The Paper is the Process: My 3-Step Analog System for Idea Capturing
If you’ve ever found yourself bouncing from one project management app to another, convinced that the next digital tool will finally fix your organization woes, I want to invite you to take a deep breath and return to something beautifully simple: paper.
There’s something powerful about writing things down — not just for the sake of productivity, but for the way it helps your brain process, make decisions, and actually do the work. This week, I want to walk you through exactly how I use paper planning in my business, how it supports my brain, and why it continues to be one of the most reliable, grounding, and effective tools I reach for every single day.
Spoiler: paper isn’t outdated — it’s your brain’s best friend.
Feeling scattered no matter how many productivity apps you try? In this episode, I share why pen and paper might be the most powerful tool in your workflow, especially if you're neurodivergent, a deep thinker, or just tired of digital clutter.
🎙️ Inside the episode, I'll cover:
The real reason writing things down helps you think more clearly and stay focused
How analog systems can reduce decision fatigue (no more bouncing between apps!)
Why capturing your ideas on paper leads to more follow-through and less procrastination
How repeated note-taking boosts your memory, creativity, and project momentum
What to do when you're stuck overcomplicating your workflow and want to return to calm
Plus I take you behind-the-scenes of my paper planning and project mapping process
This is your reminder that you don’t need a fancier tool, you just need a process that feels like you.
📝 Cozy up with a notebook and let’s dive in 👇
The Permission to Use Paper
Before we dive in, I want to give you permission: it's totally okay if you prefer using paper to plan, ideate, or manage your tasks. There’s a lot of noise out there pushing us toward digital everything and while I do use tools like Google Tasks and Google Calendar for deadlines and reminders, I still rely heavily on analog systems to think.
Paper isn’t just a planning tool. For me, it’s a thinking partner, a memory aid, and a place to externally process everything that’s swimming around in my head.
My Three Main Paper Planning Tools
Here’s a quick look at the three books I use almost daily in my business:
The Daily Productivity & Brain Dump Book – for daily brain dumps and idea processing
The Mindful Productivity Guide – for monthly and weekly planning, habit tracking, and intentional reflection
The Simple Standard – my go-to for project management, breaking things down, and tracking progress
And a quick reminder: you don’t need to use my planners to follow this process. You can absolutely replicate this with a blank notebook, lined paper, or anything you already have on hand. What matters most is the process, not the product.
Why I Start with a Daily Brain Dump
Every morning, usually after the pets are fed and I’ve had my first sips of coffee, I crack open my Brain Dump Book. The left side of each two-page spread is for the brain dump itself, while the right side holds a structured daily productivity layout.
That brain dump side? It’s my mental catch-all.
Sometimes it’s structured with prompts or sections, but often it’s just a blank page where I can spill my thoughts. And honestly, this is where the magic happens.
I jot down anything: ideas, rants, little annoyances, shiny object business thoughts, even what kind of coffee I want to try next week. Sometimes I scribble over what I’ve written once it’s out, not because it didn’t matter, but because it no longer needs to live in my head.
Processing Before Posting
Here’s something I’ve noticed: we often use social media to externally process. We toss up a thread or story with a thought, secretly hoping for validation or engagement.
But what if we didn’t?
What if we gave ourselves the space to process privately first, through journaling or brain dumping, before bringing others into our emotional or mental space?
That’s something I’ve been working on lately. A new level of personal maturity, maybe, or just a more grounded sense of what I actually need in the moment. I don’t always need to talk to someone else, sometimes I just need to write it down.
The Real Value in Writing Things Down
There’s a false narrative that writing things down is inefficient or a waste of time. But here’s what I’ve found: rewriting something actually helps me decide if it’s still worth pursuing.
At the end of each week, I go back through my brain dumps. I cross out things that no longer feel relevant. I highlight good ideas. I color-code thoughts by future project status. And the best ideas? They get rewritten, moved to a new, more refined brain dump page in the back of the planner.
