Episode 177: Developing a Planning Plan for Your Planners
Do you have a plan for your planners? Should you use more than one? Still stuck on choosing a planner? Let's talk about it! In this episode I'll be sharing which planners I'll be using for the year ahead, how I'll be using them, and talking about the differences in functional planning, memory keeping, brain dumps, and creative planning.
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You're listening to episode 177 of the Mindful Productivity Podcast. And this week we're gonna talk about setting up your planning plan.
A plan for your planners. Planning out your planning for planning. When you plan your plan so much planning, are you excited? Planning?
I've said it so many times now that the word plan doesn't even sound like a word anymore. Remember when you used to do that? Oh, my gosh. Let's just get into this.
Welcome to the Mindful Productivity Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Steckler, and this is the place to be to live a more mindful and productive life. If you're ready to turn daily chaos into calm and start your days with intention, then get ready to join me as we dive deep into mindful living and personal productivity. It's time to connect with your true self so you can live the life you want to live. And it all starts now.
Every single holiday season, millions of you struggle with one of the most stressful decisions you'll make the entire year. And that is what kind of planner should I buy? Should you use a paper planner? Can you only find one? Is there one to rule them all? That's totally perfect for you? Probably not. Do you buy more than one? Can you feel guilty? Is it stupid to buy more than one planner? Should you use paper planning? Is paper planning stupid? Is it going to work for you? Would you prefer using digital resources instead or planning on an ipad?
The quick and dirty answer for you is you won't know until you try things out and experiment. And as someone who's been planning Vlogs a decade, at least I can tell you that there are many things that work for me and many things that don't. And also just because of the nature of being a human and having a brain, these things will change from time to time, which can be annoying because you think you have a system that works for you and then your brain is like, Actually, I work better now if we can write things down multiple times.
I know that takes up tons of your time, but it really helps me just solidify the information.
So you're going to have to figure it out and learn for yourself. But in this week's episode, I'm going to share with you how I'm mapping out my planning plan for my planners. I promise I'm not going to keep saying that a ton of times. How I'm going to map that out for the year ahead. What I'm considering some things I've learned over the years, and I'm also going to walk through all of the planners that I plan on using. There's seven of them don't freak out.
This doesn't mean that I'm planning on every single one every single day. We'll talk a little bit about that in terms of how what are the differences between daily weekly quarterly planning and then reference type planning and even memory keeping. We'll go through all of it today, so get ready to nerd out, grab all your planners, bring them all in. It's time to have a little huddle and we're going to dive into all this good stuff. Let's nerd out about planners. One thing I think is totally important to mention and talk about is that people use paper planners for a variety of reasons.
And while the main goal for a lot of people may be productivity and organization, planning is so much more than that, planning also can incorporate. When I talk about the umbrella of planning, I'm also talking about, like journaling and writing, whether that's morning pages or checking in with yourself using brain dumps, memory keeping, writing down things, keeping track of things habit tracking. So there's not only future and forward planning, but there's also reflection, intention, setting, looking back, lessons learned, all of that. And for those reasons, it can be really helpful to have duplicate places where you're doing things.
I also find that for me, planning is a very cathartic experience, and I often do it not for the sake of being more productive or getting more things done, but often just to write things out and have that time where I'm not scrolling on my phone endlessly or watching endless YouTube videos. I'm focused and I'm doing something tactile with my hands. That's not my phone, and it's a really lovely experience, so planning can be whatever you want it to be. And I think sometimes in the past I've often not let myself sit down with a planner as much because it didn't necessarily increase my productivity.
Also, I think it's really important to note that writing things down has some major impacts and benefits to your brain. Being able to write things down can sometimes can definitely increase your learning comprehension. Your memory. Think about all the times you write something down and then you don't even need to look at it because you wrote it down and you remember it. But it can also help you with creative brainstorming and mind mapping. It's one of the reasons I love my daily productivity and brain dump, because even though all the ideas are swirling in my head or maybe a notion or a Google Doc or somewhere online, something about taking that and physically writing down those ideas and drawing lines and connecting the dots really helps me understand what I'm doing on a completely different level.
