Right you lot, so I since I touched on this briefly in my Q&A video, a few people requested
that I go into a little more detail about how I organise and plan and structure my days
and stay on top of the various things I have going on like running my Youtube channel,
writing my blog, making and selling art, um, my ‘proper’ job and trying to have a social
life in there as well.
So my planner system tends to change quite a bit but the general structure stays the
same.
These sort of tiers of yearly, monthly, weekly, daily even hourly planning and goal setting.
So I will take you through my current planner in a second but first, I thought I’d show
you how I used my bullet journal.
Right so, I’m quite sure you all know what a bullet journal is but if not then I will
link on screen and also in the description of the video that goes through it all.
But basically this book acts as a sort of hub of all my thoughts and tasks and goals
and ideas, any information that’s in my head that I need to remember.
Cos the best way for me feel like I'm organised and I have things under control is to basically
write down every single thing straight away, get it out of my head and onto paper, just
so I don't feel like I'm clinging on to a hundred thoughts at once.
And also then to have all those thoughts broken down and set out in a way that’s easy to
go back on and review.
So this is one book that holds all your lists; shopping, to-do lists, books to read, stuff
like that and can also be shaped to act as more of a sort of planner with like daily
and weekly spreads as well.
So taking a look at mine in more detail...
I have this sort of ‘future log’ which acts as a year at a glance where I write down
things like birthdays, goals and deadlines; any plans that I have coming up that I definitely
need to remember but aren’t necessarily relevant right now.
Then it’s narrowed down into a monthly calendar where I write in any of those things from
the future log as well as things like lunch dates or nights out that I have coming up.
I also set goals for the month and just make sure to refer back to that basically every
night while I’m planning my next day just to make sure that I am a) staying on track
with everything that’s coming up and b) doing something every day that’s gonna bring
me closer to my goals.
Then we get to the weekly spreads.
I’ve always been a fan of the week-on-two-pages sort of set up because I think it helps to
keep things in perspective, what you’ve done and what you need to do in relation to
the different days of the week.
And having your whole week altogether helps to keep a sort of balance so that certain
days aren’t really busy and other days being really uneventful.
This is what my weeks used to look like with a vertical layout.
But now I do things a little bit differently.
So my new weekly layout has a sort of dashboard that features the sort of daily routine things
that I do on that day specifically every week so for example, every Thursday I always aim
to wash all my clothes, deep-clean my bathroom, do some exercise and pin some useful images
on pinterest (this weekly dashboard is a great way for me to make sure I’m posting to certain
social media platforms a certain number of times every week, or it would be if I could
actually keep up with it).
I also have a section for general things that are coming up this week, any sort of daily
habits that I want to keep track of like making sure I drink water every day and drink my
vitamins.
A little section to write about what's coming up next week.
Maybe a birthday wanna remember or something that I didn't get finished this week.
And also a little section where I can write about something that I'm grateful for that
week.
Then a typical week looks something like this, broken down into days.
And this is where it sort of performs more as a traditional bullet journal where it's
like a flowing to-do list that I will either write the night before or the morning of that
day, any tasks that I need to get done.
And I also sometimes will add a little bit of writing, sort of a diary of things that
happened that day if I found something interesting that I wanna remember.
And that’s basically it for day-to-day organisation in my bullet journal but I did also use this
as I said for basically everything so I have things in here like, books to read, my shopping
wish-list, any random things that I wanted to note down and also to track my finances
and savings which I actually have a blog post about if you wanna look at that in more detail
I will link that on screen and in the description of this video.
Now this system worked great for me for about a year, year and a half, and only recently
did I start looking into switching it up a bit.
I loved all the yearly, weekly, monthly spreads stuff like that but I wanted to break my days
down even more, basically by the hour, because I think as someone that works from home for
half of the week, I just needed a little bit more structure like that sort of timetable
structure that you have at school.
Cos it’s really easy to write out a to-do list but then not actually think about the
amount of time that you're gonna need for each individual task and not sort of think
about the order that you're gonna be doing things in.
So you might find yourself prioritising watching Prison Break for 5 hours over actually doing
stuff that you need to do.
And yeah, we all need to stare at Wentworth Miller for several hours a day but...
So I wanted to keep all the features of my bullet journal but incorporate a schedule.