This is where the refinement happens. The act of re-writing is where your brain goes, “Yes, this still matters.”
Turning Ideas Into Projects with The Simple Standard
Once something’s passed the test of time and interest, it gets a spot in my Simple Standard Project Productivity Book. It’s where ideas officially become projects.
There’s a master index for every project, and each one gets its own breakdown:
what’s the outcome
what tasks are required
is it a one-time thing or ongoing?
Again, all of this still happens on paper. We haven’t even opened a digital tool yet.
From there, I break everything down into micro-tasks. The more granular, the better. Tiny steps mean less overwhelm, more clarity, and a greater chance that the project actually gets done.
How I Use The Mindful Productivity Guide
This is the planner I use to bring it all together in time-based form. It’s where I zoom out and look at:
📆 Monthly overviews and intentions
⛅️ Weekly task lists
🌳 Quarterly planning
✍️ Space to reflect on how I’m feeling or what I’m focusing on
What I love is that it’s undated, so I don’t feel guilty if I skip a week. And it’s flexible, the monthly section helps me look at the big picture, while the weekly spreads give me space to map out tasks in real time.
I also love using the “Super Awesome Amazing Idea Space” (yes, that’s what it’s called) to capture fun ideas I want to revisit later. It’s a creative sandbox that keeps the pressure off.
The Power of Doing it All on Paper
There’s nothing wrong with digital tools. They serve a purpose. But sometimes, I don’t need a timeline or a category or a linked task. I just need space.
And that’s why I’m still such a big believer in paper planning. It’s tactile. It’s quiet. It doesn’t notify me or send me reminders. It just holds what I need it to.
So if you’ve been second-guessing yourself for leaning into paper, or thinking you need to “get with the times” and move everything into Notion or ClickUp, I want to remind you that the paper is the process. And it’s a process that works beautifully.
Want to Try My System?
If this whole system speaks to you and you want to dive in, you can check out the planners I mentioned:
Remember: your productivity process should serve you, not stress you out.
Thanks for reading and for giving yourself permission to slow down, reflect, and plan in a way that feels good.
Related Resources:
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You are listening to episode 218 of the Mindful Productivity Podcast. I'm your host Sarah Steckler, and this week I want to talk to you about why the paper is the process. If you're someone that loves writing things down and you're always struggling to find the perfect project management system or way to capture and organize your ideas, I want to remind you that there's power in simplicity and doing things an analog way. And although many people might tell you it's more productive to use something online like a project management system, I want to remind you and talk to you today about why paper planning, using a planner, and writing things down is so important, effective, helpful for your brain, and helps stimulate your productivity even more. Let's go ahead and dive in.
Welcome to the Mindful Productivity Podcast, Sarah. 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.
Foreign hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. I almost said channel, although I do want to start making more YouTube videos, but that's for another time. Today I'm super excited to talk a little bit about why you can give yourself permission to use paper planning as the ultimate productivity tool, idea capturing tools, all of that, and why it really still matters and why it really helps your brain. I thought it would be fun to explore this topic by just kind of walking you through my paper process, what I do to capture things, what I do to circle back to projects, and why. Even though I'm someone that really needs deadlines, hard deadlines and reminders and I get those through, right now I'm using Google Tasks and Google Calendar.
I still have a plan in place to circle back through my written materials and fine tune my projects and go through that whole process. So I thought I'd walk through all of that with you today. So I'm actually at my desk right now. I've got three planners that I use, but I also want to remind you that you don't need to have these planners I've created to do this process. You can absolutely use a blanket, lined or dotted notebook, whatever makes sense for you.
But I'm gonna walk you through this process and what I'm hoping to do is also let you know a little bit about what's on the page. So if you don't have these planners, you can kind of structure out something similar. So the three books or journals that I use every single day, just about in my business, are the Daily Productivity and Brain Dump Book, my mindful productivity guide, which is an undated planner. And then things that I don't necessarily the one that I don't use every single day, but that it's kind of a reference place for all of my projects, is the Simple Standard, which is a project productivity book. So let's walk through what each of these is, how and why and what purpose they serve, and then I'll get into the details of how I do all this and what helps me circle back and actually get things done.
