[Plan with Me] December 2021 Monthly Layout & Holiday Planning

Hi everyone, my name is Matt, and welcome back to another plan with me monthly video. I'm sure you'll hear this on so many other plan with me videos this week, but I can't believe it's December. We're almost at the end of 2021. And in this video, I'm going to show you a different monthly layout than I've been using, something that you'll probably recognize and is very simple and easy to do, which as each of you who have been watching this channel for a little while know, I like to keep things as simple and effective as I can. So that I can get back to doing the work that matters to me and the people that I love being with. Before I show you the layout, I do want to make a note that when I'm planning for December, really what I'm doing is I'm starting to already get in the mindset of how I'm going to plan for the new year coming up. So monthly planning for December is incorporating a lot of what I'll do for annual planning going into January. This December and January timeline is really critical for making the rest of the year work as effectively and successfully as it can. And the most important part of this for me is to protect at least a day or a block of time that is equivalent to a day to review the year behind and preview and plan the year ahead. Now it might be easy to think, I don't have a day to review and preview, Matt, I'm busy. And I completely understand that, I'm busy too. What I can say is that if you think about how many workdays there are normally in a year, it's about 250. And to just take literally one Literally, 1 day out of your year is not even equivalent to 1% of your working time for the year. And that's even if you take it out of your working time, it's way less. I didn't even do the math on what is 1 day out of 360.

Yeah, it's that number right, right there.

So when you think about the amount of time that you actually spend out of the year reviewing and previewing or planning so that you can be focused and successful, it has an exponential effect relative to, relative to the amount of time that you actually spend on it. In fact, what I like to do is protect one day each quarter to do a review and preview, and then an additional, an additional day in December to do a full year review and preview. When you think about those 5 days for the year, it is equivalent to only 2% of your working hours for the year. So that 2% can make an exponential impact on the effectiveness and success of the other 98%. It really is crazy when you think about the time that way, but it's effectively how you are using your time to impact the rest of your year. So let's go ahead and take a look at the monthly layout. It's going to be very simple, and I'm just going to explain to you why I do it this way and how you can make this grid work in your own bullet journal.

