Pre-Party :: How do you plan? 2016planathon.com

Alright Plannin Bunny, I know you are about to get all kinds of amazing tips and inspiration and information in the days, weeks, months, even year to come in 2016. And I figured the best thing I could do is just share what I actually do and share what actually works for me because that's the bottom line, right? I mean we can get all this information but I know Amber's all about like what will you actually use? What are you actually gonna implement that will help you move forward and get to where you want to be by this time next year or by this time next month or two months from now. In case we haven't met yet, I'm Nikki Elledge Brown, the communication stylist, creator of the course About Copy, Jeremy's wife, Bryson's mom, baby Deacon's mom. He'll be joining us before the end of 2015. So 2016, throwing a baby, a deployment. It's going to be interesting over here and planning is going to be more important than ever. However, planning has been really important in the last few months over here because I've been pregnant, my husband's been deployed, we have a preschooler and I've been launching and running my business and all that kind of goodness. And so I wanted to share with you exactly what I've been using for my planning system. And I say system because I mean there's all kinds of apps and software that you can use out there. But in reality I'm a paper girl. I like to be able to know that if I'm going outside I can take a spiral notebook and write some stuff down. You know, just get it out of my head and onto paper because sometimes just looking at a screen makes me feel sick after a while. Like I'm just over it. And so you may be surprised, this is surprisingly low tech and I'm actually surprisingly unorganized. So I usually laugh when people ask like what's your plan? What's your calendar in your system? But lately I've got one. So first I want to share. My big baller investment of a planner was just this one from Target last year. $9.99 from Target. And I know there are all kinds of beautiful planners out there and they work great for people. But to be honest, as much as I love them and they're beautiful, I don't actually use my big weekly planner that often. It's really just for like long term stuff when I'm making appointments and things. I literally took it to the chiropractor the other day. I was like hang on let me pull out my planner. Anyway, so, yeah, it's not necessarily efficient because what if something happens to the planner? You would want to have a backup in your Google Calendar or something. But I do use this planner so that I can make longer term appointments and things and kind of keep track of things. Then as the new month rolls around and I'm going to share links because there are free printables at the wazoo that you can download again, free. So this was less than $10 or $10 of tax. And then there's free printables, all kinds of amazing, beautifully creative calendars that people have put together. And I'll share a link to one that I just found for you for 2016 where you print out your month at a glance. Again, you can totally do it here in a planner like that that I just showed you. Or if you just want to break it down, break it down now. Then you can just print out one of these free planners and just write the things that are like big upcoming that you have appointments for. So that's what I've been doing. And I would highlight the things where I'm responsible to other people because we can just be in our pajama pants doing our own thing most of the time, but sometimes we've got to be places. So whether that's basketball practice or my 34 week OB appointment or whatever it is, I make sure those things get on there first so that I'm planning week by week, I can kind of see where things will fit in. And then on Sunday that's where I would list like, these are the big things that I know need to get done that week. So that's the bigger, broader, like the year. Again, I'm all about the 90 day deal like Amber talks about, but the bigger long term stuff for the year, whenever I'm making plans for appointments and things like, well in advance, I use this guy for a month. At a glance, I use these guys and again, I'll share the link. And then for, for week by week, you can go back to my old school Mary Kay days when I was selling Mary Kay in grad school. And they have what they call a weekly plan sheet and it's literally just that. So I actually made my own version and then I converted it to a PDF. It is so plain. I thought about making it pretty, but I'm like, no, this is just how I use it. So I'm sharing it with you in PDF form and Excel form if that's easier or you want to make it Pretty and whatever, but seriously, just super straightforward. It's just the days of the week and then times. And I haven't been so good about filling it out lately because my husband just returned from an appointment. Plus we were moving. But what I'll normally do or what I was doing and it was working really well, is on Sunday night going through and just taking some time to get it all out on paper and plan, what am I going to do this week? So again, I would put in the things where I'm responsible for other people in highlighter so that