So the Daily Productivity and Brain Dump book is usually the first thing I'm grabbing in the morning, once I'm settled and the pets are fed and I have my black coffee, I'm sitting at my desk or I'm outside if it's nice, and I'm opening up my Brain Dump book. This has a set of templates and the way it works is you open it up and each two page spread. So every left and right page is basically that's for your whole day. So on the left hand side there's a Brain Dump template page, and on the right hand side there's what I call the Daily Productivity page. So on the left, the Brain Dump page changes and varies.
Sometimes it's just a blank page, which is actually what I use more often than not. Then there's other pages with different sections. I'll link to a couple podcast episodes I have where I lead you through a more guided and structured brain dump. But there's also places for, you know, helping you write down what's on your mind and decluttering your mind. And essentially the reason for the Brain Dump is to do just that, to kind of get all that mental junk out of your brain, to take away all those ruminating thoughts that are going on, that kind of want a place to go.
And instead of throwing them up on social media or putting them up on a place like Threads, where you're kind of, you know, subconsciously looking for some kind of engagement or feedback or someone to validate your own internal thoughts. And then you're continuing that conversation, instead of doing that, you're just putting it down on paper. And as a side note, I have found that this is such, for me, a more healthy and sustainable way to process my own stuff. One thing I really Notice about myself is that I'm an external processor in terms of if I'm going through something difficult or traumatic or I'm frustrated, I need to talk it out to know how I feel or I need to journal about it. Right?
But if there's a close ear, if I got a friend on voxer, if my husband's home, those are people I'm gonna want to talk to about. But one thing I've been trying to do more lately is really think about what I'm doing before. Before I go to someone else, before I go to social media, before I dump all of my thoughts on them. Is there something that I can first do for myself? And I think this is kind of coming out of like.
It's like a new level of maturity for me, if we're just being honest because I. I went from being in a place in my life where I didn't want any help to leaning on people more. And now and then I've kind of found myself in this other place where it's like, I think maybe there's a little too much of that. So if that resonates with you, if that makes sense, good. If not. But I just wanted to share that.
So the Brain Dump book really helps me do that. And I will also have all these linked below or on my blog show notes page for this as well. And hopefully I don't sound too scattered because I've got all these planners out in front of me here and we're looking at everything. So the Brain Dump helps me collect my thoughts. It helps me put them somewhere, and then once I write them down, I don't think about them again.
Right. You. One thing I also hate about social media is that urge to compulsively share our most random thoughts. And it's almost like once you post it, you feel better, like you've put it out into the ether, you know? But then three hours later, it blows up, or someone comments on it, or someone says something negative on it, and then all of a sudden you're thinking about that thing again, and then you're questioning yourself about what if that thought I had was good or bad or I shouldn't have posted it, or, you know, that person brings up a good point, point, and it's like, why are we doing that?
Why are we doing that with all of our little thoughts and all of our, like, stupid little thoughts that could just be something, like a little cloud floating by in our brain? And we're like, huh, okay, yeah, that. All right. And then we just Let it float by. I'm trying to do that more.
So the Brain Dump book helps me really do that and really tap in. And I honestly, what I'll often do is I'll do like, I'll use a section of the Brain Dump page to just write down like a bunch of bullshit. Like, you know, I'm thinking about this, this pissed me off. Like, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, I want to try a new kind of coffee next week, whatever. And then once that's out on paper, sometimes I'll literally just scribble over it and be like, good, that's out of my head.
I don't need it. Fantastic. The other thing that I usually you end up using my brain dump for, like, that. That part doesn't actually take up a whole lot of time or space. But it's usually like in the morning, my mind is fresh and I've got all these ideas for curriculum builds.
