New Quarter, New Planner...s

I have a confession to make.

I didn't finish my Intelligent Change quarterly planner.

I know! I know. What a waste, am I right?

I meant to, I did, even though I wasn't the biggest fan of its constricted layout or its dated calendar or its forward-thinking approach, but life had other plans for me the last couple of weeks, and I decided to just...let the planner reflect the last two weeks through its emptiness. Poetic.

Its rigidity kept it from breathing, and I like my structures to breathe.

Maybe the Trio and Claude were on to something when they both concluded that my builder brain works faster than my project manager or my narrator, because I now have an ecosystem of planners that branch out from one to the other, and it makes me far happier than it has any real right.

Let's talk a walk in the forest, shall we?

The Project Planner

This is the planner that houses every single one of my projects as well as the stepping stones required to complete them.

Within the Goal box, I briefly state what the goal is, and beneath it I write why it's important to me personally. The date at the top is when I wrote the goal down, and instead of assigning "task deadlines" next to each step, I plan to write the date I complete each one.

For this particular goal, the tasks listed break down even further, so I wrote the breakdown on the back of the page, which is wonderfully dotted.

The Analysis and Motivation sections are where I'll be more inclined to write my observations and challenges encountered as they happen as opposed to noting a reward I probably won't give myself or trying to predict what the choke points throughout the project could be. It's not that I don't try to think ahead to the obstacles I could face, because I very much do, but I like to hold them with open hands instead of risk a self-fulfilling prophecy. As for rewards...eh. I'll reward myself in whatever way I see fit once I finish the project, which in itself might feel like enough of a reward.

This planner is likely the one I'll visit only occasionally, since it's home to the "big tasks" for my projects. Even the ones on the back only get broken down so far before we reach quantum level tasks to complete. For example, for my Research Compendium, the page shared above, I have "Complete Daily Summaries," and on the back I break it down further to January, February, March, and April. I could branch it further by adding weeks or even the individual days, but why do that when I can track the microcosm in another planner?

The Planned Tasks Planner

This is my weekly outlook planner, and not even it was exempt from my editing pen. "Weekly Focus"? "This week will be...because..."? Nah, no thanks. I have too much I want to accomplish to narrow my focus down to a single item, and I'm not about to try and predict how the week will be, not even with "busy" or "laidback", because it feels like another self-fulfilling prophecy in waiting. Oh, and if I write "good"...well, what happens if it's not good? Then, I'll only feel worse.

So! I changed its scope and went from "Weekly Focus" to "This Week's Question:" and "This week will be...because..." to "Why the Question Is Important." It keeps the curiosity alive, and the range of answers could span from, "It's important because I've always wondered this," to, "This is a part of my life's work."

The weekly calendar was something I appreciated about the BestSelf Co. planner, and it gets implemented in this planner as well. I can plug in important events or activities without them taking up space in the "Focus Areas" section, allowing me to see how the next week looks.

The Focus Area is where it's at though. There are 6 different sections, which each tie back to the main Project Planner above, and within each I break the larger tasks further into smaller micro-tasks. The Research Compendium section, for example, tapers into "1.2 Daily Summary", "Create 1.2 Companion File", etc. These are the tasks I want to complete within the next week, each one manageable and concrete, and it's from these 6 sections where I choose the 3 highest priority ones to put in the "Top Priorities" just above them and below the calendar.

The top 3 priorities are the bread and butter tasks for the week. The rest are just cherries on top.

One of my biggest gripes about the previous planners I've used is the "Daily Tracker" page. Each page might have 10-15 lines that you can fill out, and I always felt obligated to try and shove as many habits in there that I could. This planner and the next one I'll share have limited space for habit tracking, and because they're on the same page as the projects, it becomes easier to look at the tasks and ask myself, "What do I need to work on every day to check the item off the list?" Game changing. Truly.

The back also has a dot-grid pattern, and so that's where I intend to write my weekly reflection, which will pull from the last planner I'll share.

