Planner Chick
photo credit: Joni Smith Fotography
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“For I know the Plans I have for you.” declares the Lord. “Plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11(NIV)
“Commit to the Lord whatever you do and He will establish your plans” Proverbs 16:3 (NIV)
“I’m done! What’s the point in trying? Every time I try to do right, everything seems to go wrong.”
I threw up my hands in surrender to God. I was fed up and frustrated. I’d been on a constant treadmill of planning and scheduling my daily, weekly and dare I say monthly tasks. But I kept hitting a wall and sliding down in a pile of “going nowhere fast.”
They say if you want to tell God a joke, tell Him your plans. I guess I’m in training to become one of God’s favorite comedians. But maybe the joke is on me.
Planning is my thing.
I do this and always have. But I decided that I would relinquish control to The Giver of Days and Keeper of Time to figure out how best to maximize whatever time I’m given to get things done.
For starters, I’m in a phase of pregnancy where I don’t get sufficient sleep at night. I’ll wake up at 2, 3, or 4 am and can’t fall back asleep. But this inevitably means I’m always very sleepy right when Lavender wakes up at or around 8am.
Then there’s Lavender’s schedule. Sometimes she takes two naps, sometimes she takes just one and fights the second and at some point, according to the “experts” she’s supposed to have a big nap in the middle of the day.
And finally, there’s my husband's recent pandemic telework schedule. Because he works from home several days a week, I’m adjusting to that change. And I know I’ll be readjusting when his schedule changes again.
ON top of that is the need to stay flexible and ready for life’s demands because no matter how much I organize and engineer my weeks, something will happen and I can’t be so rigid as to not leave room for God’s plans.
I desire to be, as a wise bawse lady once put it, “obnoxiously disciplined with my schedule,” but I have a feeling that that reality left when I entered marriage and motherhood (but I’m open to tips from other mothers).
I’m looking to figure out how to maximize this God-given affinity for planning and organizing.
I don’t reject it because this is who I am.
I have proof, receipts and alladat.
According to several takes at the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator, I am an INFJ, which is one of the rarest personality types (less than 1% of the population) identified by this tool. Told y’all I was a unicorn!.
Notable INJFs per the 16 Personalities site
I’m not going to go into full detail and break down exactly what that means.
Instead, you can go to a solid site (here) and take the test yourself to see what it tells you. It’s pretty spot on.
I’ve taken a number of proctored and professionally administered MBTI tests since my first year in college.
This online version is quicker and yields accurate results. Now, there was that one year when my results came up ENFJ but I was the office DJ and BINGO master at the time, so I guess I had more extroverted tendencies (shrug).
“NF” Combinations fall within the Diplomat Family
Anywho, my last letter “J” stands for “Judging” and I usually like to say I’m just judicious.
But really this letter, and all who bear it in their MBTI results, means that you’re usually meticulous, relying on lists, grids, and spreadsheets to organize and track your day to day or overall activities.
You’re task oriented, usually prefer work before play, and tend to plan ahead.
This is often why and how I justify my planner collection and idiosyncrasy.
PLANNER CHICK
A non-exhaustive collection of my planners.
I have used well over 7 different planners in the last 3-4 years. And I am on a quest to find the perfect one.
I’m always researching and purchasing newfangled scheduling tools to help me get a grip on my daily, monthly and quarterly tasks.
My biggest issue is not completing a planner from start to finish, OR when I find myself juggling two or more planners at once for different areas of my life, which is the current story of my life.
I just want one that does it all without being as thick and expensive as a college textbook!
Usually, when I don’t finish a planner, it’s because it’s no longer practical.
Maybe it’s too big and bulky to lug around. Maybe it’s too small and doesn’t leave space to write out and expand my thoughts.
Maybe it’s lacking a feature that I know will streamline my tasks.
Maybe it’s too basic.
Lately it’s the lack of a month-at-a-glance section in my planner or a lack of daily pages that provide ample space to write out and detail my day-to-day needs.
I currently use three different planners to make sure I outline my tasks (tew...much). You might be scratching your head in confusion or nodding yes because you can relate.
So, to make it “make sense” I’m going to share a little overview of my current go-to planners.
HAPPY PLANNER
I have a Happy Planner that’s large and colorful with quotes and tabs for each month. It’s your everyday, simple, get the job done planner.
I purchased this planner to keep at home so that I can always have something at my desk that doesn’t have to leave or isn’t at risk of being lost. I do like how large the pages are and it has a feature to insert different types of bonus content, like a budget planner.
They also have different date formats for people who prefer to organize their daily activities in other ways. The brand also features stickers, which I LOVE. Raise your hand if you loved Lisa Frank Stickers back in the day.
The only con is that the pages can be ripped out too easily by toddlers, and the version I use is pretty heavy.
PASSION PLANNER (#PASHFAM)
Then there’s the Passion Planner, named so because of the emphasis on aligning your daily, weekly and monthly tasks with your passions.