I want to do mini courses, live events, stuff products, services outside of my wheelhouse that I wouldn't even make sense with my business model. But I'm like, ooh, that sounds fun, right? Like little shiny objects that I want to do if I have time, if, if my revenue gets to a certain point, or if I have, you know, extra cash to inject into something else. These are things I would love to do, right? And I feel like those are things that if you're working in a project management software, right, and it's not directly tied to an income generator or something you're currently doing, then you're less likely to put them in there, right?
There's almost kind of a barrier to putting something in to a task or project management system without it being attached to a project or a timeline or a goal or revenue generator. But if you just are putting it on a brain dump page and it's not anything yet, it's just. It's just existing outside of your brain. So it's not taking up real estate in your brain anymore. And it's just on paper.
There's no barrier there. No one has to see it, no one has to like it. No one is going to give you their opinion on it. It's the best. It's the best thing.
And I feel like humans, you know, got to live this kind of life for centuries before the Internet. And I just love that I'm, you know, just coming back to this even more. So that's my little rant about social media lately, but I do that. So I'm kind of just flipping through some of my pages. I'm trying to see if there's anything specifically that I want to talk to you about.
So. Okay. Yeah. So one thing I do a lot on my brain dumps is I'll write down, like, what do I want to learn? Or, like, what's my intake right now?
So what are things that I like, courses I'm currently going through, things that I purchased that are on the back end. You know, I got something in a bundle and I really want to use it, but it's not really a priority this second. I'll write down the ideas I have for different projects, and then I'll also do, like a brain dump around whatever I'm currently working on. So if I'm developing a current workshop or if I'm in, you know, every year I go through the curriculum, publish with purpose. For example, if I'm updating a specific thing in there, let's say, like, CANVA has released, you know, all these new cool updates, and I want to make sure I'm updating that.
Then I'll kind of list out, like, what are my ideas around that? How do I want to get students to go back through the course? Like, maybe there's some kind of exciting incentive I could do, or do I want to gamify it or whatever. I just write all that kind of stuff down. So that's the brain dump.
And then you might be asking yourself, well, cool, you do a morning brain dump. But then, like, then you've got all this brain dump stuff, like, what are you doing with it, right? Like, if you're not doing that thing the same day, if you're not putting it into a task or project, then, like, doesn't it just, like, die in this brain dump graveyard? Yes, but also no. So what the other thing I do is at the end of the week, I usually do this within my, like, Friday weekly pulse point check in.
And again, I'll link to that. I have a whole episode on that as well. And what I like to do is go back through my brain dumps for that week. I don't always do a brain dump every single day. When I do, my day is better, I can tell you that.
But I'll go back through these brain dumps and I will cross stuff out that isn't relevant anymore or that I'm like, ooh, actually, no, that's a horrible idea. Like, it sounded great when you were, you know, having some patio lettuce the other night outside, but this now, like, not the best idea. So I think that it's Important to just go back through and, like, cross out ideas that make sense or don't. And then I also highlight things. So I will have, like, a yellow highlighter for things that I'm like, yes, that's a great idea.
Sometimes I'll circle stuff in blue that I'm like, that's cool. But I'm not gonna come back to that. That's like a future project. And then what I do is in the back of the Brain Dump book, there are more Brain dump pages with, instead of a daily productivity page on the right, there's actually two main lists. And this is where I kind of flesh out and move things to the next level, if you will, and flesh out ideas.
So I take. I'll go through every week, and I'll take the core ideas and things that I think are worthy of my time and energy, and I will put them into a new brain dump. So, yes, I'm rewriting something down, right. Which, again, I think we're just so caught up in the. The efficiency of streamlining everything that we are omitting the value that is writing things down.
Writing things down, taking time to do that, even if it takes up more time than it would take you to type something into a project management system, it's so good. It lets your brain process things. It helps you think, it helps you make decisions. You write it down, you take a bath, you go for a walk, you know, whatever. You go pet your dog.