How do I go from, "This looks nice on the page," to actually working on each section? I'm so glad you asked~

The Scheduler

Ahh, I do love my time block schedulers, but what I especially love about this one is that I can take those 6 sections from the above planner and write 3 of them in the "Focus" area on the right side. I haven't written the 3rd one yet because I didn't want to dedicate it to my blog post, despite the blog post being my top priority for the week, and because I wanted to systematically work through the other 2 sections before deciding where to shift my attention next.

I changed the "Admin" section to be my "Wawful" section, because my Wawfuls felt like they deserved a place to live, and neither of the above planners contained a good spot for them. Such minor tasks, the perfect place for them is where I'll see them the most often, right next to the hour-by-hour schedule.

The only complaint I have is that this is a 5-day work week schedule, Monday through Friday, and that's not how my weeks are structured, but I have a plan to hack it to my own needs! I'll just cross out the days I'm off, such as Monday, and replace it with Sunday instead. It's a small edit and takes little time.

The only other part of it that I want to change is the "All Day" section just under each day of the week. As of right now, it's irrelevant to me, so I've been trying to think of a good replacement. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to do so yet.

Okay, okay, so I have the time block scheduler to actually commit myself to working on my projects, but what about after I've completed each task? Is it sufficient to just check it off the list in the above planner and be done with it?

No, my friend. No, it is not, and this is where the final planner enters the scene.

The Completed Tasks Planner

The intense satisfaction I get from seeing an empty page like the one below fill out with accomplishments over time rivals everything else.

I took this picture mid-morning Wednesday, and it has already filled out quite nicely for both Wednesday and Thursday.

It's not a regurgitation of the "Planned Tasks" planner. The "Lay out new planner" scribbled in the top row for Wednesday represents the full "Set up Planner System" section, so in some ways this planner almost makes it look like I've accomplished less than what the Planned Tasks planner displays, but that's where the fun enters.

If I can fill out a majority of the 10 rows (excluding the final one that's grayed out, which belongs to my word that reflects the day), then that tells me I've done significantly more than what each dated column could hold. It feeds into the feeling of accomplishment and fulfillment, especially when I cross-reference back to the Planned Task planner and compare.

For the "Goal" section at the very top, I've recorded my top priority hobby goal that I want to focus on during my day off. It's not a Wawful, and off-days aren't on the Scheduler anyway, so this goal doesn't belong there, and it's not important enough in the sense that it's work-related to deserve a spot in any of the major project sections of the Planned Tasks planner. It does serve, however, to keep this planner relevant even on my days off.

I still need to figure out what I'm going to do with the "Parking Lot" box next to it, because I highly bout I'll use that one for its intended purpose. Again though, I haven't been able to land on an equal replacement.

Since this planner also has a dot-grid page on the back of each week, that is where I will write my daily reflections throughout the week. I'll either narrow the list down for my days off or cut the day completely from the reflection. I could see myself doing either or.

Ecosystem of Planners

Is this system overkill? Probably. But it breathes, and that's what I love about it. None of these planners try to shoehorn in extra fluff that bloats the page, and they're easy to adapt to my particular system, serving my autonomy instead of me having to take a hacksaw to clear out what I dislike. I only need to trim and prune with garden shears. Upon closer inspection, what looks like an unruly forest becomes noticeably a carefully manicured garden.

Real Talk:

• Are you a "sees the forest first" type of person, a "sees the tree first" type of person, or a hybrid of the two?

  • I myself am a hybrid. Sometimes, like in the case of one of Cael's performances, I'll start with a powerful scene that comes to mind, and then I'll zoom out to the structure as a whole. Other times it's flipped. I'll zoom in and out as necessary, usually the latter once I realize I've entered too far into the weeds.

This Week's Obligatory Cat Pic: Salad...and Mura?

She believes that if she tries hard enough, she can stick her face into the puzzle far enough to get the food. Oh, and who knows what Mura is doing immediately behind her.