Use this planner to be a more productive and focused student

Hello everyone! Welcome to September 2020. It's pretty wild that it's already September. I think for as weird as this year has been, and that's putting it very lightly, it's gone by kind of fast. I would wonder how you feel about that as well, but you know, here we are. It's actually September 2nd, so a day late on the Plan With Me release, having some of Costco's finest coffee. And what I want to share with you today is how I'm planning out my month of September and looking into getting some things done in October because I have a couple of launches and some cool videos coming up. How I plan and prepare and set the groundwork for doing that in September is how I can have a really successful October. So September for me was supposed to be a really fun month. I had a vacation to California that was cancelled.

And then I was supposed to go to Austin to see friends and that was cancelled.

And I, yeah, it's supposed to be the start of football season and football is still actually, actually starting. And so I'm excited about that, but it's a little bit later and like a lot of other things in 2020 has felt really weird., and like, is it going to happen? Looks like it's going to happen. Before we get started with this video, I want to raise my coffee mug glass to Woven. Woven is the sponsor for September on my YouTube channel, and Woven is a calendar app that is the smartest, most analytical, and most helpful calendar app that I've ever used in my life. It's actually replaced Calendly for me. It replaces Doodle for me. It has helped me immeasurably with my time blocking and my time tracking.. It saves me time. It's lovely to look at. It has a dark mode. There's so many things that I love about using Woven for my calendar. So there's going to be a specific video about how to get started with Woven and how to use it next week. But I just wanted to give a shout out to them in this first video of the month. They are the sponsor. I'm really excited to work with them. Let's go ahead and jump into the video now. For this August, September, October kind of 3-month quarter, I've been using the Full Focus Planner Pocket Edition, and I've really liked it. It's, you know, it's nice and small and it's compact and it's easy to use and carry around and just get the critical, like, tasks in every single day. I'm going to show you how I'm planning out my month using the Full Focus Planner and just give you a quick preview of 3 new, like, kid and teen editions that they have, which I have really liked using. And like I would use them even though I'm not a kid anymore, just a kid at heart, or a teen.

Maybe not a teen at heart, a lot of stuff happens when you're a teenager. So a couple of things that I do specifically to hack around what I want to do in the Full Focus Planner is whenever there is the new month coming up in a weekly preview, I just note which month that is back at the beginning. So September is on Page 22, and you can see my 20-month-old. Man, he's getting big. Made some additions to my monthly layout. We'll get back to that in a second. So, I just note that, make a reference to it.

I'm setting up the week going ahead right here.

And so, pretty normal things as we're getting into, like, the top 3 things that I want to do each day. And the way that I normally lay out a month and a week is that I take the top tasks as they're related to my weekly Big 3 and fill them in to the Tuesday, you know, the week ahead. The other thing that I do, and this is related to the video on analog to digital workflows, you can check that out up there, is that I often have like tasks in something like Notion or Roam, and then I transfer them into my Full Focus Planner or my Bullet Journal. So, that is how I've been planning out the week. I use the September calendar to give myself a big picture view of the main events that I need to keep an eye on. So, what we've been doing for many of us, I think just over 100, 120 have been a part of the Bullet Journal Setup Series that's going on right now. And then I'll have different events, like we're running a summit for Podia the last full week in September, different mastermind calls.. And that way I can see everything that I have to do from a big picture perspective. One of the sad things, I didn't even write it in because it's about to be canceled, but, you know, like I had an Austin trip planned from a while back and not going to be able to do it. So that is X'd out right there. Too bad.

But I'm just using this to look at the month ahead.

