Plan with Me

In this week’s plan with me I am re-visiting the goals I set at the beginning of January to see what’s working and what is not.

I started off with 3 priorities this month. The first one was to be awake at 7am and to be doing more movement and stretching. If you have been around here a bit you may know I am a night owl and being up and active at 7am isn’t a strength of mine. Still, it’s something I would like to move towards so I decided to keep it on my list for now.

My second goal was to post more consistently-day and time of posting-here on the blog and my channels. I have done pretty well this past week and it’s something I want to keep focusing on. Although as I am writing this blog post a tad bit later than what I would call “consistent” it’s also important to understand that life happens!

The third focus was daily writing and editing. This is meant for my fiction writing and not my blog writing and I am still struggling with forging this habit. It is important to me so I am going to keep focusing on building this habit.

I like to think of these priorities as my ideal and any step I take towards them is a win for me. I may not be writing consistently but I have cleared my desk that had become a mess and made a beautiful space to write.

In the end I kept my priorities the same and then I set about doing my decorating and adding the appointments and “to-do’s” for the week. Once I did that I went through and added my content for the week and also created my new tracker. I ended up abandoning my time blocking for this week since it wasn’t working and I will see if I want to bring it back next week.

So that is my planning for the week. I would love to hear how you check in with your plans so please feel free to comment below.

Until next time…

-Michele, aka The Dreaming Dilettante

Last week I shared a plan with me video and then found myself sick by Tuesday which meant all of my pretty plans didn’t happen.

I am trying to be very conscious this year about what it is I am trying to accomplish and making sure it aligns with the things that matter to me most. Adding something to a list every week that I am just not doing isn’t going to help me reach any goals and not giving myself grace when things happen is also not going to support me and the goals I have.

We get sick, we have bad days and plans don’t work out. What I am trying to do this year is to really connect with my plans and re-visit with them each week to make sure they are still in alignment with what I am working towards.

Handwriting my Habit Tracker and Time Blocking schedule is really helping me with that. I am able to recognize that right now, focusing on my dissertation and course work isn’t best suited for the headspace I’m in right now. I don’t want it to fall to the wayside but I also need to be realistic about where I am right now.

So I removed a few things this week like my coursework, editing my writing and daily walks. Since I haven’t been writing daily-which is my highest priority, there is no sense in focusing on editing. With the weather right now and the fact that I am just starting to feel back to my normal energy level letting daily walks go for this week made sense so I can focus on stretching instead.

I really like this way of connecting with the habits I am trying to cultivate. It’s my hope I won’t be beating myself up for not doing something and rather looking at why it wasn’t done, do I still need to do it and if there is a better way to approach it. It also keeps me from having things on my list that I think I should be doing rather than the things I am meant to be doing.

With the time blocking I am basically splitting my day into 4 parts and deciding what activities are most like going to be done during these times. This isn’t for tasks like “laundry” but rather meant for the things that really matter to me and I want to make time for. I took in to account how I feel at different times of the day. Since I am not a natural morning person (much more a “noon” person) that wouldn’t be the best time to try and practice my flute or work on my French lessons. My brain is not nearly awake enough for that.

By plotting the general time I am planning to do certain goals it feels like I am leaving more space for things to happen spontaneously throughout the day which I also love. As much as I love the idea of planning out each minute of the day I am not that person. I love leaving lots of room for the unknown or to follow a burst of inspiration here and there.

So that is what I am working on today. I hope you enjoy this little look into my planning day. If you have any questions about what I am using please feel free to comment.

Until next time…

–Michele, aka The Dreaming Dilettante

Happy Monday everyone!

I hope you had a lovely weekend and your week is off to a great start.

I thought it would be fun to do a little plan with me session. So many of you seemed to enjoy my Happy Planner Haul so I thought it would be nice to show you how I use my planner to organize my week.

It seems only fair to say I am not a super planner in that I don’t plan out every bit of my day and keep to those plans. I like to think of my planner as a container of possibilities where I write down the things that need to get done and the things I would like to get done and try and make space for both. I think it’s why I like the boxes of my Happy Planner-they are perfect little containers of ideas and things I want to do.

I am using my Classic Dashboard Layout in the video and my new sticker sheet that I shared in the haul video. I love to start out by adding color usually with washi tape but sometimes I use highlighters or markers around the boxes too. Then I add some stickers before writing down my to-do’s. I saw Elisa at the Scrappy Wife do this and I really liked it. I have found that decorating a bit first let’s me know how I am feeling about the upcoming week and helps me to gauge my expectations. Adding the color and stickers also gets me excited for perhaps some of the less interesting activities that fall within a week.

Once I have decorated a bit I add in any appointments. My husband I use a shared calendar to keep track of all our appointments which really helps so we don’t double schedule something. Once I add in the appointments I then write down any things that need to be done on a certain day in the next row of boxes-like returning library books or something like that.

I am trying something new this week and I am adding my business to-do’s relating to the content I create and share both here on the blog and my channel to the third row of boxes. I used post-it notes to show when something would air and then worked backwards to see (based on appointments) when I needed to record, edit etc. I really like how this worked out and I am excited to see how it goes.

Then I add any to-do’s that aren’t day specific to the far left corner, add some more stickers and call it a day. How about you? What planner do you use and how to you plan out your week?

I hope you enjoyed this post, if you have any questions or comments let me know!

Until next time…

-Michele, aka The Dreaming Dilettante