So let's jump into some things that you can consider as you're picking out your planner for the new year. Whether you have one or maybe you just have a bunch of blank notebooks. There's a ton of endless ways to use something, and you don't necessarily need something structured in order to reach your goals or accomplish the things that you are setting for yourself in the upcoming year. However, I know that having templates within certain planners can really help give my brain that focus and structure that it needs to pave the way, write down priority tasks and actually get things done.
So the first thing I want you to consider is that just because you buy a planner does not mean that you're tied to it and that you have to use it the entire year. Planning is really an experimental process, just like anything, right? Just because you start listening to a playlist on Spotify and you save it and you end up not liking it 20 minutes in doesn't mean you have to keep that in your library for all of eternity. Right. And I know that's different, but I think sometimes we think that if we buy a planner, we're committing to it and it's got to stay on our shelf forever.
There's tons of really fun planning, like swap groups on Facebook and all kinds of ways that you can donate or exchange a planner with someone else if it doesn't end up working for you. Also, that is just the name of the game experimenting, seeing what kind of layouts work. It's one of the reasons why I love checking out plan with me videos on YouTube. I have a couple on my channel as well where you just kind of get to know and get a feel for different ways of writing down things and what people are tracking and looking at.
Right? So start with the mind of experimentation and get curious about what might work for you instead of working on trying to find the perfect planner because truth be told, the perfect planner for all of the end of time does not exist. There are definitely planners that feel perfect to me for certain seasons or certain reasons within my business and within my personal life. But again, those are for those specific things so you can have multiple planners that you use for different things, which leads me to the beauty of compartmentalization and being able to give yourself a space where you're using a planner for specific personal things or memory keeping versus actual functional planning.
So to take a step back and not make this episode super overwhelming, I want to talk about just some of the main things that you can consider when you're mapping out your planning plan. The first one is, do you need something with you on the go? Do you need an EDC or an everyday carry something that you can reference? Are you on the go a lot? Are you working from different locations? For me? I love to have a hobinici weeks and my pocket planner that I created that I can easily take with me in my person in my wallet.
I also really love a six size planners for this reason because they're really compact and for me, being able to jot down a few things and then have a place to write down ideas as I go is really helpful. This is also helpful because I love doing like planner picnics where I basically just go out with Bella to different parks and try to find different places to sit and plan. And I love that I have my planner with me on the go. So you want to think about size and functionality and what you're really going to use.
Right. And also another thing I want you to think about is the fact that just because there is a blank page within a planner doesn't mean you need to fill up all that space. So again, this is why I love the planner community online on Instagram everywhere, because you start to get a feel for all of this stuff. And you also start to realize that there's a big difference between functional planning where you're using things to plan out and get things done, right? And you're not so worried about the aesthetic versus more creative planning where you are using lots of stickers or washi tape or stuff like that or colors, and you're practicing maybe your handwriting or your calligraphy.
Any of that, there's no wrong or right answer. And again, I feel like a lot of people make fun of people that do these extensive planning spreads that are, like super elaborate and take them hours. But what people don't realize is that the point of that is not to do it in an efficient way and spend less time. It's actually that whole process is like an artistic and creative expression. So again, you get to decide what those planners and that process looks like apart from size, I think it's also important to understand what appeals to you with planning.
For me, I like to definitely have more of, like an annual game plan and then quarterly monthly, weekly. And then there's daily stuff I do. But the daily planning I'm doing, I'm not necessarily planning ahead for that day. I typically already have a plan or a focus project that I'm working on. So a lot of my tasks are kind of already mapped out for me, or I can pick them from standard operating procedures or the tasks within a focus project and just kind of add them to my day, giving them a due date.
