My 2018 Planner Crew!

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Happy 2018!!! A new year always means new goals and new planners! I am a huge nerd when it comes to planners and I love trying out all kinds of goal setting sheets and planner formats to figure out what system is best for helping me kick butt at achieving my goals 😃 

The past two years, I have been a hardcore Day Designer fan. The daily sheets have allowed me to plan each hour of my day so I can clearly see what needs to be accomplished! Around fall of this year, however, I found that having the day sheets every single day was actually a little overwhelming. There’s a part of me that always wants to fill the space in planners and when each day sheet includes 10+ spots for to-do items, the crazy person in me felt like I needed to fill every single spot - even if I didn’t have the time for it! Although I still love the Day Designer’s daily sheets for those jam packed days where I can’t keep track of anything, I knew that I needed something different for this upcoming year. So, instead, I went for a mix-and-match approach to my planner instead of being tied down to one option! 

Dated Weekly Planner (Marshall's)

Even though I tend to prefer planners that have daily pages, when I have long-term deadlines, I find that a weekly or even monthly page is the best approach for me. Although I might not use my dated weekly planner on a daily basis, it’s easiest for me to see long-term deadlines on a weekly page rather than a daily page. 

Cultivate What Matters: Powersheets

This is my second year using the Cultivate What Matters Powersheets and I could not recommend them more highly. If you’re someone who loves to journal/plan and you want to work on breaking down goals so that they are actually achievable, then the Powersheets are for you! My favorite part about the Powersheets are all of the little reminders tucked away in its pages on being imperfect and not comparing to others. On top of being an amazing set of goal worksheets and a thoughtful journal, I feel like my Powersheets are also my biggest cheerleader with all of the sweet motivational bits tucked throughout the pages! 

Undated Day Designer A5 Inserts + Filofax

As much as I love the idea of bullet journaling, I have to admit, I’m too lazy to commit to it! I love being artsy and creative with my pages but I just don’t have the motivation to set up and decorate each page of a bullet journal! I received this beautiful Filofax as a gift and purchased a set of undated Day Designer sheets to fill it - Although I’ll be moving away from the Day Designer planner this year, I won’t be moving away from Day Designer entirely! I still love their daily sheets and will be using them on those days where I’m so busy I don’t know which way is up! 

Simple Notebook (TJ Maxx)

As I’ve gotten older and have more commitments in different areas of my life, I’ve found that one planner is often too limiting - especially when I have a random list of house chores sitting on my kitchen counter or a list of groceries sitting in my bedroom! I’ve started collecting all of my random to-do lists in this notebook and have found it so helpful to have all that chaos in one place! Although it’s definitely still chaotic in the notebook, at least now all of the chaos is in the same notebook!  

Looking back on what I’ve written, I realize that having five different planners/notebooks to keep track of my to-do list might seem a little excessive. For me, however, being tie down to one planner actually gives me more stress than being able to switch between different options depending on what is best fit for that specific day! What planners are you using for the 2018 year? I’d love to know!

How I'm Using Multiple Planners for 2017

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Hello everyone! It's a new year which means a fresh start with more goals and more planners - to make sure I achieve those goals! While I typically stick to one, comprehensive planner, this year, I've decided to give multiple planners a shot. It definitely takes up a lot more desk space, but I'm hoping it will also help to clarify and organize my goals for the year.

I'm one of those crazy people that has to write everything down. Whether that's by jotting it down on a post-it note, telling Siri (my bff) to create a reminder, or filling up every nook and cranny on my planner. Last year, I used the Day Designer as my planner for everything - home, blog, work, etc. As organized and beautiful as the Day Designer is, with all that was going on in my life, I found that I was getting a little bit lost with all of my to-dos in the same place. If I thought of a new blog idea, I jotted it down. If I remembered I needed to call my dentist, I jotted it down. If I wanted to do a new DIY project, I jotted it down. In the end, the pages were flooded with thoughts and ideas that weren't necessarily achievable to-do's but more so anything and everything I wanted to do in my lifetime! 

So, for the upcoming year (in an attempt to organize the chaos that happened last year!) this is how I plan to utilize my planners and why I think these specific planners will work best! 

