Welcome to Episode #23 of The Planner Podcast.
In this episode, I share three quick tips to plan for success that will help make planning your week ahead more enjoyable and successful!
LINKS:
- Free Class: Creating Stickers That Sell
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TRANSCRIPT:
Hi, this is Mim Jenkinson, and you’re listening to The Planner Podcast. This episode is sponsored by my free masterclass on Creating Stickers That Sell.
If you’re looking to start a creative side hustle from home and wondering if you can be successful in making and selling stickers, this is for you. If you’re worried that the market is oversaturated or how you can make stickers that stand out, this class has you covered. To sign up for this free 60-minute masterclass, head to lovefrommim.com/class.
Hi, lovely, and welcome back, and I have a quick three-tip podcast for you today. So, I wanted to talk about planning and how you can plan for success more. So, maybe it’s overhauling how you’re planning at the moment, maybe you have a brand new planner for the second half of the year, and you’re looking on how you can improve your planning techniques, or perhaps you’ve just been struggling to make planning a habit. So, I have three quick tips for you that I hope will help when it comes to planning for success every week. Now, these relate very much to using a paper planner, as always. As you know, I love paper planning. However, if you use a digital planner or an online planner of any kind, you can absolutely make these work as well.
So, the first one, and let’s talk about one of the things that you know I am obsessed with and it’s personalizing your planner. So, maybe your planning hasn’t really been working for you. Maybe you have a brand new planner. Maybe you’re trying out a different layout, or maybe you just want to shake things up a little bit. What I love to do and what I know so many of you love to do as well is personalize the planner that you have. So, one of the easiest ways to do this is to buy stickers, obviously, or make stickers yourself and use them to really customize the pages of your planner and make it really, really work for you. It isn’t just about decorating. It’s also about just making sure that the way you’re planning every week and the layout of your plans is designed in a way that is going to work for you and help you be productive and successful and make progress.
So, you can absolutely customize your planner in lots and lots of different ways. Depending on the planner you have, you can also get inserts as well, really tailored to the kind of things that you want to plan for and you want to organize in your life. But I have found absolutely that personalizing my planner pages has really had a big impact on me just being able to use the planner really intuitively and easily and therefore getting things done.
The second tip is all about planning your planning. Now, what do I mean by this? Well, what I mean is do you actually spend time planning when you’re going to plan? Do you have a set time in your planner or in your diary or calendar when you are going to sit down and do your daily or weekly or monthly planning? And because I do, I’ve shared this before, but in case you missed it, I used to plan on a Sunday, but I found that that didn’t really work for me, and I’d spend a lot of the time at the weekend wondering or struggling a little bit, thinking, “Gosh, I’ve got such a lot to do. Where do I start next week?” And I changed my planning and made it a Friday afternoon.
So, Friday afternoon around three o’clock-ish, when I’m a little bit tired, when my working week is pretty much wrapped up and done, but I have a little bit of time before maybe the kids get home from school, I set aside about 15 or 20 minutes to do my planning for the week then. And that really works for me personally because it means that I can close my planner, enjoy my weekend, and not have to kind of worry or think too much about what I need to do the following week. It’s also a really nice way to kind of draw a line under the week and just celebrate the success. We spend so little time celebrating, but I find that doing this on a Friday afternoon is a great way for me to look back on all the things that I’ve done and just take a few moments to celebrate that as well.
So, find a time that you can actually put into your planner every week where you can plan for the following week. It might take you a little bit longer the first couple of times you do this, but you’ll soon get into a swing of what works for you, and let me know what day you choose to be the best day to plan for you. I have a recent podcast actually on choosing that best day, and I will link it in the show notes so you can go and have a listen to that if you’re wondering what day is going to work out well for you. So, that’s the second tip, planning your planning.
Okay. And the third tip is being open for things to change and being as flexible as possible. And I know that this can sometimes be a bit tough when we’re working to deadlines or we’re working to other people’s deadlines and needs and requirements as well, whether it’s for a work situation or if you’ve got kids or a partner or a business and so on, but try to keep things as flexible as possible because adjustments will need to be made.
And what are the things that I do just to try and make this as easy as possible even goes down to the pen that I use. So, I absolutely love the Pilot Pen FriXion pens. If you haven’t tried them yet, I highly recommend them. First of all, I love the fact that they come in a million and one different shades and different thicknesses as well for the nib. The one thing that I love most of all is that they’re erasable. It’s a pen that can be rubbed out. So, it isn’t a pencil. It writes beautifully like any normal pen would do. I really, really enjoy the ones that I use. I use the black one. Let me just grab this one that I’m using at the minute. I think it’s a 0.7. It is. It’s a 0.7 FriXion ballpoint pen.
And I just love the fact that I can rub things out because constantly in my planner, I’m having to shuffle things to different days or add new things, take things out that are not a priority anymore, but one thing that I really don’t like is messing my planner up too much. Not one to get stuck in perfection too much, but I don’t like to have to cross things out. So, what I do is just rub them out instead. And I absolutely love, love, love, love, love FriXion pens. I will have a proper link to where you can buy them as well, but most stationery shops, or even supermarkets where I am, and Amazon, eBay, places like that, you can grab them from.
But just generally, be open to things changing and try not to get too hung up on your planner looking perfect. If you are the kind of person like me, who doesn’t want to have lots of squiggly lines and things crossed out, then that doesn’t mean that you to mess up your planner or have things in your planner that aren’t actually happening. Invest in something like a FriXion pen or worst-case scenario, put a sticker on it. If things change, put a sticker on it, but try and keep things as flexible as possible because we’re bound to have things change in the week. New things are going to come up. Other things that were a priority will no longer be a priority. Life happens as we know. All sorts of things can happen in any given day and any given week that are going to change things for us. So, try and have an open mind when you’re planning as well that if things change, what is your plan to accommodate that change, and definitely give the FriXion pens a go.
So, there are a few tips that I hope will help you in planning next. And I would love to hear from you if any of these have been helpful. If you haven’t already, please make sure to subscribe because I have some great episodes coming up that I would not want you to miss out on. And if you’ve been listening for a while and you’ve been enjoying these episodes, I would absolutely love for you to leave me a review. I’d love for you to leave me a five-star review. And that will let me know that you’re enjoying the episodes, and hopefully, it will make sure that other people get to hear about The Planner Podcast as well. I hope you are super well, and I will talk to you in the next episode. You take care.
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