All of a sudden you've got more ideas and thoughts, and you're like, this is great. Or, I want to take this and move this here. It just works. So I put those into a brain dump. I don't necessarily fill up that whole brain dump page, but it's like that.
That's gonna sit in there. And then after I do that for like, a couple weeks, when I have, like, a month's worth of stuff that I fleshed out into this new Brain Dump page, then I look at that stuff and I start grouping it into different categories. Like, here's one I did. Gosh, this is back from 2020. So this is how long I've been doing this.
Even longer than that, I think. I made this book in 2018. Basically, I had a bunch of different ideas. So I. There was like, a category for journals, a category for course catch up.
Like, things I want to do. It's really fun to look back on all these past courses I was going through. Like, I was taking a course about positive psychology. So I was like, I want to wrap that up. Course Content creation.
So I had a whole list of like things I wanted to create. I had a whole thing for publish with purpose updates and. Oh, okay, cool. And then I also had a section for like things I was enjoying doing and I wanted to add to my weekly pulse point check in. And so that's like a whole template I've created in a Google Doc at this point.
And I just bring that up and make a copy of it every week and then every Friday it's on my calendar and I do, I just do those things, right? Like there's, you know, clean your office and all this kind of stuff. So I do all that. And then I also had one for product ideas. Then on the right hand side I had it says February 2020 catch up.
And so I wrote there's a place here on the left, it's like highlighted in blue at the top it says catch up tasks. And that has stuff that, that's exactly what you would think. Like updating funnels. Organizing and updating my Google Drive was one of them. Doing an energy driver.
Updating the energy driver and habit tracker. I have to do that every year. I have to create a new one for all the new dates and everything and any changes. And then I had another column for future planning. So looks like at the time I was deciding on investing in a new video editing software.
I can't remember if I did that or not. Oh, I had list books to read for the upcoming year, blah, blah, blah, blah. Some other stuff, other things that didn't come to fruition. And it's interesting to look back on that. But that's my process.
So that's my idea. Generating, fleshing out, winding, whittling things down, process. It's daily brain dumps, weekly reviews of the brain dumps. Moving that brain dump and the select items to a new brain dump and taking those things out and turning them into tasks. Now those things can then become action steps, right?
So like where do we go from here? So that's something I do. And you know the Brain dump book, really, if I had to give it like a theme or category, it really is more for like idea for me. Idea processing, decision making and curriculum development. That's kind of like where this stuff lives.
If you were to look through one of my random books, you would just see that whole process in real time. Every single page. Like you've got an idea for a course. Here you are making the course. Here you are making decisions about the curriculum, the launch, the emails, you know, all that kind of stuff.
So that's that process then in terms, I guess that's kind of the Capturing the Brain Dump book is the Capturing the Mindful Productivity guide. And the Simple Standard are more about the doing. So the Simple Standard and I use these in tandem. But the Simple Standard really is it's not necessarily a date specific thing like all these planners, by the way, are undated. But the Simple Standard is a project productivity book.
So there's a place in the front to brain dump out all of your project ideas. So for example, once you've made a decision and you've given yourself a couple weeks to think about an idea, you know, even longer than that sometimes, then it, once it makes the cut and it moves to that last brain dump and that column list or whatever, however you want to do it, then that's where I put it. I go, cool, it's going to be a project. So then it'll move into the project brain dump. I'll still do Project Brain Dumps in here randomly, but that's where it's going to get a lot.
It's going to become a line item on this page. This is why I really should do some more YouTube videos, because I can visually show you what I'm doing. But basically I'm just looking at the Project Brain Dump set section of my Simple Standard book. There's a brain dump page on the left and then there's a. Basically an index that you create on the right with your project ID and description.
And then a place to put like where it lives in here. Because there's all kinds of project pages. So it's going to allow you to, you know, choose what page number, where it's going to live, all that kind of stuff. Once that thing becomes a project line item, it can just sit there and live there in your Simple Standard book. But then when you flip to it, I've got these project template pages.