Day Designer: I love the set-up of the Day Designer and always planned on getting one for the 2017 year because I still find it to be the best system for organizing the majority of my life. This year, I'll be using it for all the to-do's around the house, at work, and for fun! The Day Designer will serve as my control center for day-to-day plans because it provides the best set-up for each day. I like that I will be able to schedule my time on the daily schedule as well as list all of my small task to-do's for the day. 

Moleskin: The things that really overcrowded my Day Designer last year, were all of my blog plans and blog to-do's! This year, I've separated all things related to my blog into a smaller moleskin weekly planner. This planner's set up is perfect for blogging. It has a weekly view on one side where I can see upcoming blog posts I have planned and plain lined paper on the other side where I can list/jot down blog ideas. I'm really excited about this one because it seems like such a perfect fit! I won't have as many to-do's associated with my blog, so a smaller planner is the perfect size, and the plain lined paper gives me so much more flexibility to use it as I see fit! 

Cultivate What Matters: PowerSheets - In 2016, and for most of my life, I struggled with setting realistic, attainable goals. I'm a dreamer. There are so many things I want to do someday, somehow, some way - but I'm never going to achieve all of those things if I can't set up a realistic plan! The PowerSheets are great for people like me because they help you jot down all of your wandering thoughts and guide you towards honing in on specific goals. I plan on using it this year to track daily, weekly, and monthly goals more thoroughly. So far, it has been a great place for me to check back in with my goals every couple of days. My favorite part of these sheets has been the continuous reminders that it's okay to be messy and change your mind about your goals! I tend to get a little bummed out when I feel like I haven't achieved what I wanted to, but these constant reminders and refresh worksheets give me a chance to re-do my goals every couple of months which is great for an indecisive person like me! After a couple months of using the PowerSheets, I plan on doing a full review so stay tuned for that! 

Bonus: Trello - I've blogged about Trello in the past in a post on my favorite organizing apps - and it truly is! On top of all of my planners, I use Trello for more broad, far-in-the-distance type projects and random things I want to do that aren't relevant to my day-to-day goals (i.e. someday, I want to try eyelash extensions, but does that need to go on my Day Designer? Probably not!). 

Whew! That was a lot! What can I say? I'm a little crazy about planners and organizing - it's so fun! This is the first time, I've tried using multiple planners so it'll be a new experience for me. Hopefully, for the better! What planners are you using for the upcoming year? Have you tried using multiple planners before? Leave me a comment! I'd love to hear your thoughts! 

Twenty Seventeen Resolutions

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This is the first year where I'm so incredibly relieved for the end of a year. 2016 was full of ups and downs for me and to be perfectly honest, I'm not great with roller coasters - emotional ones or real-life ones! Despite all of the ups and downs, I think I'm even more excited for this new year because it is a fresh start. A fresh start that I hope will bring more focus and direction into my life.

Last year I chose to focus on health as my word of the year and while the year started out well, the emotional ups and downs of my year threw any thought of health out the window. Meh. Nobody is perfect, right? Despite not really focusing on health this past year, I did learn a lot about the factors in my life that contribute to my health both mentally and physically. Feeling unhappy through half of the year taught me a lot about the things that actually do contribute to my happiness (a cozy home, my hobbies, a non-stressful commute!), and the things that don't contribute to my happiness (money, a fancy job title).

Over the past year, I spent too much time working towards what I thought I wanted because of what societal pressure, peer pressure, and even my own confused mind told me I wanted. So this year, I'm choosing to focus on a phrase: It's your journey. It may not be particularly eloquent or universally inspiring, but it's how I want to re-focus my mind. This year, I want to ditch comparing my journey to those of my peers and focus on my journey, however it might unfold. It might be full of mistakes, hard times, confusion, and at times, complete disarray! - but it's also full of achievements, small milestones, and happy times that I want to relish and remember.

I'm excited for 2017 because I'm excited for a refresh on life. As strange as this year has been for me, I'm still optimistic about the future and so excited for all of the things to come. I know the journey won't be easy or perfect - but I'm going to try my best to remember that it's my journey and no one else's.

I hope you all are having a wonderful star to your new year and that you are ready for all the great things that are in store. Remember, It's your journey - it's challenging, it's exciting, it's unique, and it's yours alone to experience it, so enjoy it ♥ Happy new year, everyone!