Now the other thing that I normally do looking at, say, the month that's upcoming, and the reason that I like to do a little pre-planning for October even when I'm in September or November when I get to October, is that the plan that I make in September affects what I'm actually able to do in October. And so I do a lot of prep and planning and setup before I get into the month after this one. It's the same thing when I was back here in August. And so I was doing things for building Second Brain. I was doing, I was doing a lot of work on making sure that I had everything together for the Bullet Journal Setup Series that we're doing right now. So I'm looking ahead and thinking like, okay, when are we going to do the October Challenge? Probably going to be the first week in October. So now I know, looking at this, that this week, the analog action launch, getting that all the way through. So this is the launch. And now, so I need to be thinking like, what do I need to do in the 14th and the 21st? What do I need to do these weeks to make sure that we're going to have a good launch and make sure that all the lessons are done and everything's outlined? So this way I'm seeing like all the way, all the ways that events ideas, milestones, launches in October are going to be started in September. So then I take what I'm looking at for the month. And I go into the, like, daily, weekly spreads. And I'm kind of pre-filling in my top tasks, or like the big, the big 3 objectives that I have for each week. So ship the Woven video, heard about Woven, this month's sponsor. And then testimonials for members so that I can like just, you know, share that social proof of how much people have been loving the mastermind and the setup series. Working on another video and then speaker slide decks for the Podia Summit. Continuing through, same thing here. This is the Podia Summit week, one more Woven video. So this way I'm giving myself these weekly milestones so that I know I'm hitting all of the goals and completing the projects that I have for the month ahead. And then, so going into the last week of September that becomes the first week in October, one more Plan With Me video just like we're doing right now, Connect the Dots show for the podcast that I should be starting, and final week in the mastermind. So you can see that usually from a day-to-day basis, I'm not like pre-planning a lot, but what I do have is I look at, you know, what are my goals for this month, and I can see— and the month that's upcoming, so September and October. I can also come into like just the beginning. This is Full Focus Planner specific, but I have, I have a collection for this when I'm doing this in the Bullet Journal, but for your key projects that I have these kind of dated out. So some of these are already X'd out as complete, but something is happening in September, a couple of things happening in October. Just a couple of overall goals that I have. So they go from, you know, the key projects help inform the monthly plans, the monthly plans and dates inform the weekly big 3 that I'll have, then the weekly big 3 help inform the daily tasks. But I don't do too much pre-planning, just so that I can make sure that I'm doing what ends up happening, needing to be the most important thing. And I will sometimes put in, like, hey, I really need to make sure that the Austin trip is canceled by the end of this week. My cousin has her birthday on the 10th. So, those are some things that I will go ahead and just put into the, like, month ahead. One other thing to show you from the Full Focus Planner team are all of these lovely new planners and journals that they have set up. I'm just gonna show you one. This one's probably my favorite. It looks like the logo of the state of Colorado.

So, fan of this one.

They're all the same in terms of, you know, their interior layout and system. So I'm just going to show you this one. Here are some other colors. And what I like about these— so I've been a fan of Full Focus Planner. They're a big supporter of the channel and appreciate the partnership we have with them. But this is set up for, like, kids and teens..

And I really like just the colors, the simplicity of it.

You can see there's a lot of similar things, just made a little bit easier and clearer. I really like how they put in, like, how to use your planner. There's also some online links here. But annual goals, goal details, a bunch of pages for those. Streak tracker. Yeah, they do have Ideal Week. They have the Day Builder to kind of build out that morning, daytime, evening ritual. I think that is great. The self-care planner, which is more and more important, especially for teens. And then everything else is very similar. So you have your weekly preview. What do you want to do and what should you do? That's a good way to frame that. I like the simple little way they have, like, review your weekly big 3. How far did you get? With just like a range of smiley faces. And then Monday, your daily big 3 and other tasks and reminders. Have the agenda hours right here, and then just a dot grid layout for extra notes. I really like this. Like, I would use it. I would use it myself. And then notes and sketches in the back. Quarterly review, quarterly preview. What will you keep doing? What will you improve? I like this little quote from Michael. "If at first you don't succeed, you're normal." That's great. I like this too. I wanted to bring this up. Is they have like a list of goal ideas. Because especially if you're like, you know, kind of young, or especially parents, as you're helping your kids like set healthy goals, giving some ideas, just even if they're just talking points you can have as a family for what goal setting and achievement and consistency and habit building looks like for kids, is going to pay big dividends, uh, literally for their entire life.

Like I said, I would use any of these like kid teen versions of the Full Focus Planner just myself. I love the colors, I love how they're a little bit simpler, and not as structured as the regular Full Focus Planner. So I'm going to be giving away— I haven't written in any of these, I just wanted to show you a preview. So I'm going to be giving away all 3 copies of the Kid/Teen Edition of the Full Focus Planner. Just leave a comment below, make sure you like and subscribe this video, and, you know, just make sure you're subscribed to the channel. That's all you have to do to enter. And actually, sorry, I'm going to give away 2 here and then one on Instagram. So if you want to have like an Instagram opportunity to win, hop on over to @bulletjournalguy.com— nope, just @bulletjournalguy on Instagram, and that will land you on my page. Just make sure you follow on Instagram and leave a comment on the photo that is going to go up. Thank you so much for watching this video. Thank you, Woven, for sponsoring the channel in this month. Thank you so much for being a part of this community and this channel. There's going to be a new video next week showing you exactly how to set up a Woven account. And I know you're really going to like it too if you use a digital calendar at all. So look for that video next week, probably Tuesday or Wednesday coming off Labor Day, and I will see you then.

Take care everybody.

Bye.