Right? Deal. But for some people, they do like to plan out their day as they go. I think it's important to think about how often you might reference your planner. And if you're new, don't add that pressure of okay, I've got to use a planner every single day or fill up all these pages. And if I ever have a blank page, like, I might as well just stop. Right? So don't over complicate it, right? Just like if you were trying to start a daily walk or something like that or get back into running, you wouldn't want to just say, okay, I'm just going to start walking 20,000 steps a day.
That wouldn't be feasible. You probably hurt yourself and you're going to wear yourself out. Right? So don't give yourself pressure to plan any one way, just start experimenting and see what works. And the other thing I want to say, too, is, I know dated pages within certain planners can make you feel a certain way, right. But I have found a lot of Liberty and freedom and just kind of not worrying so much about the dates on the pages right. There's tons of pages in some of my hobanichi planners where I literally just throw stickers or washi tape over the dates and use them as reference pages or go back and Journal.
And if I do want to fill in past pages, that's what I use it for. So really, you get to decide how strict you want to plan. And just because a planner has something one way doesn't mean that you can't make it flexible. It doesn't mean that you can't use whiteout or tape or stickers to make it work for you. So I think what actually might work even better in this episode is just to go ahead and dive in and tell you about the planners that I'm going to be using for the year ahead, which is 2022.
But this could be applicable to any year, no matter when you're listening to this. But this is my plan for the year ahead. So I've actually got seven different planners listed, and you might immediately think that's nuts, but I want to tell you that not all of these are going to be a daily planner. I've also got them highlighted and I'll throw this picture up on my website and the show notes for this as well, if you want to take a look. But I basically got written out here on this page in my hobanichi weeks.
It says Planner plan, and then I've got all of my 2022 planners listed out, and then I've got them highlighted with either blue for functional planning or pink for more memory style keeping and journaling. So one of the first things I'll talk about are the different planners I'm using. And if you're like, what are you talking about? I will have links to all these planners as well. Whenever I'm talking about the hobanici planners, those are planners from Japan. They use Tamil River paper, although there's a big uproar about whether or not they're going to be able to continue using that specific paper in the future.
Can you hear me leafing through it here right now? It's a really light, really thin paper, and you definitely have to use a different kind of pen with it. So I actually have a list here of planner pens that I use for specific planners. So you definitely want a smaller, lighter type pen, so you don't get bleed with these pages or tons of ghosting. But I really love the paper. And it also allows for a much more compact planner, because the Tama River paper is so, so thin and so delicate you can pack hundreds of pages together in less than an inch where more thicker type, higher quality paper in the US kind of stuff tends to be thicker, but this is just as high quality.
It's just different, if that makes sense. So there's a number of different Hobbit planners, and I absolutely adore them. I'm trying to remember when I first found out about them. I feel like it was like 2018. I think I got my first one. They do a winter like New Year type launch with like, a January start date. For most of them. They also do a spring launch. You can buy a planner and start it in April. And that was the first year that I got a hobanichi week.
Now the hobanici weeks, and I have a whole link to a blog post. So if you want to see a visual of comparing a comparison of all these, you can do that. The hobinichi weeks is kind of like a wallet planner. And what I mean is it's the size of a wallet. So I don't have the exact dimensions in front of me. But I want to say it's more like four inches by seven inches. So think, like, longer hot dog rectangle. And I love it because it's got a really simple layout where you just have all seven days of the week on the left hand side of the spread and then a blank grid page on the right and all the dates are included.
You've also got some monthly calendars. And then you've also got bullet Journal type, like grid paper pages in the back with numbered pages. And if you get hobinichi weeks mega, that actually has even more grid pages in the back. And I actually bought one of those this year. So we'll see how that works with this one. I actually bought it's so fun. It's hard not to buy multiples of them because the covers are just gorgeous and they're some of the most highest quality journals around. But I actually bought two different hobonichi
weeks this year.
