End of the Year Planning Tip #16 – Streamline The Sections in Your Planner

End of the Year Planning Tip #16 – Streamline the Sections in Your Planner

With Christa, the Christmas Elf with a Plan – 16 December

Christa’s back with another End of the Year Planning Tip.  It’s another tip for making our planners easier to use.  Tip # 16 is to streamline the sections in your planner.  Maybe she’s thinking I could use those cute stick on tabs to help me locate specific pages more quickly. Implementing this tip will require you to determine the best arrangement of pages and information for the way your mind works.

Streamlining the Sections of Your Planner

Yesterday’s tip had us purging old lists and past monthly sections and other things that simply needed to be archived.  We also talked about removing pages or sections that may have been included with our planner, but that we don’t need or use.   But there are a couple of areas we didn’t address in the planner de-cluttering we did yesterday:  (1) redundant information and (2) the arrangement of the sections and the pages within each section.

Reducing Redundant Information

Are there things you write down in your planner that you never use in your planner?  For example, do you fill out budget pages (or have them in your planner), but you keep all your financial and budget data in an app on your computer or online?   I have at least four apps on my phone that I can use to track my water intake, do I really need a water tracker in my planner?  The answer to both of those questions is maybe. 

Let’s go back to the budget example.  If you are using a app and never use the pages in your planner, the planner pages are redundant.  If you use them because you think you’re supposed to, but you never look back at them because your data is in the app, the pages are redundant.   But if you have a goal that is related to your budget and the pages in your planner provide your with a means to hold yourself accountable and record progress toward your goal, the budget pages that provide that support beyond what the app does, are not redundant.

One of my four apps that can track water intake will randomly remind me to drink water throughout the day.  I like that, but I don’t enter my intake in that app.  The other three are various diet and exercise apps and I do use one of those for both food and water intake.  But I have at the same time used little stickers I made for each day with eight water drop shapes to color for each day.  I liked the visual and didn’t feel it was redundant.  You might find it redundant though.

With so many printable planner pages, designed by different people with different ways of visualizing what is needed, it’s not surprising that there’s redundancy across the different planner add-ins.  We still create printable planner pages for all the things we needed to keep track of before so much of the information was provided to us digitally.

So determining what is redundant isn’t simply a question of whether or not the information exists in another location, it’s whether or not you need in both locations.  The multiple locations may be one planner/journal and one digital app or in two locations in one (or two) planner(s)/journal(s).

I saw an idea put forth somewhere suggesting it was redundant to write down goals and then write them again on monthly pages and then again on weekly tasks lists.  I’m not sure that’s redundant, it just how the action steps get allocated. The reverse path would occur with the status to completion.  I think seeing what is accomplished in the course of a week, and then a month, and then over a year can motivate us to keep pushing forward toward the goal.

Arranging Pages for Efficiency

Every list of tips for organizing your desk or workspace includes tips for prioritizing functionality.  And functionality is exactly what we want for our planners.  There is usually a specific tip about frequently used items and another about creating zones for specific activities.   In our planners frequently used items would equate to the pages we access most frequently.  Planner zones might be defined for groups of activities like daily planning/executing/tracking vs monthly, quarterly, or annual planning and goal setting. 

Think about the pages you access daily and what you are doing with them.  You might have to go back and forth between different sections and may require page markers or other aides to be able to find the page you need quickly.  Think also about the order of the pages.  If you like to turn pages and have them in a particular order, is that the order in you planner.   Would your daily planning be more pleasant, more efficient if you rearranged the pages? 

There is no one right way to setup a planner for success.  Each of us is unique and though we might have the same set of pages, our planner processes and how we use them may be different.  I learned that I have strong personal preferences regarding the order of pages in a planner when I decided to try one of the digital planners that can be utilized in Goodnotes.  I wanted to find out if a long-time paper planner gal could go digital.

First I downloaded a free digital planner and tried it out using OneNote.  Then I purchased another digital planner that I tried out in Goodnotes.  I didn’t care for the free one at all, but that may have been having not used One Note in that way before.  The purchased one has the look of a paper planner.  But the monthly spreads are all together and then all the weekly spreads are together.  There are hyperlinked “tabs” for the monthly spreads which have hyperlinks to the weekly spreads.  But to got back to the monthly spread, you had to use the hyperlinked “tab”.  And when you click a hyperlink, the screen seems to flicker more so than just swiping to turn the page.  It also didn’t have planning and review pages for each month.  So naturally, I created my own digital planner.  I included all the hyperlinks and maybe a few more, but my pages flow so that I can click the hyperlink to go to the monthly “spread” and then swipe to turn the page through the planning pages, weekly “spreads” and the review page.  Another swipe and I’m on the next monthly page.  The jury is still out on my using a digital planner as my primary planner.  I plan to continue playing around with it and see.

Take Action As Desired

To determine what streamlining you need to do with your planner pages and sections by observing how you interact with your planner.   Imagine you are explaining to someone exactly how you used your planner over the last 24 hours.  Include every time you picked it up, every time you turned a page, opened a tab or used a page marker.  Observe how much movement is involved, how much back and forth, how much search for the right page or entry location. completed your last weekly planning session.  Look for any unnecessary redundancy.

Repeat this observation of your processes for weekly planning and monthly planning.   Did you notice any opportunities to streamline your process by rearranging the pages?   Did you identify any redundant pages that are not needed?  If you answered yes to either question, then make your changes to your planner going forward.   If you make significant changes, set any removed pages aside.  Assess the impact of your changes after your next monthly planning session.  If it’s going well, let go of the removed pages or archive them, as appropriate.  Didn’t go well, and maybe you need to put them back, you can do so.

Summary

Streamlining your planner sections comes down to personal preferences and what feels right and works best for you.  Removing redundant or unused pages reduces any guilt that may be felt from not using them.  And it frees up space for more of what you do find helpful.  Rearranging your planner pages and sections can improve your planning efficiency and make the experience more enjoyable.  The right content and setup of your planner is the one that work best for you.

Until Christa leaves another End of the Year Planning Tip …

Happy Planning,

Linda

P.S. If you have just discovered Christa, the Christmas Elf with a Plan and her tips, you can start at the beginning and go through them all.  You’ll find Tip#1 by clicking here.