And again, we haven't even touched anything digital at this point, right? Apart from maybe doing like that weekly pulse point check in or something. We have not in terms of ideating and capturing project ideas. We haven't even touched anything we've not touched. Notion, Sana Trello, whatever you use.
We haven't even went there yet and we've done so much. So we go into these project pages and there's a place here to. There's some specific questions that help you both clear your mind and make decisions about the scope of your project before you even start, which is something I think so many people overlook. And then you get into the project page where you're writing out like the project name. There's a giant checkbox in the upper right hand corner when you're done with it.
But it's the due date, the time estimate, the type, is it ongoing, one time or variable recurring? I'll link the podcast episode about the Simple Standard book as well. But you can go through here and you can get really clear about what your outcome is. Then you've got all of your tasks that you can dump out and flesh out. And then there's like a project notes page area as well.
So if there's like additional stuff you want to write about. So that's kind of where the project both lives for me and then gets like divided out, fleshed out. Like here's all the micro steps that you need to do, right? Like the more steps, the more you can break down your steps, the easier it's gonna be, the more sustainable, the more likely you're gonna do the thing. So that's what happens there.
Now the Mindful Productivity Guide. And again, you could do this something similar all in one notebook. You don't have to have three books. This just makes sense for me because I feel like I'm operating in, in different parts of my brain when I'm in each one of these books. It's kind of like going into a room in my house in my brain.
Like if I'm gonna make dinner, I go into the kitchen, right? And I'm going to the bathroom. That it's similar with me. It's like, oh, you're going into the brain nut book. So you're just like thinking and ideating and generating and making decisions.
You don't have to come up with a finalized anything yet. You're just, it's just like stuff, it's ingredients. It's kind of like the mise en place of your idea development, right? So then the Mindful Productivity Guide is more of the time. It's like the time based entity.
It's giving time a tangible structure, right? Just like any planner would. But this, and it obviously has mindful productivity strategies in here. So there's like fun things for you to do every month in terms of like a little bit of journaling exercises with seed sentence prompts and stuff like that. But this has, we'll just kind of go through here.
There's a whole page on like how to make different collections and lists. You've got your year overview that you can date. You've got your month by month section where you can write the day and the Day of the week, like the date, the day of the week, Monday through Sunday, and then a note. So this is helpful for like, seeing everything at a glance. And then you got those month by month.
Then you've also got weeks of the year. And again, this is if that's helpful to you. Right. Like, I don't always use this section, but if I have bigger launches that I'm planning, or if I have a quarter coming up where I'm doing a lot of different, you know, bundles, summits, stuff like that, then it's really important for me to see all that stuff right there. Then I've got a giant task bank area.
And this is just for like one off stuff I can't forget. Like, it goes in here. There's an annual game plan section. So if you're someone that likes to, you know, choose a word or a theme or focus for the year, you can do that over the years. I found for me, choosing a word or a theme for the whole year doesn't really make sense because so much changes so fast.
Like, every quarter of my life feels so different from the last one. So I actually more so think about, like, what I want to launch rather than like what my theme is, if that makes sense. And I break that down in here. And then there's a course quarterly goal planner, which I love because you can write down like, the week that you're in, those dates, what your main focus is. And like, any notes.
So, like in here, I'm looking at this one from a while ago. Yeah, Gosh, this was. I think this was a couple years ago. This current one I'm looking at. It was.
I had week 26. It was July, June 28 through July 4. And the theme of that week was just doing the publish with purpose course updates. So I can't even. That might have been when I updated the whole course and made a bunch of cool new stuff.
So, like, that was the whole theme. And then I had the next week was the launch and the event week. And then we did a publish with purpose summer round, I think, back then. So that that was the next focus of that week. And I highlighted all of those weeks in yellow because that's published with purposes color.
And then I had. When I was working on a different course, I had it in a different color. And that just even looking at that was so helpful. So you can take, as you can see, you can kind of like take your projects that you've mapped out in the Simple Standard, and you can kind of move them into. Into this as well.