I bought a pink one that is a week's mega. So it's got those extra pages in the back. And I'm going to use this for functional planning. So basically, like personal lifestyle and functional planning. I may also write down some of my duplicate business tasks, like if I'm on the go, and just as a note to that, I think a lot of people will tell you that you don't want to duplicate things. Right? But here's the thing. I know that for me with my brain and just like how it works, it can actually be really helpful and helps me focus a lot to sometimes write down things.
So I have most of my focus project to do tasks and all those things and all my projects mapped out in notion, and that's kind of like my project management system of choice. However, I like to go in there and then every week or every day, write down some of those tasks and rewrite them in my planners because it just gives me that extra reminder. And it's also kind of just a nice practice in the morning to sit down at my desk with some coffee, write down some of my main tasks and then get going.
And then again, this can be helpful because Bella and I usually try to get out of the house once a day and go for a walk or find a new park. So if I'm like on the go and I don't have Internet access, which happens a lot because we go all these different places, then I have my planner with me with my main tasks, and I kind of check in with myself that way. So the first planner that I'm using is this week's mega. And again, that's going to be for functional planning.
I also have a regular hobonichi weeks, same thing, just a little bit fewer pages in the back. And this is going to be primarily for memory keeping. And I wrote down here sticker dump because I have so many stickers. It is insane. I have multiple monthly subscriptions that I am a subscriber to where I get stickers every month in the mail, and I love it. And I just never use them enough. Like I always look at my stickers and I feel like I've got to save them for the right time or the right circumstance.
And I was really thinking about how ridiculous that is. I'm like, no, the minute from now on, the minute you find a sticker or a sticker sheet that you love and you're obsessed with use it that week. Don't wait. You don't need to hold onto it for anything. Just start using it. So what? I'm going to use my hobiny two weeks. The regular one for is basically just kind of writing down like a highlight from the day. So I have a bunch of stickers I'm looking at right now because the hobanici the first week actually started the last week of November into the first few days of December.
So I've already started in there, and I basically just have some little notes down. So I've got all these cute Penguin Christmas stickers. And then for Sunday, for example, there's like, Penguins, a big sticker. And then it just says that we had an epic pancake breakfast that my husband made for us. And then it was a cold, cozy day with office organization. And that's literally all I wrote down for that one little day. And then there's the whole other grid page on the side. And I like that because I think I'm going to start using that to kind of write down just like a free write Journal.
Like how I'm feeling. I started on some new medication for my mental health. So I'm like, kind of write down what's been feeling good and what's been working. So I can kind of like flip back through this and do a check in. And that'll also be a great place to kind of, like check in and make notes that I can then talk about with my counselor every week as well. So those are the first two planners that I'm using. And again, it's just going to be what it is.
It doesn't have to be every single day and a lot of times with the memory keeping. Sometimes I just end up going back on Fridays or Sundays and looking back at, like, the week and seeing the highlights. Another thing I'll do sometimes with memory keeping is I'll put in stickers ahead of time, and then I'll just kind of fill in the blank spaces around. But again, the goal is not to fill up every single page completely. It's totally okay if there is blank space. So I'm kind of trying to move away from this, like completionist mindset with a lot of those pages.
The next planner that I'm using is the Hobaniti cousin. So this is both a daily, weekly and monthly planner. Again, there's photos of it on my website. If you want to see, like, a comparison of it. And what I like about this one is it's bigger? So it's more like an a five size and there is space for daily. So what I'm going to really use this for in my business is really just a lot more space, like throughout the day. It's just going to be nice to have something open on my desk because I inevitably end up taking notes or writing something down or like, there's a new course I want to check out or a podcast I want to listen to.
So I'm going to have space on there every day to just kind of capture those notes instead of using sticky notes because I still find myself getting in that cycle where I will start using sticky notes, and then I end up with a pile of them. And I'm like, why didn't I just put these in a Journal? So that's when I'm going to use that for again, more functional planning. Also mapping out some of like, my bigger business stuff, launch plans, things like that. Again, most of that is in notion, but I need space to really write that out on a blank page.
