End of the Year Planning Tip # 8 – Establish Daily Routines That Include Planning

With Christa, the Christmas Elf with a Plan – 8 December

Just look at that elf! She’s doing it again “sleighing” all day! How does she do it? Maybe her End of the Year Planning Tip #8 will give us a clue. She says we need to establish daily routines that include planning. Oh, I see, in order for our planner to work for us and keep us able to “sleigh” all day, we need to actually be using it throughout the day.

Let’s talk more about this … but first, if you’re new here, you can head back to Tip#1 when you are ready by clicking here.

Routines, Habits and Daily Planning

Today’s topic is one I’ve written about before in a slightly different context, but she’s absolutely right. The only way to have our planner work for us and derive any benefits is by consistently using it. My previous post is part of a series on Functional Planning targeted toward anyone that is just starting or has struggling with using functional planner systems.

The previous post explains that who we are is defined by our habits and our daily routines are groups of habits. If desire to be a person who is successful at functional planning (and reaping the rewards), we need to habitually functional plan in our daily routines. For example,let’s say you are a couch potato who wants to be a person who runs marathons.

The habits of a couch potato might be:

• Sleeping late
• Wearing comfy clothes
• Sitting on couch
• Watching TV
• Eating snacks
• Drinking whatever
• Staying up late/sleeping on couch

The habits of a marathon runner might be:

• Waking up early
• Dressing in running clothes/shoes
• Doing warm-ups
• Going running (long distances)
• Doing cool-down
• Eating healthy foods
• Staying hydrated
• Getting plenty of rest

Even without creating the routines that would come from those lists of habits, we can easily see that the couch potato is nothing like a marathon runner. What if the couch potato started waking up early, putting on running clothes/shoes, did warm-ups and cool-downs, ate healthy foods, drank plenty of water and got plenty of rest – would he be a marathon runner? No, the key habit is actually running. All the other habits support the habit of running and running a marathon requires a great deal of experience in running long distances.

Planning Habits

So what habits would help us to become effective functional planner? How do we turn our planner into a “personal assistant” that helps us with productivity, reducing stress, ending the chaos and/or being organized and on top of things? We have to use our planner.

Here’s what doesn’t work (on their own):

• Buying a planner every year.
• Setting it all up every year.
• Buying all the “right” supplies.
• Having all the different kinds of sections you can possibly add.
• Watching every planner how-to video.
• Reading every planner how-to tip.
• Decorating the pages weekly/monthly.

You do need to have a planner … it can be as simple as a 3-ring binder with simple pages hand drawn or printed from your computer. And you do need to spend some time setting things up … at least the first month or so of dates and things you know. Having some good and helpful supplies and additional pages/sections that meet your needs can be good. Watching and reading about how others are doing things can also be helpful. Consider the ideas presented and adapt what makes sense to your way of doing things. I’ll come back the the last one on the list.

To explain what I mean by “use you planner” and having your “daily routine include planning”, let me outline my planner specific activities/habits in my four daily routines:

• Daily Morning Routine:
  • review today’s plan,
  • scan plan for the remainder of the week, and
  • make notes of any thing that may occur to me after a restful sleep.
• Start of Work Day Routine:
  • review planned work tasks for the day including last/next step notes,
  • review any Brain Dump from previous workday and allocate to appropriate lists for further action, as required.
• End of Work Day Routine:
  • make sure completed tasks are marked and record any notes,
  • note last/next steps for any ongoing tasks,
  • adjust the plan for the next work day, and
  • perform a brain dump of any other work related thoughts, ideas, or questions that are on my mind. I can clear my mind of these; my planner has them captured for me.
• End of Day Routine:
  • review my day,
  • check off completed tasks,
  • reallocate items to the future (as required),
  • check my progress,
  • celebrate successes,
  • allow myself grace (if necessary), and
  • reflect on what I am grateful for from the day.
  • Perform a Brain Dump if I’ve got stuff on my mind.

In addition to the reviews, updates and planning that occurs during these specific daily routines, I am reaching for my planner throughout the day. Appointments are entered as they are scheduled. Dates, statuses, tasking, and ideas are just a few of the types of things I’m constantly adding to or updating in my planner. These are tiny habits that are triggered by the information or event that needs recording or updating.