I considered using the two systems side by side, so keeping my bullet journal and having
a separate planner that was like a daily planner and I looked into the Happy Planner and the
Day Designer and they were really strong contenders, but being the cheapskate that I am, I did
decide that I would just make my own planner.
So this is it, it was really easy to make.
I basically just put together some really basic printables on Word, I cut them down
to size, I got the cover and wire binding of an old sketchbook and cut those down to
size and basically just looped it all in.
And then I painted on the front what was supposed to be a marble design and added this gold
sort of um...
what's the word...
Engraving?
of my logo.
And since I was making my own planner from scratch , I decided that, all the spreads
that were in my bullet journal I could basically recreate in here and I wouldn't have to use
them both together.
Monogram.
That's the word I was looking for.
So the only thing different here is that I have taken away the weekly dashboard and instead
have a page at the beginning of the month that tells me all the things I should be doing
on certain days, plus a daily schedule page which breaks down specific days into a certain
structure.
And It’s not completely filled in yet so just to explain better how I do use these
pages I will I’ll show you how I planned today, earlier this morning, I actually filmed
it so that you could see what my planning looks like.
First I checked the month at a glance to see if anything was coming up that I had forgotten
about, then I used the weekly schedule page to look at the things I would usually be doing
on a Wednesday, then going back to my daily page I wrote out a list of all the things
I wanted to get done that day and then, looking back at my daily schedule page as a reference,
I mapped my day by the hour.
I also add those daily habits, and then at the end of the day, I will note down anything
that happened that was worth noting down that day.
I do also have a journal so I can get into a bit more detail about that stuff.
And then I will also write down something that I am grateful for that day.
And this might seem a bit overly complicated compared to my last system but I’ve found
that I like mapping out my day from scratch the night before or the morning of.
It helps to keep things feeling a bit more organic.
Cos obviously I do have the same sort of plan day to day and week to week, the same sort
of structure.
I could probably get away with having the same weekly schedule just repeated.
But when things are mapped out like that it starts to feel like I'm going through the
motions, I get quite bored of it so being able to write things out every single day
just keeps things feeling fresh.
It keeps things feeling more organic.
BUT, an easier alternative to making your own planner cos I know it's a bit extra would
be to get something like this.
Now this is just a basic daily planner.
You can get it from places like WH Smiths, Paperchase, Staples..
what shops do you have in the states?
Michaels?
Is that a stationary shop?
I dunno!
Basically any stationary shop.
You can get just a plain diary and what you can do, or what I would do with this is, because
it's got the plain page, I would just write my to-do's on this side and I could write
my schedule on this side.
And I do think that I will find a way to incorporate this into my system somehow.
Cos I like it!
As if I need another planner.
Uh yeah but back to my home-made planner, I also have a ‘Work’ section where I keep
things like my finances um passwords, contacts and also a schedule of blog posts and videos
I'll have coming up in the next two months.
Plus in this section and my normal section I have a page called brain dump where I will
just write down any little thoughts and things in my head that I need to note down but don't
necessarily have a specific place.
And lastly I thought I’d make a mention this uh app!
I’ll try and leave a link for it below, there’s a free version and a pro version.
I have the pro version and can’t remember exactly how much it costs but it can’t have
been that much because, I’m not one to spend a lot of money on apps.
And I basically would use this in conjunction with my other planners so I actually have
all those tasks mapped out um by the hour and alerts would go off to tell me what to
do, when to do it but as I said, having those sort of generated at the same time every single
day, it just got a bit stagnant.
and i just didn't really pay attention to it.
But I do still use this app as a sort of back up for things that come up maybe every few
months like backing up my computer which I actually need to do today and also um things
like birthdays cos you can set like a few alerts to go off before something happens
so maybe one to go off two days before something happens, another one to go off the day before
the thing happens and then maybe another one on the day that it's happening, like an hour
before.
So you’re always aware, always prepared and things don’t creep up on you out of
nowhere.
So that's it guys!
Hopefully there's at least something in here that you can sort of take and shape and mix
up to use in a way that suits you.
Honestly, there’s no better feeling than feeling like you’ve got everything under
control.
So, even if this is all a bit much at least, I don't know, write everything down on a sticky
notes.
Right have a nice weekend you lot.
I will see you on Tuesday.
Bye.