Evolution of My Planner Books
An old planner book
It’s interesting to look back at the evolution of the way I’ve used planner books throughout my writing career. I have posts from 2019, 2020, and January and August 2021. These trace my shift from using post-it notes on a two-page spread for each week to ditching the post-it notes and shifting to a page for each day.
Currently, I have three different paper planners. One is the daily page planner. Another is a week by week notebook. The third is a priority list for projects.
The daily page planner is where I track what I’ve done on a given day. It starts with a list of the tasks I would like to get done on that day–some are recurring, and others are specific to that day. As I complete each of those, I check them off with either a colorful stamper marker or a small sticker. I also note my plans for the day, like whether I’ll be in the office or not, meetings for work or otherwise, gaming, and other appointments. There’s also a section where I can jot down exciting things, like when I’ve sold a piece.
The week by week notebook is one I made myself with lots of stickers. It lists all of my recurring tasks, has space to mark when I’ve done social media posts, and includes a complete list of my projects for the week. As I finish each thing, I add small stickers to mark them as done. This helps me make sure I get through all of my non-recurring projects that I need to work on in a given week. I also have space where I can add a large project that needs to be worked on daily or a specific number of days within the week–like when I’m doing NaNoWriMo, I can make myself a little NaNo section where I can add stickers when I’ve hit my word count for the day.
Finally, the priority list is the newest addition to my planning. It’s a sheet of paper where I can note all of my projects, their deadlines, and then rank their priority with respect to one another. It also has a column I can mark when a project is finished for the week. I particularly like this because if I’m honest with the ranking, I know which projects I SHOULD focus on first, as well as which ones I could let slide to the next week if something comes up. Things with a nearer deadline get higher priority than those with a deadline further out.
I could definitely combine the second and third parts of this planner system, and I may go in that direction in the near future, as it is quite a bit to juggle two notebooks and a separate sheet of paper (which is easily lost in the shuffle). I tend to color code the priorities on my current priority list, so that would be easy enough to implement in the space beside the list of tasks in the week by week notebook.
If you’re someone who uses a planner book, it can be helpful to look at your processes every so often to figure out if they are working for you and if there are ways to streamline or minimize the amount of time and work you do to keep them updated. Then you can use that regained time for more writing!
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