How to use a planner to organize your life

 

[VIDEO TRANSCRIPT]

 

Hello, my friends. I hope you're doing well. In this video, I'm going to talk about how to use a planner to organize your life. If you're new here, hello, my name is Tanya and I make videos on functional planning. I would appreciate it if you hit the like button and I would love it if you would subscribe. On this channel, you can find a lot of videos to give you inspiration to actually use your planner.

 

If you have a tip or two on how you use your planner to organize your life, I would love to hear about it. Please put it in the comments.

 

So tip number one for how to use a planner to organize your life is to do a brain dump. So a brain dump is where you take a sheet of paper, and you write out everything that's in your head on paper. If you're trying to organize your life, there must be a thought in your head where you're thinking that you're not organized in some area. So to relieve that pressure, and to try to get to the root of what it is that you need more organization in your life is to put all your thoughts on paper. So everything that you have to do, everything you need to shop for anything that you feel you need to plan for, just jot it down on paper, it doesn't have to be neat.

 

One time I did a brain dump and it was about four pages of just ideas and things that I had to do after I did the brain dump. I felt so much better in order for you to find the areas or to pinpoint where you feel unorganized starts with writing a list and a brain dump is the beginning of that process.

 

So what do you do with the brain dump? That's tip number two, you sort through the brain dump, and you categorize the items and write them in your planner. So in other words, if you write down in your brain dump that you need to attend your child's school function on Friday, you actually want to open up your planner and start writing in those items on your brain dump in your planner. So obviously, the day of the school event, you want to make sure you put it on your planner, so you know that it's coming up. You may have on your brain dump items that you need to buy or things you need to clean all of those things you can start to categorize and organize in your planner.

 

If you haven't noticed this beautiful binder here, this is a binder that I sell in my shop at Tonyaplans.com. And when you're getting your life together, it does not hurt to have some beautiful planner supplies, I hope you will check my site out at Tonyaplans.com. And you can save money with discount promo code TONYAPLANS20 also beautifulplannerproducts.

 

What I like to do is organize my brain dump into different categories. And you can choose your own categories. But these are the ones that I use. I have a personal category of things I need to do for myself, things I need to do for my business, things I need to do for work, things I need to do for the kids and things I need to do later. So this is kind of how it looks. It doesn't have to be neat. But these are the different categories like business work, personal kids, and what I need to do later. And I'll take my brain dump and just put them in different categories. Then you can start to think about when you want to do things and actually write them in your planner and start to schedule them out.

Now as you do this process, I promise you, you're going to start to feel better that you're at least making a plan to organize some of the things that you've been thinking about because a lot of times when we have things that we need to do, it keeps coming up in our head over and over again, because in our mind, we don't want to forget. But when you put it on paper, it releases that pressure for you to have to remember and it just makes you feel so much better. And it makes me feel like I'm getting my life together when I actually write it out on paper.

 

Now some of you may be thinking, “Can I organize my life by just using an app on my cell phone or using my computer or using my iPad or other electronic products?” You absolutely can organize your life that way. In fact, I use electronics and paper together. So if I have an appointment that I need to go to I jot it on my planner. And I also make an audible reminder either on my phone or on my Outlook calendar or by using some other device. But there's something about paper.

 

There's something about writing things out on paper that sticks more in the brain, there have been studies done on this. They say that people are more likely to do something when they write it down, there is a connection between you actually writing with your hand and your brain. And that connection doesn't happen when you're typing on a cell phone or when you're typing on a computer. So that's why I believe paper planners are so important and it has been a tremendous help in my life.

 

So the third tip I have is when you start to look at the things that you need to do on your list is look for those areas where you feel unorganized and put a star by it. So it could be something simple or something more serious. For example, I may be honest, right now in my life, I know that I am unorganized in my kitchen. So when I go to prepare meals, a lot of times I can't find the food. We have four people in our house and when we get home from the store, everyone's putting up groceries and stuff and some people put groceries in one spot. Some people put groceries in another spot. When I go to cook, I can't find the ingredients and it's so annoying. So I know that that needs to be organized. And I know I need to tell my family members, “Hey, you know, can you make sure you put the bread here because this is where I look for it”. But that's something that I need to feel more organized about. So what if you have a lot of things in your life that you feel unorganized about and you just don't know where to begin? Well my last and final tip is going to help with that.

 

Tip number four is to determine your highest values so you'll know what to do first. The reason my kitchen isn't organized is because it's not part of my highest values and I put other things ahead of it. So what are values? So values are things that you hold true and that are important to you. Everyone's values may be different. So for example, I know that I value number one family, I value cleanliness, I value financial stability, because I don't like to feel insecure about money or where I live and things like that. That squat, it's a value of mine. So, those are three examples of things that I value. So, if I have something to do that's directly related to my values, I'm gonna do that first. So, that's how I determine what I do first when I have so much to do, and I have so much to organize. So guess what? Me organizing the kitchen pantry has felt low on my list, my house is not that my kitchen isn't cleaned, because that's one of my values. It's just not organized the way I like, and I can't find things as quickly. So that's why that hasn't been done yet. I found I had things to do for my family, which is one of my highest priorities that I put first, or maybe I had to work, I work full time maybe I had to work and my financial stability values is more important than to me right now than taking time to organize the kitchen, I am going to get to organize in the kitchen just not right now, because I tend to do those things that are most directly related to my values first.

 

So do you know what your values are? I'm going to put some examples of values up on the screen and just jot down three or four of them that stick out to you. These can change; don't take it too seriously.

 

To be honest with you. If you ask the average person none of us feel completely organized, almost no one. There's always an area in someone's life that's just not quite where they want it but be kind to yourself.

 

I made a video if you haven't checked it out yet on what to do when you don't have time to clean while cleanliness is very nice and it does have a lot to do with organization. Sometimes you may have higher things that are more important that you'll need to deal with first. Now I don't like cleanliness, don't get me wrong, but sometimes things do get cluttered and unorganized. We have busy lives, we have a lot of things to do and sometimes we have to keep in perspective what we can actually accomplish because there's only so much time in the day.

 

I hope you found this video helpful. Please don't forget to like this video. This is Tonya helping you feel more organized so this can be your best year yet.