I’ve come to love Passion Planners over the last few years and decided to try their latest product, The Passion Planner Daily.
The Passion Planner Daily covers three months worth of daily tasks to allow for quarterly scheduling. So if you like “90 Day plans” or breaking your years into quarters, this one's for you.
The Passion Planner Daily is great in that it gets even more granular than the standard Passion Planner, helping users better organize and plan their days around a game changer goal.
It comes in a classic black version and colorful version and if you get all four of the colorful edition, you can color code your quarters (pretty fancy). It’s easy to fit into a book bag or purse and user friendly.
But…
It does cost more over the long run because you have to purchase a total of 4 planners to cover one year, versus one calendar for the entire year.
I also do miss the regular Passion Planner, with its monthly and weekly designs.
PRODUCTIVITY PLANNER
Finally there’s my Productivity Planner. I learned about this from an entrepreneur, and my virtual, fairy business guru, Zim Flores while attending one of her business retreats.
Unlike a standard planner with pages dedicated to days, months and hours, this is essentially a book of important “to-dos”.
You determine your top 10 priorities for the week and each day, write out the top 5 tasks that you must complete to help you successfully achieve your weekly priorities.
This baby is designed to increase productivity via the famous pomodoro method. The beauty of this planner is that it helps you track how long it takes to complete key tasks for any set of goals or actions.
You set a timer and work uninterrupted until the end of that block (e.g. 25 minutes). For best results, turn off email notifications, your phone, or put up a sign to let people know you’re busy and can’t be disturbed.
Once the timer goes off, give yourself a 5-10min break to do something other than work (look at puppy videos, talk to that colleague or go grab a cup of water) before jumping into a new round of uninterrupted work.
Think of it as interval or fartlek training for the brain.
The planner provides 5 daily pages featuring spaces for five tasks and a section for notes. At the end of each 5-day period, you’re encouraged to review your week by documenting.
FULL FOCUS (new planner alert!)
I recently purchased the Full Focus Planner on recommendation of Zim, via her newsletter.
Used by a host of corporations and influential business brands, I figured this might be the answer to my planning frustrations (read: multiple planners, lots of money and a lot of time planning).
Like the Passion Planner Daily, the Full Focus Planner is in a quarterly format. It also includes a section for goals, the steps required to achieve them and a quarter-at-a-glance section.
Like the Happy Planner, it has monthly spreads. And because it’s undated you can determine when to start using it.
Like the regular Passion Planner, it also includes a week spread, but this is a one-time “My Ideal Week” format and intended for the user to map out their ideal week specific to that quarter.
Like the Productivity planner, the Full Focus planner includes a “week in review” section to help you assess how your week went, your progress towards completing your tasks and achieving your goals.
The Full Focus Planner also includes questions to help you figure out what you’ll need to do to stay or get back on track and closer to your goals in the week ahead.
Other features in this planner that I haven’t seen in the others include:
Annual Goals with subsequent pages for you to build out and elaborate on the goals of each annual goal listed.
Rolling Quarter for those things that you didn’t complete in previous quarters but want to take care of in the new one. As well as the key activities that you can’t change in this quarter (for example an anniversary trip or family vacation, etc.).
A spread to list morning rituals, morning warm ups, evening rituals and evening cool downs.
A Key to help you determine and label which tasks are to be delegated, listed as important, deferred or unnecessary and deleted.
A “Weeks left in the quarter” ledger so you can see how far you’ve come or how much time you have left to accomplish that quarter’s goals.
An index page for you to reference where you might have mentioned various topics and ideas in the past quarter. This is exciting and a helpful little tool for those of us who don’t throw away our calendars and planners.
At $44 for the classic versions, this planner is neither cheap nor skimpy and I intend to give it the full 90 days so I can get the full benefits.
To help users navigate the layout and maximize the benefits, the website provides a series of video tutorials, an online guidebook and a private online community.
As of this post, I’m just getting started with my Full Focus Planner, so I’ll share my results when I’m done.
And that’s it. That’s my extensive list and fascinating world of plannerdom. If you think I’m on another level, you should see the people who commit to the bullet journal method. Those are some of the most artistic and creative planners I have ever seen. I neither have the time nor patience to do all of that, but I really admire the artistry and dedication of those who do.
So, based on what I shared, what planner “family” or category would you put yourself in?
Are you more of a “Happy Planner”: keep it simple and just give me paper to write on and keep my dates together? Or are you a “Full Focus”: let’s get down to the nitty gritty, chart out the path and do it every three months, sort of person?
Or maybe you’re in the Passion Planner world of “I like mapping out my goals and being goal oriented but let me just stick to a weekly and monthly format for now.”?
Perhaps you’re not even into the analogue approach to planning but prefer your Google calendar app or some other digital option for planning tasks and organizing your time.
Let me know which one you gravitate towards and if you’ve used any of the mentioned planners or another not on this list.