexible. To make lots of space for YOU and your process of bringing more of your DREAMS into your LIFE, your way.
Get 15% off the Year of Dreams until Sept 14 with the coupon code: EARLYBIRD