And that's what I will be using that planner for. This is the last hobinic I have. I'm using four this year. I also have a hobanichi Tesho, which is actually got the English version. And all that means is that the quotes at the bottom are in English instead of Japanese. As a big side note. One of my biggest goals I need to commit to it, but I really want to learn start learning Japanese. But anyway, this one is the English version, and it's got all the quotes at the bottom, which is kind of fun.
And this one is a lot like the cousin, except it's a six size and it doesn't have the weekly vertical spreads in there. So it does have the daily pages. And I'm going to use this one for memory keeping as well. So this'll be kind of like a deeper dive into my memory keeping. So the weeks, the hobbinici weeks will be kind of like a daily highlight. Where, like, for example, Sunday we had that epic pancake breakfast, so I would go in here and kind of make a little bit more notes about the day.
And I might try giving myself a template in here, like doing a Quadrant or something and writing down maybe the low and the high of my day, and maybe what the weather was like some more stuff like that. And again, just because it's such a lovely practice, and it doesn't take that much time to do this. And then it's just, like, really cool to kind of flip back through that as well. So two planners so far for memory keeping, one is just kind of a daily highlight, and the other one is like a deeper dive during the day.
Again, you don't have to do it every day, but that's going to be the goal is to set aside half an hour every day to do this. And I absolutely know I have that time because I've spent so much time doom scrolling through TikTok. If I switch up that time, I'll have that available to me. So we went through four of the seven planners I'm using now this next one. I think this is important because these next three because these are planners that Bella one of them I do use every day, but some of these other ones are more reference type things.
The first one that I'm going to be using on a recurring basis is the Mindful Productivity Guide, and I actually think I'm going to highlight this in purple. The functional ones are highlighted in blue. I've got pink for memory keeping, and I actually think I'm going to highlight here we go, this one in purple, because sometimes this is a hybrid, meaning sometimes I like to use stickers and washi tape in here. But the Mindful Productivity Guide is really helpful because it allows you to create your annual quarterly monthly and then weekly kind of game plan, and it really gives you those templates to break down, like when you're doing things.
What the theme of your week is? I really find that helpful. So this is something that I check in with. I check in with, but I'm not necessarily using this every single day, and I don't necessarily use every single weekly page. So I usually use the weekly spreads, and it's undated, which is great. So I never feel like I'm missing any of them. But I usually use the weekly spreads if I'm in a very intensive season in my business, and I'm working on a very specific project, and I need things really mapped out.
And there's also a page on the right side of the weekly spread that allows more space for notes and more to dos. And I just find that layout so helpful in helping me do that. So the Mindful Productivity Guide again, this is an undated planner is really going to help me map out what I'm doing on a more like if the lens is zoomed out kind of projection. Right? So what's my annual goal? What's my monthly goal? Quarterly goals, and then I'll be able to check in on that.
So this isn't necessarily a planner that I open up every single day. I usually take it with me when I do planning picnics and stuff because it helps me kind of stay on track. But I usually check in with this planner during my weekly pulse point check ins on Fridays. So that's kind of like it's kind of like, what's the main goal are you sticking with it? Are you on the right track? The other Journal or planner that I'm going to continue to use that I use literally almost every day since its creation in 2018 is the Daily Productivity and Brain Dump book.
This is my most popular planner to date that keeps selling all the time, but also it's also the one that I have been the most consistent with, and I actually have a new planner flip through on my YouTube channel where I go through one of them and show you a bunch of the different pages and what that looks like. And I just find it so helpful spending that 1015 minutes in the morning to declutter my brain before I even get going, just dumping out everything, not looking at social media and instead getting stuff out of my head.
