New Year, New Day Planner
Anyone else obsessed with having an actual paper, hands-on day timer? I am not sure I could make through the day without my google calendar but I can't seem to let go of having a hard cover planner on my desk full of squiggles and lists.
If you know me, then you probably know that I don't do traditional goal setting. I find it constrictive and just another reason to judge how I am falling short. And I am well aware that to create a future that I love and a today that works for me, I need to take action and be clear on what the heck I want my future to be like.
This year I chose the Passion Planner to my buddy for the year. It looks cool, has lots of blank pages at the back and has a big grid calendar at the beginning of each month. All things that are important to me. The Passion Planner has a lot of guidance built into it, how to take the big picture and break it down into bite sized action and more. TBH: I won't use it all. I did some of the stuff but I will absolutely not keep up with all the journal prompts and mind mapping they lay out. I will use this planner "Linda Style".
I will sit down at some point with each month and schedule upcoming classes. I got most of my January classes scheduled in December but there was one I just popped in this week. When and how I sit down and schedule my month varies every single time and by now I trust that about myself. If I try to make a rigid plan of how to schedule I will fail at it. I trust I will be random and I trust I will get it done sometime, somehow.
This planner has detailed line by line, half hour scheduling for every day. I will not use it. I won't enter every 1:1 client or meeting that I have. That's all on my phone. I won't pretend that I will get up at the same time or workout at the same time everyday. I will trust my randomness. I use the daily space to write lists of thing I want to get done or quotes I love or blog ideas or notes from a meeting or whatever the heck crosses my mind that I want to write down.
At some point this year, I will probably get bored of it and not write down anything for a couple months. And then one day I will dust it off and start scribbling.
There will be a day sometime this year that I want to touch back on some notes I took in a class and I will know to just pick up my planner and start flipping through pages close to the date of the class and I will find the notes I am looking for. As I look for those notes, I will notice lists that I made for events I was dreaming up and I will smile with the realization that I had an idea and I actualized it. I'll see questions that I jotted down and remember that I was struggling with something that has now changed and become ease for me. I'll see things that I planned that didn't hit the ground but I'll recognize that they led to something else that did. I'll be reminded of trips I took and people I met and times I was sure I had F'd it all up and other times I was convinced I had finally solved all my problems.
All those squiggles and lists will remind me that I can trust my randomness, I can trust me. I will achieve those things that are important to me, I will actually achieve way more than I imagined I could. And the things that I didn't get done will not have led to disaster, if they are thing I truly desire, they will still be there, hovering, waiting for their time.
This planner will be a source of acknowledging the surprises that met me along the way, the brilliance of trusting my timing and the insignificance of where I thought I had failed.
For all of you out there making big plans with your New Day Planner, this is my reminder to make that planner your own. How can your planner support your quirky, unique way of creating? And remember to leave some room for magic.
xo Linda