Your Planner = Personal Assistant

Imagine the planning activities in the daily routines as conversations with a personal assistant. In the morning and first work day routine, the personal assistant would be sharing with you all the information you need as you start your day or begin your work day. They would also take down any new information your have. At the end of the work day and in the evening routine, you are summarizing the day and making sure your personal assistant has recorded everything from the day and will be prepared to share the needed information the next day. Throughout the day, you are conversing with your personal assistant – schedule this, reschedule that, make a note, close this out, add this.

It takes some practice to build this relationship with your planner. You have to trust that you can write things down, put them out of mind, and then retrieve them when needed. Being about to clear non-urgent information, thoughts, and ideas from our mind can allow us to focus on our energy on our current activity, even if it’s rest. It reduces stress and feelings of being overwhelmed by life. Better focus and improved rest can lead to higher productivity.

I could go on and on … less chaos … more organized … but I think you see the potential benefits.

To Decorate or Not To Decorate

I said I would come back to the topic of decorating planners. Please decorate your planner as much as you like. It’s down to what makes each of us happy and helps us enjoy using our planners. But much of the planner decoration is non-functional.

Social media is full of images of beautiful planner pages that are perfectly decorated. Many have very little space left for any planning information to be added. Most of these images are “before the pen” so we don’t know if they are actually being used for any actual planning activity. I have seen posts with pictures of spreads with the entire spread covered with stickers. IMHO -This level of decoration takes a planner from any chance of becoming a functional planner and makes it an art journal.

I belong to several online planner groups. I see posts all the time about feeling the only thing they are accomplishing with their planner is getting it decorated. I’ve seen posts of holiday week spreads weeks after the holiday that say, I finally went back and finished this up today. And yes, the image is still “before the pen”. Maybe that was their art journal planner and they have another planner for planning.

If you are just starting out or feel like you aren’t seeing the results you hoped for from functional planning, I would recommend decorating as go through your weekly planning. Decorate “with the pen” (not all before or all after) and keep decoration to a minimum. Decorate in a functional way:

• Use some of the thinner washi tapes – 8mm (3/8″) or less – to add a bit of color and highlight sections of your layout.
• Use colorful box stickers, highlighters, and/or pens for color-coding
• Use decorative stickers for section titles. For instance, I find lots of decorative stickers for my Gratitude section on my Weekly spreads. They don’t need to say “Gratitude” or “Grateful”, they just need to invoke that feeling.
• Choose a few small images and try to place them in ways that don’t fill spaces completely. Near the edges so that part of the image is in the margin or straddling blocks leaving space to write, if needed, on both sides would work.
• You can also decorate the banner area across the top of the page where there’s usually a little more space. Choose decorative months, days and numbers.

You don’t have to do all of those, or any of those. I started using a planner long before all the washi tape and planner stickers were even though about. Planners were simply functional planners back then (and neither was social media, smart phones, … yes, it’s been a few years). I started to print some sections (i.e. contact info) on colored pages (horrid shades of yellow, pink, blue and green) and using highlighters (neon yellow and pink, got excited when they brought out more colors). My first “pretty” planner was a Franklin Planner (Franklin Covey back then). I was afraid to write on it at first. They still make their planners with similar designs. They are a good example of decorating around the edges and leaving space to plan. Here’s an example: Franklin Planner – Blooms Weekly (not an affiliate link, not connected to Franklin Planner in any way).

Summary

I really expected this post to be much shorter; I apologize for the length. But Christa’s End of the Year Planning Tip #8 – Establish daily routines that include planning – is an important one to me. It’s something I have strong feelings about, I suppose. In order to be successful at anything we have to practice it. If we want to reap the benefits of functional planning we have to actually use the our planner. We can do this by developing habits than include the use of the planner and practicing them every day as part of our routines.

If you want more information on documenting your routines and establishing new habits, do checkout my previous post, Daily Routines and Habits for Successful Functional Planning.

Now be like Christa and set yourself up to “Sleigh All Day”!

Happy Planning,

Linda