And then there's that second page in the spread that helps you map out like, what are your main two focus projects for the day? Right? What are the tasks that you're going to be doing? And it helps you kind of outline your time. So if you're going to use Pomodoros, what are those pomodoros going to be? Right? What are those increments of time going to look like? And that really helps me so much. If I start my day with a brain dump in this book, I almost can guarantee that it's going to be a more productive day.
Right? Like if there was a research study or a trend graph or something every time that I use this, it's night and day different for my ability to focus and all of that. And it's always amazing to me how much gunk or clutter is in my brain and how nice it is to get that all on paper. And it feels like I'm physically removing Goo from my brain. And then the last planner that I'm going to be using on a regular basis is the simple standard.
This is a project planner that allows you to map out all of your projects and also your standard operating procedures. So I use this to map out, you can map out both recurring or one off or standard operating procedure type projects where you're writing down all the little tiny micro tasks and steps that you need to do to accomplish something. And what I really love about this is that it allows you to also Mark down and give kind of an energy rating to your tasks. So if you know that something is not very high energy intensive or you can do kind of, like, in the background without thinking, right?
Like, you can totally have music on in the background and work and blah, blah, blah, blah. Or listen to a podcast, then that energy rating is a lot lower than something that's like, you totally need to have all hands on deck, so to speak with your brain. And so I love using the simple standard for that reason, because it's really allowed me to map out my recurring standard operating procedure stuff like podcast episodes or content creation and know, hey, if you're going to do this, most of these specific tasks are really high energy, and these ones aren't.
So if I'm having an off day, I can easily go in there and choose tasks depending on where I am with my energy and my mental capacity. And that allows me to get more stuff done. So again, this isn't really a planner that I'm using on a daily or even like, a weekly basis. Like, I'm not checking in with it. I'm using it when I need it, right? I'm using it when I'm working on a specific project or a specific recurring kind of thing. That's when I use it.
So as an overview, I've got both functional planners that I'm using. I've got memory keeping places to write down highlights and more in depth stuff during the day. And then I've also got my functional planning stuff for my business where I'm capturing and, like, decluttering my brain. I have a place for my ongoing and one off projects within my business. I have a place to take notes within my business and kind of, like, keep track of one off or ongoing kind of like things that aren't necessarily tied to something.
And then I've also got my functional planner that I can take with me on the go. So likely there's going to be different things that live in different places. But this feels really good. This feels really exciting. And now I know, too. Like, when we go on our annual cabin trip this winter, we always go try to go around Christmas or the New Year. I know that I can bring two main memory planning planners with me planning planners. And that will be what I'm using if that couldn't be what I'm focusing on.
So just making this decision, even though there's a lot of them is really nice, because now I know, like, okay, this is the place where you're doing this. This is the place where you're doing a brain dump. This is the place where you're taking notes, right? And all of that is going to help me. So so much. So I'll keep you updated. Probably on my Instagram stories over at Mindful Productivity Blog. If you want to see kind of like what I'm doing and how I'm mapping things out.
But again, you get to decide and experiment with it. And I'm totally a believer that you can have more than one planner and still make it work. There's some really cool accounts on Instagram where they use multiple planners and they kind of show you what their daily spreads look like and everything like that. So give it a try, see what works. I would love to hear from you. Are you going to just use one planner? Do you think I'm insane for using all of these? I'd love to hear what works for you.
Do you separate your functional planning with your memory keeping, or are you someone that kind of just goes back and forth depending on the week or the day or what you're feeling? I would love to know. So feel free to tag me on Instagram. I'm over Mindful Productivity Podcast blog and to get a full complete list of all these planners that I'm using, as well as links to all of them. Make sure you head on over Mindful Productivity Podcast and you can find the show notes for this episode linked below.
Whatever player you're listening to, or you can head over to the podcast page you are listening to Episode 177 and you can find it there. All right. Have a wonderful week ahead. I'll see you back here next Monday. Thanks so much for listening to the podcast and happy planning.
