well hello I feel like I'm the host of a talk-show when I have this mirror behind
me but I'm just trying new filming setup so let me know if this is distracting but
hopefully it'll add some interest to my backgrounds anyways welcome back to The
Bliss Bean in today's video is going to be on how I'm doing digital planning using
TeuxDeux every time I mentioned this I have to explain that it is not spelled "to-do" it
is spelled T E U X D E U X now that we've got that cleared up let's roll the intro
so I started doing digital planning recently because I grew a little frustrated with how
difficult it was to manage a paper planner especially with how many different things I
was juggling and how many tasks I had to keep track of for the longest time I couldn't find
any digital planning tool that worked for me but then I was watching Rowena Tsai YouTube channel
and she mentioned TeuxDeux and it just looked perfect because it looked a lot like what I did
in my paper planner just digitized so I decided to go ahead and try it and I actually ended up loving
it so I wanted to take you guys through how I used TeuxDeux to plan out my weeks and stay organized
and on track with my goals now you just stopped talking with my hands okay let's continue so first
I'm going to take you guys to some of the like initial setup that I do so TeuxDeux has a very
simple like column based style while that might not work for everyone some people like having
a lot of different like scheduling and labeling features but for me that simplicity works really
well so one of the things that you can do is you can create headers if you type in a task and you
add a hash tag before it it will format it as a header which just means that it'll be bold with
a little bit of like a gray background behind it so I create headers to break up my days right now
what I have is a header for a lunch a header for after-school and then another school one is my
independent study header which I used to plan out what I want to get done in that free hour that I
have so by typing in every day or every week after your task you can make that task repeat so what
I've done for example with the lunch header is I just typed in hash tag lunch in all caps and
then every day and then every day I don't have to worry about adding in the lunch header it's
just already there another thing I do to set up my planner is repeating tasks so there are some
things that I do every day or every week and I don't want to have to remember to put them
into my planner every single time so for example daily blog tasks I do every day obviously and so
I just type in daily blog tasks every day and then TeuxDeux automatically makes that task appear in
my to-do list every single day there are also some things I do weekly so for example weekly planning
so when I first started using TeuxDeux I put in plan next week every week and I put that on a
Sunday so now every Sunday that task automatically appears in my to-do list okay so that's basically
like the foundation setup that I have for my digital planner the next step is to actually
use it to plan my individual weeks so when I do my weekly planning which I have a video on my process
is basically the same as it was when I did paper planning so with my paper planner I used to like
format events differently so that I could tell what was it to do and what was a timed event I
love that this app could kind of mimic that using headers so I go into my Google Calendar and then
I transfer events from that into TeuxDeux I just typed for example hashtag turbo kick at 7 and then
it puts that in bold letters and I know that it's an event this is really really helpful because
then I can like arrange tasks around my events so I like to set little goals for what I want to get
done before I have to go somewhere I think it just adds like a good sense of urgency that makes you
work faster so I can just drag and drop my tasks and figure out what I want to try and get done
before I have to go somewhere so once all of my events are in then I figure out what I actually
have to do that week this is the bread and butter of your weekly planning routine so I still do a
brain dump on paper just like I always used to if I write down anything and everything that I
might have to do that week I might decide not to do it later on but I'm just brain dumping so I'm
not trying to filter once I've got a list of what I need to do that week then I take it and I start
typing it into TeuxDeux I don't have to think about when I'm scheduling it as much as I had to
when I did paper planning because I know that if I decide it's actually all I do this on Wednesday
instead of Monday it's super easy to just drag it and move it instead of having to whiteout
and then rewrite it somewhere else so once all my tasks are in it looks pretty overwhelming but it
is nice to just have everything organized and see exactly what you have to do in the upcoming week
the last few steps of my weekly planning routine are to write down three or four reminders for the
week and then three things that I'm excited about in the upcoming week so I used to do that like at
the bottom of planner pages or a little post-it notes but now what I do is I use the lists that
TeuxDeux has at the bottom basically you can create any kind of list that you want and you
can just see them at the bottom of your screen below your weekly layout so I've created separate
lists for reminders and things I'm excited for it so every week I just clear the things that
were in there before and I type whatever I've decided on for that week I also want to go over
how else I use that list feature because it's super helpful I have a shopping list everyone
should have a shopping list I also have a list of communications to make so that's basically
just people that I need to call or email it's more productive to just get all of your communications
done in one go so if I have some time I'll just look at that list and make a bunch of phone calls
and send a bunch of emails the next list is called do some time which is just things that which is
just things that I don't need to urgently do but I want to do some day so I keep track of them there
but the list is starting to get really long so I might move them into its own separate document but
it's still a nice way to like remember ideas you might have had that you don't want to lose but you
also don't have time to currently work on the last list is called systems check because lately I have
been doing like a little bi-weekly routine where I basically take a look at what routines and habits
I have and just try and figure out what's working what is it and what changes I can make to improve
so throughout the week if I come up with anything I want to take a look at what I'm doing my systems
review or systems check whatever you want to call it I just put that in that list and I don't have
to think about it until a Sunday want to actually sit down to do it okay next is how daily planning
works with TeuxDeux so during my morning routine one of the things that I do is I set three
priorities for what I want to get done that day and a awesome way to do that with TeuxDeux is by
making those tasks bold basically how you do that is you just put double asterisks around the task
asterisks the very difficult word to say so even though there's not a lot of customization features
in TeuxDeux like you can't make things different colors I think the bolding feature really helps
to just make a couple of your items stand out once I've got three priorities set then I look at all
of my tasks and I try to rearrange them in the order that I think I'll do them and I also try
to schedule them around my events I try to make sure that the priorities I decided on are as early
in the day as possible to make sure that they get done sometimes that's possible sometimes it's not
but it's just a good thing to keep in mind that you don't want to leave your priorities for the
end of the day they might never get done as I go through my day I just check off whichever tasks I
completed TeuxDeux does have an app so it's not as easy to use as a computer version but I do
like to have it with me so that I can cross off things I've completed I will say that it's not
as satisfying as filling in a checkbox on a piece of paper but it's still pretty satisfying so yeah
that's basically it that's how I've been using TeuxDeux to plan my life digitally I've just been
really really enjoying digital planning because it's so nimble like if your plans change somehow
it's so easy to adjust because you literally just drag and drop things around it's also a lot easier
to carry around with you because even though my paper planner was pretty small and light it's
still a hassle to have to find a place to store it to have to take it out and flip to the right
page find a pen your phone on the other hand you basically have it with you all the time so
your planner is with you all the time and I feel like that convenience is just priceless another
thing that I really like about this is that if I find out about something that I have to do way in
the future or even just like a month in advance with my paper planner I made pages as I went so I
wouldn't have the pages for that month yet so that meant I would have to find another place to write
it down we just got kind of messy so with TeuxDeux can just go to whatever day however far out in the
future it would be and you can add a task and then you don't have to worry about it anymore so there
is just a lot of things that make digital planning so convenient I know that some people will still
prefer paper planning I totally get that but I encourage you to try out to do because for me it
was the thing that converted me it does cost money and it cost three dollars per month or two dollars
per month if you buy a yearly subscription which i think is a totally reasonable price and a worthy
investment if it works for you I'm pretty sure there's like a one month free trial so you can
figure out if it works for you so yeah that's TeuxDeux for you so I hope you enjoyed this
video and if you did please like and subscribe I would really really appreciate it I look forward
to making more videos like this in the future about planning and productivity and things like
that so if you want to make sure you see those you should subscribe I'll see you next time bye