I do also have project pages within the Mindful Productivity Guide. So if you don't need like, you know, 90 different project pages, there's, I think, let's see, I think there's about eight of them in here. It's a two page spread. It's similar. There's a place to break down your tasks, you know, write down what you need to research and decisions you need to make, and then any notes.
And so like, for instance, here, one of my first project pages in here is my website update. So I did like a website audit and update. And yeah, this was back, this was back in 2021, I think, 2020. And I did like a whole new squarespace template. And it was like, so it was going through and really pruning out stuff.
I think I also unpublished some podcast episodes that I just like didn't feel good anymore, didn't feel aligned. And so that was part of that process. So I'll also use these pages for mapping out different courses and curriculum, stuff like that. Okay, so you've got all that stuff. Then you move into what I call the monthly banks.
This is a series of. There's four pages for every month. So two, two page spreads. And this is where you're kind of like mapping out your time. So there's like a monthly overview page where I'm writing down like, what are my top three priorities.
If there's any important appointments, they go in here. I don't have a lot of appointments. That is like how I love to live my life. I don't. If I don't have to get on a call or don't have to go somewhere or don't have to have a meeting, I will not do it.
So my schedule is as free as possible. So I don't usually have a ton on my calendar, but I do have it mapped out for what I'm doing and when. And then there's a reflection and intention page. These are like seed sentence prompts. So like, I'll give you a couple in here.
For example, this, this one says, this month I will work on harnessing my inner blank in order to feel blank and blank. So these are like what I call seed sentence prompts. Basically it's a way to tap in, you know, be intentional, be more mindful, do a little bit of journaling for someone that doesn't have, doesn't either want to or doesn't have a ton of time to do like a lot of, like fill up a whole page. So I like this because it like Gets me to check in with myself. But if I don't want to go super deep, you know, or cramp my handwriting, then I've done something every month at least.
Then the next spread, there's like a quote on the right hand side, which I also will use as like a mind map or sometimes just a bucket list for things I want to do that month. There's a success list which has both things that I accomplished and things that happened for me, and then a place to track daily actions and habits. So that's the monthly section and the monthly section for me, that's kind of where I'm making sure that I'm also kind of taking care of me. Right. There's a little bit more mental health stuff in there.
And it's basically giving me an overview of like, hey, this is what you have going on this month. And just it's just a reminder. So it's like a reference page, not something I'm necessarily checking every single day. Now the weekly spreads are in their own bank in the back, and they're apart from the monthly spreads. So what I usually do is in the monthly area, I'll write down the page numbers for the weeks that I'm using.
And these are. And I did this originally because I'm someone that doesn't always plan every single week. Right. Or stuff happens and you just don't get to it. And I didn't want to feel like I failed or that I, you know, wasted pages in my planner.
So the weekly spreads are in the back and then you essentially attach them via page number to the monthly areas. It's just. And it's super easy, you know, you just. I just put in little tabs every month. It's great.
So for the weekly spread, I really love how this is set up because on the left hand side, you've got your days of the week. You've got bigger sections for Monday through Friday and then a half box for Saturday and Sunday. And what I'm usually writing in here is not what I'm doing, but more so like what's happening. Like, sometimes I'll write down stuff, but like in this one I wrote finalized a planner publishing guide. This other thing I wrote, like high anxiety in the morning, you know, like you have a summit interview.
So it's kind of. That's just more like kind of what's. Basically it's kind of a fun way to look back. When I'm reviewing my weeks, months, my whole year. It gives me a good overview.
Like there's not A ton in each day. What I love about this planner is on the right hand side. That's where I really utilize the task area. So I like working from like a weekly tax task list. And then those things get checked off and I decide where they're going to go into the day.