All right, friends, let's go ahead and hop into my monthly layout for December. Now what you're going to see is a really simple, almost kind of monthly calendar style layout. And the reason that I did it this way instead of the minimal like column style that I've been doing for the last several months is, as you can see, I just wasn't being as good as I wanted to about filling these out month to month. Now, November, as you can see, did not go very well. But if we go back to October, I was much better at it. So it was kind of a month to month thing in terms of how consistent I was being with logging, logging my habits and my highlights. And because there are so many events in December, I wanted to go ahead and create more of this still focused on the week as the organizing, like, section, but to treat it more in the traditional, almost like monthly wall calendar or desk calendar layout. So I kind of copied a bit of a layout from what I would see in, like, this Field Notes desk calendar, this workstation calendar, which, by the way, definitely check these out, link in the description.. And so Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And then the only thing that I do differently is because it fits into this 2-page layout such, so much more cleanly, so much, it's such a cleaner layout. I start the week on a Monday and then I split the Saturday, Sunday. Okay. So instead of doing like Sunday to Saturday, those are combined. This gives me 6 blocks on each weekly grid. And you can see the way that I've laid this out is 6 blocks across and then 5 blocks vertically. So you can think of it like 6 columns and 5 rows as just like a simple table layout. The other reason that I'm doing this is because I'm running out of space in my, uh, in my Bullet Journal, which is great. I want to be finishing up my Bullet Journal towards the end of the year. And so I'm not doing as much of what you're also used to seeing from me with, like, this, you know, split layout of, like, each day getting half a page. If I did that, I would be totally out of pages within the first— by the second week of December. And so really what I've been doing, even back into November, is still a similar layout, but not trying— not giving it a specific amount of space and pre-planning those, those spreads. So even though there are only 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 entries on these pages so far, you can see it covers a week, Wednesday to Wednesday, of actual working days. That's why this bigger, like, more expanded monthly layout is really going to be useful for me this December. Now you may be asking yourself, "Matt, what happens if you do run out of pages?" Because as you can see, these are like notes and other things, and yes, it's upside down. I can explain that in another video if you like. So what happens if I do run out of space? Well, if I do, no big deal. I will still wait to do the next year Bullet Journal fresh. So if I run out of space, all I will do is use my friend Jeff Sheldon, Jeff Sheldon of Uggmonk. Uses literal Analog note cards. So you can see that I have these that I can use, and you can check out the video that I have about Analog. It's a great little system, and especially if you don't want to do like the whole Bullet Journal thing and it feels overwhelming, checking out Analog is a great idea. I can also just use, um, you know, Field Notes. And so it's easy for me certainly to start writing down tasks for each day and give each page or each day a page in a Field Notes notebook. So no big deal there. I'm still writing down my December goals and tasks. The two big things that I'm focusing on are getting more YouTube videos out for you, and then also Productivity Power-Up, my cohort course. The third, third cohort or third round is going to be starting on January 10th. So if you want to know when that is going live, make sure you sign up for my email list in the description below. The last thing I want to give you the nitty-gritty details on is how I laid out, like, specifically with the number of dots and size of the grid. For this month. So this is, of course, the Bullet Journal Edition 2. And one of the many things that I like about this edition, and you can check out my review for it in the description below, is at the front, not sure how well you'll be able to see this, but they give you the number of, like, dots. There you go, you can see it up there. The number of dots vertically and horizontally. So I know that there are 25 horizontal dots and then 37 vertical dots. So this lets me know that basically across I have 50 dots across to work with and 37 vertically. So this one, I believe, if I can do not boring math, then if I have 50 across right here and I'm trying to get 6, I'm pretty sure that I was going like 8 dots across. Yeah, 8 by 6 is 48. So 8 dots across for each box and then coming down since there are 37, 5 times 7. So it was each box is 8 dots across and 7 dots down. So that way I'm able to create a nice like consistent grid right here. Again, writing Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and then Saturday, Sunday split up top right here. So just go through the bullet journal that you have and count the number of dots horizontally and— horizont— horizontally, not horizontally. Horizontally and vertically so that you can figure out what your grid needs to look like. Now, like I said, the Bullet Journal Second Edition will tell you all of those, but if you've seen some of my other bullet journal setup videos, I will also, if it's not explicit, I will go through and count. So this is the Baron Fig Confidant. It's 36 dots down and 24 across. These are Baron Fig sticky note dot grid sticky notes, by the way. Again, 36 by 48 across, so I'm doing a 6 by 8 layout for each grid in something like the Baron Fig. And it looks— nope, like this is a work in progress for the Baron Fig one. So as you can see, Here's my, you know, 6 by 8. So 8 across right here, 6 up and down right here for each, each block. And then, you know, I just need to fill in the rest of the grid. So that's all that I'm doing. That's all you need to do for a nice clean monthly layout in December. Some of the explanations and reasons why I'm doing it so that I can close out the year on a high note.

I talked a lot about my review and preview process, and I am going to have specific videos coming up this month that will help you think through your own annual review and the upcoming annual preview or plan. So keep an eye on the channel for those videos. If you want, and it's helpful, please make sure you subscribe and ring the bell. Click the bell, ring the bell, so that you will be notified when these new videos come out. The other reminder that I want to share is to make sure that you sign up for my email list below. These YouTube videos are only a part of the content that I produce. I've been writing a weekly email newsletter. I'm going to be writing more emails that help you review and preview and plan and set goals for the new year. So if you want more like regular bite-sized emails, 2 or 3 per week, and you can just get the, you can just get the end of week review as well, then make sure you sign up to my email list in the description below. Thank you so much for watching this video, and I'll see you in upcoming videos to help you make the new year a great time of year for you.

Thanks. Bye.