April Plan with Me | One Page Bullet Journal Setup | March Monthly Review

Hi everyone, my name is Matt Ragland, and in this video I'm going to show you how to plan your month in a bullet journal. I'm going to talk about some of my strategies, a couple of things that I'm doing to stay focused and productive, and do a little bit of a look back at March. What did I do well? What are the things that I needed to improve on? And what am I looking forward to in April of 2024? Let's get into it. I have a few videos about this, so I'm not going to go into great detail about my monthly layout in the Bullet Journal, but simply put, it is a 2-column vertical layout with rows for each day of the month and the corresponding day of the week. So, as you can see, April 1st, Monday, Easter Monday, and what I'm doing for each of these rows is I'm looking at this for the month and saying what are the big events that are happening for each day of the month. I don't use this as a place to put every single appointment, obviously, but it's something like, is there a birthday? Are friends coming into town? Is there something like a jiu-jitsu tournament that I'm competing in? Are we going camping? It's those kind of bigger events that are the things that are going in the monthly layout here. Now everything else that's more of a daily appointment or a task or reminder, those sorts of things are of course going in the daily layout or the Wheelie layout. If you want to see how I put everything together, you can find those links in the description below and the cards that are going to pop up in the corners of this video. One thing that I changed in the March layout was instead of doing a habit tracker, I was doing more of a check-in tracker. The reason I was doing this is because in the past I was tracking habits that I was already pretty good at, and it was nice to say like, hey, good for me, I worked out again. But it wasn't something that I was getting much benefit out of tracking. I also track workouts on either my Apple Watch or I've used Whoop in the past. So if I want to know like when did I do a workout, I can usually just, you know, I could go there instead. What I decided to start doing was look at my hard habit list, the things that even just from an awareness, from a visibility perspective that I wasn't spending as much time on as I should. So those were things like, am I taking care of my mind? I took care and still take care of my body really well. But taking care of my mind through like prayer and meditation and even some like journaling, those are some things that I wasn't always doing a very good job with. And so I wanted to keep track and like challenge myself to do something positive and healthy related to my mental development and health just as much as I was doing for my personal fitness, well-being and health. The other thing that I've been keeping a closer eye on is my money. And always been in a good place with money, but it's something that I didn't always look at every single day. And there were days that I would look at it and be like, oh no, I forget, you know, I didn't move money over automatically, or I didn't pay close enough attention to what the credit card statement was. And so like, there would be like these times of tension, and maybe I wouldn't want to look at it for a few more days 'cause I didn't want to like have a moment. And instead, what I've been doing is just looking at it every single day. And just like making sure like, okay, these things are happening, got to move some stuff around, no big deal. And that has— I've, I haven't looked at it every single day in March, but doing that has really helped lower some of the anxiety that I feel just about like checking, checking balances. Now, of course, I want to get to a point where that isn't something that I like feel like I have to do every day. But going from a place of like I felt tension around it to now I feel at least like comfortable looking at it and checking it consistently. That has unsurprisingly, like, made me feel a lot better about my relationship with money. The last hard habit that I've been tracking is my alcohol intake, and I wanted to see like how many days of the month did I have a drink. And I've never drank a lot, but I still wanted to drink less. And even though there were a couple of days where I drank a little bit more than normal, uh, so far— and I'm recording this a few days before the month is over, I'll probably have like 1 or 2 beers over the weekend. That means that out of 31 days in March, I will have had a drink on only 10 of those 31 days. And in the past, it might have been something more like 15 or 20 out of the 30 days. So say like a couple of, a couple of beers during the week and maybe a couple of beers or cocktails over the weekend. And so that is like my in-week, you drinking has lowered significantly. So just tracking those days and saying like, hey, on this day I had a drink. It's been— this is 10 days of, of no drinking, and I probably won't— I won't have anything else to drink until, like I said, maybe 1 or 2 beers this weekend. The way that I do my monthly reviews is the same way that I do my weekly reviews, which is the same way that I think about my annual reviews. It's following this 4-step acronym of WRAP. WRAP stands for Wins, Results, Alignment, and pivot. And what that means is like, what are my wins? What are the things that I enjoyed that I did well? What are the