Monday (Not) In Michigan - Ordering A Planner and Planning for Order

I am not much for New Year’s Resolutions per se, but I do like to use the end of one year and the beginning of a new one as a time to evaluate, re-evaluate, and with intention consider my perspective on where and how things stand in my life.  I have to add here that I really do this twice a year because, although THE new year really starts on January 1, life at my house works on an academic calendar so our “new” year starts some time in mid August.  That said, I have found the beginning of 2016 to feel more like a real beginning, a new beginning, more so than Januarys of past years.

One reason for this feeling of new beginning is, that for the first time, I am participating in Ali Edwards’ One Little Word project.  I have seen references to it online the past few years and have been intrigued, but have never made the commitment to the yearlong process.   I feel like right now I need this commitment and accountability, so this year I am an official participant.  My one little word is ORDER.  As the year starts, I am feeling that the “little” part of this is a serious understatement!

My first musings on the word order revealed that order is different from organization.  I am organized in that I know where things are.  I can find what I need, but my system of organization is not orderly.  I am relatively sure that I am the only one that could find anything amidst my “system” of organization.  My goal this year is to create some real sense of order from my rather ugly methods of organization.  This includes establishing order within the tangible stuff, both at home and at school, and the intangible stuff, how I think about and organize things mentally.  As I write this, I realize that I have a lot of work ahead of me!!!

The first step for me in this yearlong, or maybe lifelong, process was to find a planner, an actual paper planner than requires a pen or pencil to write things down and has a format that will help me to establish the kind of order that I sense that I need.  I have an iPhone and my husband has dutifully set up color-coded Google calendars for each of us individually as well as a family calendar, but this only works if you actually look at it.  lol.  I do rely heavily on technology in some aspects of my life, but maintaining my daily calendar is not one of them.  I still prefer and need a paper planner.  There is something about writing things down and seeing them on the page that makes me feel more in control and more accountable for the things that make it onto my schedule.  This need led me on a  search for the “perfect” planner for me.

Here is where I do rely on technology…I did an online search for planners.  The results were a bit overwhelming; there must be thousands of them out there!  I was amazed by many of the beautiful and creatively done planners that I discovered on Etsy.  I found myself being sucked in by their aesthetics—pretty colors, appealing graphics—rather than what i really wanted, which was a means by which to maintain order simply and concisely.  I have no doubt that there are many fantastic paper planners out there.  I finally came to the conclusion that I needed to stop looking and make the best decision that I could in that moment.  The search for the “perfect” planner, I realized, is much like the search for the perfect purse or the perfect camera bag.

The things that I was looking for were:

• An 8 1/2 X 11 format - Last year I used a half page sized planner and felt like I didn’t have enough writing space.
• A weekly layout
• An hourly schedule - This is the big change for me from last year’s planner.  The one that I used for 2015 did not break the day down into hours; it had blank lines for me to write down the details of day.  This worked fine for the events that happened at particular times, but it failed me with regard to the free-floating “To-Do” list.  I would write things down on this list and come to the end of the day and be frustrated and disappointed in myself because too many things were left undone.  My husband suggested the hourly schedule to help minimize my frustration (and ensuing grumpiness).  
• A place on the weekly page to notate my goals for the week.
• A place for notes to myself - I have come to the place in my life where things need to be written down or there is a real possibility that they will just disappear into thin air!

I finally settled on the Intentional Life Planner by Abby at Just A Girl and Her Blog.  Several things helped me to finally make this decision:

• This planner is purchased as a PDF download and then printed at home. (Or, you can send it to be professionally printed and bound, but that gets too pricey for me.)  I should mention here that when you purchase the download, you receive both an 8 1/2x11 page format as well as a half page format.  I liked this because I think I want the bigger pages, but, if at some point later in the year I realize that this was not the best choice for me, I can print the rest of the year as the smaller format.  I am a fan of the Levenger Circa system so by printing the planner pages myself, I was able to punch them for the Circa system.  This allows me to add my calendar pages to the Circa notebook that I already use for other things.