I know these are times and places where I have to actually be somewhere at a certain time. Then I look at the list of all the things I wanted to do that week and, and just kind of fill it in accordingly. And that's even like bedtime, you know, Like I would tell myself, be in bed by 10 o'. Clock. It didn't always happen, but if I kind of worked it out and kind of mapped it out and you have to be flexible again, I'm a mom, I understand. And life happens even if you don't have kids. Like, things come up. So you have to be flexible. You may choose to write in pencil instead of pen, but you just map out your entire week. And I wish I would have saved some of the craziness that was September when I was launching and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, because there was a lot going on. Here's a little crazier time. So I even mark like when I'm picking up my kiddo, when we're starting dinner, bath and bedtime. And then I would have like little pockets of time where I could actually get work done. And I needed to know ahead of time. Instead of just waking up and seeing what the day brings, I needed to know ahead of time I'm gonna have these hours where I can work on my business. I'm gonna have times when I'm dedicated to mom and family time. And that's great and what life is all about, for Pete's sake. But anyway, planning your week. So yes, all about planning the year in theory, 90 day chunks at a time, the month at a glance. But actually planning the week on Sunday night is just going to help you feel so much more empowered and in the driver's seat as opposed to just waking up and just seeing what pops up then on the most micro level, I got this stationery when I was literally in fourth grade because my friend Casey had some and I thought it was cool. So I have this stationery that I literally never used And I packed it up with me when I moved to Hawaii. For some reason I was like, maybe I'll use it. And now I finally started using it. And in theory, every night I take a little square piece of paper like this and I write down. You can put times attached to it if you want. So it's literally like wake up, do your workout, do your woo woo, whatever you're going to do to start the day, school drop off. Like, you can put times on it if you want to, or you can just do a list. Like today I'm doing the plan a thon video. I need to do a blog video and write emails and whatever. So anyway, you have the list of the things you absolutely must do right here. And then for me, what works for me is to put the life stuff over here because it's really bizarrely easy to forget about all the life stuff, like unless you write it down. So I have stuff like working out, doing my arms, weights, you know, actually hanging up the wall decor in my son's room because we just moved, which is why you can see there's like a weird funky situation in this room right now. But basically, just make sure it's all written down the night before at the end of the day, because that's going to help you go to sleep. It's going to help you sleep better because you know it's all out on paper. There's nothing that you're going to forget because you took this time to plan. And then the next day you can just go into it actually knowing what the heck you're going to do, which makes it so, so much more enjoyable. So that's my system. You don't have to have a fancy planner. I mean, you don't even have to have this one. Like I said, I didn't use it. But it is easy. I mean, for 10 bucks, it is nice to at least have tabs where you can flash forward to the different months when you're making appointments. And then we'll link up to the monthly printables, which you can just Google and find if you just Google printable monthly calendar blog so that it's not like a boring one because there's really cute ones out there. I would send you to Pinterest, but we all know what happens there. And then we'll have a link for the PDF in the Excel file of this weekly plan sheet that you can do on Sundays. And then just get a little piece of paper, just something so that you can clear all this. This is there it's nice. It's for reference, but it's so nice to come down in the morning whenever you're ready to get into your zone and you just have this one little piece of paper. This is it. This is all that is in front of you today. This is all you need to do. And once you've done that, you will feel great and like you can take on the world. And it's okay if some of the things that were on your list today happen to follow you to the list tomorrow. That's all fine because it's about progress, not perfection. Best thing I can tell you is it doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be shared. And it doesn't all have to be planned, it just needs to be done at the end of the day. But it is nice again psychologically to know that you are ahead of the game and that you're being intentional about your work time and about your lifetime. So I hope these tips help in the comments below. I would love to hear. Well, I guess that's what the Plan A thon is all about is hearing about what works for other people. But let me know what's your favorite one? What are you most excited to try and happy 2016 happy planning to you. I'll see you in the group.