Because I find that it's very annoying to write down a bunch of tasks that you want to do on Monday only to discover most of the time that you don't have enough time to do all those things. Or you just get to a point where it's like these things would make sense to do later in the week and then you just have to migrate them to the next day and like rewrite them or just put in it. I just, I found that, like, infuriatingly annoying. So it's. Instead I work from a weekly task list or I work from my project pages and I'll write down the day that I'm doing them or I'll even write down in the day, like in Tuesday, like see page blah blah blah of the Simple Standard or the brain dump book.
Those are the pages you were working on this day. So you see how you can tie everything together. You can move from different planners. It's complicated, but it's also not, you know what I mean? So I have, in this specific weekly spread, I had like publish with purpose updates, funnel setup, and then there was all this DMARC stuff.
I'm so glad that's over. All the DMARC records, updates for email and stuff. And I had like all the tasks I needed to do for that. And this whole week I just worked from this planner. Right.
So again, the paper is the process. I didn't even jump into a project management system. I just worked from this. So do I use a project? Yes, you can.
You can absolutely. Listen back to past episodes. I talk about all different tools I've used and what I'm using now. But I don't always put stuff into a digital format. I don't always put it into a project management system.
Sometimes I work just from my planner. So that's a little bit about kind of like my process. The other thing I really, I'll just mention real quick that I love about the Mindful productivity guide. Not only is it undated, so it's like I don't feel like a push to use it every week or something if something happens. But in the back there's all these collections and list pages that you can fill out and there's both tall and wide columns for that.
And These are great. These are great for idea capturing. Like, I have stuff in here. Books that you've checked out from the library, movies you want to watch this year, you know, fast action bonuses, people you want to collab with, all that kind of stuff, like ideas for podcast episodes that can go in here. And then there's a place in the front where you can write down like in your index, basically, like where.
Where stuff is. So, yeah, so this index has like page numbers for all the weekly spreads. There's also a place called the Super Awesome Amazing idea space. What page is that? 40.
If you have this book, you can flip there. It's on page 40. I wanna, I'm curious what I have in here right now. Hold on. Quarterly goals.
Okay. It's right after the project pages. For some reason, I thought this was in the. More front of the book. Yeah, super awesome amazing idea space.
Oh, I haven't filled this one out yet. This is where these little boxes sometimes, like the best ideas I have in the Brain dump book will get a spot on these pages because there is 1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. There's. Yeah, let me see here.
Probably 18. Yeah, sorry, 18 boxes on each page. And so you can go through here. Yeah, and add those to the boxes. They get like a square on the board, if you will.
So that's a little bit of idea, a little window, a little peek into how I capture things, how I use things with paper planning. And you don't have to put stuff onto on the Internet in order to get things done. You can. I do all my curriculum updates. I do stuff that I'm doing on my computer, but I'm referencing a paper planner.
And there's something really nice about that. And I also think too that we can sometimes stifle our own productivity because we're not actually inputting stuff into a system because it doesn't make sense. Or we're like, well, how do I connect this task to this project? If you just use a planner, you don't have to think about that. If you just use a blank piece of paper, you.
You don't have to think about that. Right. I recommend using a planner because then everything's in one book, one place you can reference and you don't have scattered pieces of paper everywhere, but do what works for you. So if you're interested in hearing more about this process or you want to check out the books that I have for this again, they are the Daily Productivity and Brain num. Book, the Simple Standard and the Mindful Productivity Guide.
You can find all of them under the Planners tab On my website, saraceckler.com you can also search for them on Amazon if you just search Sarah Steckler, but they're gonna pop up there. And there's also digital versions of the Brain Dump book and the Mindful Productivity Guide if you're someone that likes to write on an iPad, which sometimes can be fun and also counts as writing. Right. So anyway, thank you for tuning into this episode. I know it was like a lot thrown at you, but I'd love to hear if you found it helpful.
And again, you can always find more resources by going to Sarah Steckler. Com. All right, have a wonderful week ahead. Thanks so much for being here. And I'll see you back here next Monday with a brand new episode.