results of the intentions, the plan that I set at the beginning of the month? And then are those actions, are those results, are those wins in alignment with the type of person that I want to be, with the kind of business that I want to build, with the kind of content that I want to be creating? And the P stands for what kind of pivots or maybe like new plans do I need to make in order to have like quality wins, to have good results, and to stay or get more in alignment with the kind of person that I want to be and the kind of business that I want to have. So a few wins from March 2024. Had a lot of family time. I went camping with the boys. I took my two oldest, they're 8 and 5. We went camping. It was really cold. It got down to 25. And like the little one, I was like shoving him further into the sleeping bag and like, you know, propping up a, you know, a little, little breathing hole for him. He was totally fine. But yeah, we roasted hot dogs and marshmallows and had s'mores. We went to the SEC tournament. I live in Nashville. And so we went to the SEC basketball tournament. I went to Florida, go Gators. And we went to a game, big comeback, very exciting. We were able to move down to like near the court for the last, like, for the last little bit of the game and see the comeback completed and the win and celebrate with the team. And that was a lot of fun for those two boys also. So I spent a lot of quality time with them and the family overall. My— we had egg hunts, which is always, always fun. And then the 5-year-old is pretty much like— he's learned how to ride his bike now, which is really exciting. He feels like this sense of freedom. He's kind of the daredevil of the bunch. And so it doesn't surprise me that he learned to ride his bike, ride his bike pretty early. And now he's like, Dad, who's the best bike rider? I was like, well, you know, it kind of depends on the type. He's like, but who? And I was like, I don't know yet, I gotta figure it out. So now I gotta figure out who his, his bicycling idols are going to be. The results, the things that I'm still like having trouble with, and this has been an ongoing issue for me, I think it is for a lot of ambitious people, especially ones who are going to get into content creation like I do, is that what I think I can do versus the capacity and like actual time that I have to do things is an ongoing struggle slash challenge for me. Like, Oh, I can do all these things. And then as it like comes out in the wash, I've, I've almost, I've never really been able to do the number of things that I want to do with like content or with work or even like personally, if I could be okay sleeping 4 or 5 hours in a night, I would totally do that. I would probably go to bed at the same time as my wife because that's nice. But then like if I If I could like wake up at 3 every day and just crush it from like 3 until 10 PM, I probably would do that. Maybe I'll try it. I don't think it'll work. But I just, I have more time. I have more, no, I don't have more time. I have more ideas and more things that I want to do than I have time to do it. And coming to an understanding of that reality, the things that I want to do versus the capacity that I have to do them, is always fighting within me. Just as a quick aside, a good book to read about this is called 4,000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. It's one of my favorite books of 2023. It's fantastic. I highly, highly recommend. Now, on the other end of that spectrum is the type of work that I did, the kind of life that I led, the things that I did, the time I spent with my family in March. Does that align with the type of person that I want to be? And the answer is really close to yes. I spent a lot of time with the boys. My wife and I went to a Nashville FC soccer game, and that was awesome. Really fun MLS team, beautiful stadium. And the work that I did and the way that we're building Hey Creator, the community that I have with FatherFire Digital Dads, that's another thing that I've talked about a little bit. I feel like a lot of things are coming together. And again, like, one of the things that I'm still struggling with, like, I'm in alignment, and sometimes when I'm in alignment, it makes me want to do even more things. And so that kind of goes back to like, what are the results, the things that I want to do, the capacity that I have to do them, that thing is still a challenge for me, even though I believe and know that I am becoming more and more comfortable with that challenge being present, even if I haven't figured out a way to solve it or overcome it just yet. The final part of the wrap of the monthly review is P for pivot or new plans. And really, because I'm in alignment and because I am doing the things that I enjoy doing, really the only thing that I'm pivoting on or just like is more like protecting— maybe the P is for protect, uh, this month because I just need to make sure that I'm protecting enough time, attention, and focus to do the things that are important. Michael Hyatt calls these the uphill tasks, and I've always really liked that description. Like, are you doing enough of the things that are going to move you uphill towards your summit of success? My friend Kay He also calls this like, are you doing your 10K work? So I'm making sure that I'm protecting my 10K work. Another friend of mine, Jay Papasan, calls this the one thing. He co-wrote the book with