• The pages are pretty, without the graphics and colors being overly distracting.
• It has the weekly and hourly layout.

• Each month begins with a page asking you to outline your goals for the month and notate action steps to help you reach your goal.  This page also contains a box for a monthly assessment of things that you feel like you did well this month and things that you hope to improve on in the coming month.  I like this gentle method of assessing my strengths and weaknesses for the month.
• For each week, there is a column to articulate three more immediate goals.  I like the fact that there are only three places for these because I have to think carefully about what my "real" goals for the week should be.  Abby then provides space to notate two things that I can do to help achieve each of these goals.

• Above each day’s schedule is a “To-Do” list for that day.

• For me, the monthly and weekly structure is succinct, functional and not overwhelming.

Less than two weeks in to 2016, by using this planner and my evolving system for creating order in my life, I have begun to realize why I came to the end of so many days frustrated and discouraged.  I would make a daily To-Do list with no real plan as to how to get those things done.  I wrote all the tasks down in a list, but I never considered the when or how long it would take to do said things.  My list may have eight hours of tasks that needed to be accomplished, but my schedule only had four free hours.  Hence, the source of my frustration and disappoinjment in myself.

Now I am scheduling everything from my “Me Time” in the morning to write my morning pages, read the daily photo prompt, check my daily schedule, and mentally prepare myself for the day, to lunchtime, folding laundry, cleaning the kitchen in the evening, time with friends, as well as all of my work-related have-to’s.  This is not about being a control freak.  It is about seeing how and where I use my time and structuring that time so that I can create a realistic means to accomplishing those things that are most important to me.

I should add here that Abby also has created a bundle of “printables,” additional pages that help organize everything from menu planning, exercise, household finances, as well as many other things.  In addition to her planner, I am using some of these as well.  Again, because they are downloaded as PDF’s, I print and punch them to use in the same notebook as my planner.  I have a section called “THIS WEEK.”  It includes our weekly menus (another piece of my quest to create ORDER) and details on unique events for the week.  Once I go back to work, this section may evolve to include teaching plans as well.

The year’s system is not yet without kinks, but I do feel like it is going to work for me, especially once my spring semester starts and I go back to work next week.  Here is an example of one of those kinks.  Last week was the first full week of my new approach to time.  I scheduled all of my household chores and the writing projects that I needed to finish.  I plotted photography time based on the times of day where the light was best for what I needed to shoot.  As I have said several times in my past couple of posts, finding the best light for the food shots that we need here is not easy.  That said, I penciled in the spaghetti shots for last week’s Food Friday post at a time when the light was good where I needed it to be.   I got the shots done in the time that I had allotted for them.  Life was good and I was ready to move on to the next thing in the schedule.  There was one little problem.  I had failed to take into account the fact the things from that photo shoot would need to be cleaned up.  I had pasta to store, dishes to wash, and linens to put away.  True, none of these are big chores, but when you are taking into account how your time is spent down to the minute, 15 or 20 minutes can be disruptive to that flow of time.  Now I know.  From now on, I will remember to include clean-up time.  This may seem like a simple realization, but the reality is, that many of the things that we do take longer than we expect because we forget about small but necessary steps an details along the way.

One other thing that I am a little concerned about is that with this planner,  the day is marked off only in hours.  I'm wondering if there will come a point where I will need or want the ability to schedule in half hour increments.  Time will tell.  (No pun intended.)

So far, I am grateful for this new to me process.  I feel like a have a better sense of where my time goes each day.  I have to admit, that I am a bit surprised with how much time I spend on certain things.  Knowing this provides me the information that I need to readjust and rebalance my daily schedule if things aren’t the way I want them to be.  With these revelations, I am better equipped to do what I need to do to create that sense of order that I crave in my physical and emotional worlds.   Previously I was never sure where all of my time went or why I felt so scattered.  I just knew that something was not working.  The problem as well as a solution is now unfolding.  I am looking forward to opening myself to this process throughout the year.