OBS FAQs: So Many Planners, So Little Time

Maybe you've donated to a number of organizations, and you've gotten them in the mail. Maybe they were 75% off after the new year, and you couldn't resist a bargain. Or maybe you have an I love stuff personal style and just had to bring all the pretty planners home with you.

No matter the cause, you somehow seem to have acquired a plethora of planners and calendars.

Well, have no fear. There's more than one way to press a planner into service.

There's the traditional use, of course -- keeping track of appointments. If you use just one planner and/or calendar, that might still leave you with a small pile of extras. You could:

Use one to keep track of your progress. Perhaps you set a goal to drink more water, take more steps, or read more books. Jotting down your accomplishment of the day in the designated box can help you stay on track. Better yet, it can help you see the big picture (and your successes) on days when things aren't going so well.

Use one to log time spent on your favorite hobby. When it comes to my writing, this has become so important that I don't wait to see if I have an extra planner on hand. I buy one for this purpose. The one I use now is from the dollar store and gives me space to log my time as well as jot a few notes to myself: what I did, and where I want to start in my next session, for example. 

Planning a long-term project. One of my friends gave me a beautiful planner that I use to plan writing projects. While the daily (favorite hobby) planner focuses on the day-to-day and keeps me accountable, this larger planner with tons of open space and BIG blocks lets me do the global planning. When I can give each chapter, character, or concept a full-page spread of its own, I feel less constrained and better able to brainstorm.

Categorized lists. Cross out the month and replace them with a category. I used the monthly layout at the front of my goals planner to keep and track a running list of books I've read, organizing projects I want to do, and 22 things I want to focus on in 2022. (I also used one page to list all the good things in 2021). The page devoted to organizing projects is both a work-in-progress (I add to it as new projects pop up) and a way to keep track (I put a date in the corresponding box every time I work on a project). Because each project gets its own box, I can see the big picture without trying to cram everything onto one list. Depending on your styles, this might not matter to you but, as someone with an I need to see it personal style, once I started doing this, I wondered why it took me so long to try this approach.

A penny (or square) for your thoughts. Or prayer requests. Or anything else you want to get out of your head and onto the page before it floats away. Again, for someone like me with an I need to see it personal style, giving each item its own square keeps things visible in a way that's less overwhelming than a traditional list.

You're probably wondering why this counts as a frequently asked question. You might have guessed (correctly) that I don't have a lot of people asking me what to do with an overabundance of planners. But deciding what to do with an overabundance of anything is an integral part of getting (and staying) organized. Sometimes it's easy. We can look at an item and determine we don't need it or we'll never use/wear it again and we can toss/recycle/donate it accordingly. Or, we can decide we simply don't have the space for something, and decide to give it a new home either through donation or resale.

But a lot of times, it's not so easy. And when something we like and want to keep can honestly be pressed into service in a new and useful way, that can be a win-win. Not only are we getting to keep the thing we like, we're reducing waste by pressing an already manufactured item into service.

There's one final style caveat to consider. If the thing you love is a poor fit for your styles, it might be better off brightening up someone else's space. My primary personal style is I need to see it but, when it comes to stationery items, I definitely have a generous dollop of I love stuff, which makes me more likely to find 1000 excuses to keep all things stationery. But, because planners are an excellent I need to see it tool, it makes sense for me to hang on to them and press them into service in a new way if the planning space is generous enough. Those little year-on-a-page and pocket-sized planners? Not keepers.

So, if you've been staring down that pile of planners and calendars taking up space in your kitchen or office, take a moment and look at them through the lenses of your styles. What abstract ideas or looming projects can they help you organize? How can they help you keep track of your successes and your small steps? What thoughts, dreams, goals and ideas might benefit from being corralled into a collection of 365+ squares separated into 12 months or categories?

And, if the answer is, "they can't," then perhaps the best home for them is the recycling bin. With a clear conscience.

3 Keys Thursday: Coping with Global Mindset

Dodgerton Skillhause via Morguefile

Yesterday, I wrote about the zoom out/zoom in of global/detail-oriented thinkers and planners, and I promised to share strategies for making the global mindset work for you. So, as promised, here are three keys for planning when you're a big picture thinker, along with three keys for working with a global thinker when you deal in details.

Allow plenty of time. For global thinkers, procrastination is often the "default setting" when planning something big and/or important. Overwhelmed by the task, we vacillate from unrealistic, enormous plans to the bare bones basics, finally landing somewhere in the middle -- as long as we give ourselves enough time to work through the process.

