2024 is the year of working with my brain instead of against my brain.

Specifically, I’m talking about with organization and planning.

I am a pen and paper person, I find that if I write things down I am 95% more likely to remember it and do it (this statistic is made up by myself).

The problem is that I can walk around and people make plans and schedule meetings with me all the time and I don’t have my planner handy.

This is how I am using both my paper planner and my digital planner together this year.

First, the general rule for how I am thinking about this:

My paper planner is answering the question- Who are you?

I mean that this is showing the things that I am passionate about, the things that I want to do, and the things that are immediately on my mind.

Fortunately, I have a really amazing beautiful awesome planner by STARTbrands. I am not being sponsored by them or anything, but I have loved their product since 2018 and I tell everyone about them.

My digital planner is answering the question- What are you doing today and what are you working on?

Here are a few tips for how I keep them all together!

Monthly planning time

This is when I put things that I know I have coming up on the schedule from way before. For example, I have had my call schedule since last May. As soon as I got my new paper planner, I just put the dates in the monthly section and also on the days.

Weekly planning time

First, I have blocked off Sundays as my time for planning for the week ahead. This is the time that I put all of the upcoming meetings for the week in my paper planner. I add color for the times I am going to be at work. I have specific colors for my workouts, studying time, home stuff, and work.

After this part is done and I am sufficiently happy with my stickers and joy that I have added (for me, planning is a form of journaling and self care), I then reconcile my two calendars and the Google calendar is updated.

Daily planning time

This is just maintenance – I add in how much water I drank that day at the end of my day, or how much energy I had. I add in the various things here when I have time.

Also, day to day, I am just adding in meetings and things that come up as I’m walking around at work or speaking with my husband.

Tasks

I use the tasks or the to do list on both my calendar that is paper and my virtual calendar. Some tips for making it work for you – I add times to my tasks virtually, it makes GC remind me when I wanted to do things. Also, I mostly put specific blocks of time to my to do list. For example, instead of putting “grocery shopping” on my to do list, I put a block of time for grocery shopping. This helps me account for all my time.

This is a work in progress and I am constantly making iterations of how I am doing things to make sure I am the most efficient and productive that I can be.

I realize that this is just a broad overview of what I do, but if you guys are interested in knowing more, please let me know! Also, I love to see how other people organize their life. Drop below how you guys are combining both digital and paper methods to get things done 🙂

Love,

Lise