Gary Keller, The One Thing, which is Am I doing the one thing that is going to help me with my uphill work that's going to build the business and build a life that I want to have? And so that includes doing things like the updated 10-block strategy. And that's just protecting time, blocking things out for top tasks, goals, projects. These are often things that aren't a part of the normal day-to-day, week-to-week work. And it's important that when you find yourself really like in kind of in the weeds of the recurring tasks that can eat up your week really quickly, that you protect and say like, hey, I'm thinking about making this for 2 weeks ahead, a month ahead, 3 months ahead, 6 months ahead, so that you're not always doing things so that I'm not always doing things that are like due tomorrow, which is way too often a trap that I can find myself in. One thing that I did track in March was this really simple day rating system. And it would just be like plus if it was a good day, zero if it was like a middling day, I didn't want to put like the equals there, it looked weird. And then a negative if it was a like not so great day. So just plus, zero, minus. And if it was a really good day, plus plus, and if it was a really bad day, minus minus. So it's just like a simple plus minus. And so far, again, like I'm recording this on the 26th, so still a few days to go, but so far I'm +17 on the month. So a good month so far. Only a handful, looks like right now, 1, 2, uh, yeah, just like, uh, 3 or 4 like minus days, uh, and 2 plus plus days, both like weekend, weekend days where I got to spend a lot of time with family outside. In beautiful, in beautiful weather. So that's, you know, that's, that's definitely a plus plus setup for me. And it's interesting to just, I think I'm going to track this for a few months and just say like, hey, like, what, what is a pretty average month? I'm guessing a pretty average month is going to end up being like probably 18 to 20, plus 18 to 20. What would it mean to try and get up to like plus 22, plus 25, something like that. So Those are, those are things that I'm tracking. That's really the only thing that I'm like actively tracking. The other things that I mentioned, you know, mindset, money, booze, those are like just checking the box. Like, did I do it or did I not do it? And am I just being aware? Like checking the bank statement, that, that counts. Did I or did I not like have, have a beer today? Those are like the other kind of like more chill, those hard habits that I'm checking on. The rating is like real, like, thing that I'll be like looking at over, over time. A few things that I'm excited about for April, looking forward to, are having friends come into town. Some of my oldest friends from college and even high school are going to be in town for the weekend. So looking forward to being with them. I'm competing in a Brazilian jiu-jitsu tournament the second weekend in April. There's a chance we might go to North Carolina Carolina for a few days. My son's second birthday is later on in April and just continuing to get ready for our fourth child to arrive. I don't think I've told you this on the YouTube channel, but we're gonna have our fourth child, our first girl. Can't wait for this. I'm so excited. Gonna have a little baby girl. Three boys, one girl, uh, coming this summer. So, uh, just getting ready for that mentally, spiritually, physically, getting all the, like, uh, you know, fourth, fourth kid, kind of feel like a pro now. But I, I just can't wait. I remember, so I'm, I'm 40, I'm gonna be 40 and a half when a little baby girl comes. And my dad Chuck, shout out to Chuck, had just turned 40 when my baby sister Sarah was I was born. And so he had turned 40 like 2 months earlier. And I kind of remember, because I was 12 at the time, and I kind of remember things like, 40 seems a little old to be having a kid. And now I'm going to be older than my dad was when Sarah was born, is how old I'm going to be when our little girl is born. So that's, that's pretty wild to like have that thought when I was 12 and now be 40 and be like, oh, well, Funny, funny how life happens. Thank you so much for watching this plan with me video for April 2024. And just, yeah, the plan doesn't take much time, the review takes a little bit more. Thank you for hanging out with me. This is also like part like personal vlog. These are things that I honestly, I'm just gonna like looking back at them, kind of like a, a time capsule of what was going on during, during the month for this particular time. And this is something that when I first started my YouTube channel that I was doing every day or every week. I was like, hey, here's, here's what's happening with life. And I enjoyed that format because it's something that I still go back or like my kids go back and watch, be like, hey, when we lived in Chattanooga, hey, when we took that trip down to Atlanta, or hey, when we went out to Colorado, there's a video about that. And I really liked that. And during some of these plan with me videos, that's, that's where I'm gonna be like, hey, even if it's just for, you know, Matt and fam, like down the road, I think you'll get a little out of them also and sharing some of the lessons that I've learned throughout this process and the things that I'm doing. I hope you get something out of them too. But thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you in the next video.