Make lists -- incrementally, if necessary. As an I need to see it person, visually overwhelming lists feel insurmountable, so I often create lists by category. For my daughter's graduation party, for example, I made lists of decoration ideas, food to serve and grocery lists -- on three separate pages. My detail-oriented husband wasn't the least bit intimidated by putting it all on the same page, but for me to do so would have re-started the procrastination and slowed my forward movement.

Don't let the details get you down. Breathe. List. Act. Just take one detail at a time. Yes, there are lots of them, but, little by little, they'll line up just the way you want them to if you just take them one at a time.

Pixabay

What if your house, like mine, is home to a big-picture thinker (me) and a detail-oriented person (my husband)? Planning the same event can become a battleground unless one person does it all, or both people learn to speak the lingo. Here are three things detail-oriented people can do to make the most of their partnership with a big-picture thinker.

Try to take in the whole picture. I know that's asking a lot. Detail-oriented people often have as much difficulty zooming out as global people have zooming in. If you can take a step back from the details long enough to imagine the finished product, you'll not only get a sense of where your global partner is coming from, but perhaps prioritize your own lists as well.

Avoid the impulse to offer a smorgasbord of details. Feed details to your global partner in bite-sized pieces, and preferably off just one page of the menu. When she's focusing on the food list, don't offer decoration ideas and vice versa. If she's already drowning in details for one area, offering details for another may just sink the ship. (And that's enough metaphors for this section).

Ask how you can help. My husband has become very, very good at this strategy, which allows the global person to relinquish one detail at a time. One caveat: be aware that you must choose your tone very carefully when asking this question of a stressed out global thinker who still thinks her overly optimistic plan is possible.

Unlike the personal and organizational styles, these planning styles actually complement one another, so, temporary complications aside, being partnered with someone whose style is the opposite of yours can be just the thing to ensure that your event comes together beautifully.

Down to the last detail.

Planning Passions in an Unorthodox Fashion

passionplanner.com

About a month ago, I broke down and bought the Passion Planner I've been eyeing since last fall. Sucked in by the beautifully illustrated pages that fill its Twitter feed, I needed to first make sure that someone lacking that degree of artistic talent could utilize its interior equally well.

My new purchase (with its undated pages) sat in my office for a few days as I decided what to do with it. I'm sure you're wondering why this was even an issue. I mean, it's a planner, after all. What does one usually do with a planner?

All sorts of things. As a fan of white space, I often use calendars to keep track of things besides appointments. I use a thin, inexpensive month-at-a-glance calendar to keep track of my writing and a smaller, spiral-bound, equally cheap school-year calendar (July to June) to keep track of the assignments and lessons for the classes I teach. This is in addition to the main calendar on my computer, duplicated in hard copy form on the bulletin board in the kitchen where it's accessible to all who live here.

And this new Passion Planner with its soft, leather cover was much too beautiful to use for something as mundane as word counts, assignments or appointments. Too thick to stash in my overstuffed book bag, and more journal than calendar, it begged to be used for loftier pursuits.

It didn't take long for me to dub it my "Brainstorm Book," and to create tabbed sections for projects I want to map out. Placing baby steps in individual squares not only makes big projects seem less insurmountable, but it also allows me to see progress as I check off each square as I accomplish it.

Yesterday, I grabbed my Passion Planner and started doing one of my favorite things: mapping out the summer. I pulled out my felt-tip markers and created areas on the page for the things I want to devote time to this summer, things that get pushed aside in the crush of class planning and teaching and grading. TED Talks. Reading for pleasure.

Then came the things that I want to focus on but not be consumed by. New promotional opportunities for my writing. My Thirty-One business.

Finally, I wrote in new ideas that popped up at the writers' conference I attended last weekend -- things I want to investigate or learn more about. And when I'd finished with those things, there was lots of blank space left for me to jot down new ideas that come up as the summer progresses.

Because I'm using the Passion Planner more as a project planner and less as a month-by-month life planner, I've yet to decide how to use the monthly reflection pages. I suspect that the perfect way to use them will occur to me as I continue to use the planner. Meanwhile, my I need to see it style is practically drooling over the sheer visibility of my goals laid out in a step-by-step fashion.

How about you? What typical organizing or time management tool do you use in an atypical way? How does it fit your styles?

passionplanner.com