Are you feeling a bit overwhelmed? – I love organising and planning & systems, how about a schedule?

I have tried so many different types, some printable some digital, some I find work for a little while but then when things don’t go to plan or something pops up, I tend to lose track of where I am … so I haven’t found one which works for me 100% … yet however, here is my latest!

In the course I am currently participating in, Lila Rogers, suggested a process which helps to block in chunks of time for “whole projects”.
When I first read her suggestion about using “sticky notes”, I thought oh yeah i have heard of that before…When she explained that this simple system allows you to move that particular tasks around… in the “available” slots on your schedule that perked up my interest and seemed to make sense. So I thought I would give it a whirl.

One of the points she mentioned that really got me interested was this: If you allocate ALL of the tasks for a project on your schedule eg.. concepts, research, etc. then you can have an accurate timeframe for completion which is awesome …

but HERE is the biggest take away for me:

When something falls in your lap that you would like to do.. and you look at your schedule for your next “available” schedule time you are able to see at an instant whether you have time to fit it in your schedule or not. If you use sticky notes for your items you can then lift them off and move them to the next available slot if you wish to move things around, but if not then you can simply say (Wait for it…. No.! i am sorry it doesn’t fit in my schedule!)

It’s a pretty simple system but from putting this one together I can already see that i have lots of things on my plate and i am able to allocate time more efficiently, particular for parts of projects that will go on over a number of weeks.

TIPS:

• I am using different colours for different things ie. pink=clients, orange=art, blue=personal/biz – cause i am a bit pedantic like that but you don’t have to.

• Laminate a whole month and put it up where you can see it. If its laminated you can write the dates on or put a big cross on days / times that you know you won’t be available it’s there right on the planner!

• 1 post note = 2 hours chunk of time. I cut some in half and used them as 1 hour blocks.

• Write out all of your whole project tasks in one go, that way you can know ahead of time how long a project should take or more importantly how you are going to get that completed.

• Allocate some Downtime – If you are like me and always have something on make sure you leave some spaces blank so you do have time for things like relaxing etc. It’s a bit sad but yes I have to allocate time to recharge!

 

Download your printable Planner(PDF)

Click on the thumbnail to see the planner. Note: Please make sure you print the PDF not the jpg file. The jpg will print blurry this is just to show you the planner.

Weekly Planner

Click to Download a Weekly Planner

 

Fortnightly Planner

Click to Download a Fortnightly Planner

 

I would love to hear how you go

If you give this a go I would love to hear about it, please let leave a comment below or share it with your friends and send me in suggestions of what you find works for you.