Saturday Set-Up

It's the beginning of the month which means little around here except that it is time to get my month in order. If you are familiar with my blog and way of doing things, then you know that I am a pen and paper person rather than a digital calendar person. I have been using an agenda or planner for most of my life, and I enjoy the routine of writing things down.

I have two planners that I design and use on a regular basis. The first is my personal planner. I keep track of chores, appointments, celebrations, and all sorts of stuff in that calendar. My current personal planner is a red covered dot grid journal that I bought from Michaels when they had a buy one, get one sale. I tend to stock up on blank books when those types of sales happen. I have a set pattern for setting up this planner - one week per spread with limited changes to the format.

My second journal is my work planner. This is the one that has changed the most recently because my work has shifted from an out-of-home job to a home-based job. I have been trying something new for me to help me track performance on specific projects and situations that I am working on. I'm currently using this one in a more traditional bullet journal format rather than a calendar. If you are interested in learning more about the Bullet Journal Method, please check out information by Ryder Carroll - the author and originator of this method.

I am not a full-out BuJo disciple - I do what works for me and not everything that Mr. Carroll prescribes - but I am finding this structure to be better for my work flow than a calendar-style format. In this planner, I devote portions of each page to each day as it arrives. The work list is ongoing rather than a spread per week. I use four indicators - task, note, appointment, and migrated/cancelled - for the things that I am doing. I set up my journal every morning around the time I start writing my blog posts. I have a future log as well as daily logs in this planner, but I am starting to find a need for a monthly log, so I made one this morning.

I have been spending some time on Amazon Haul recently, and one of the things that called out to me was a stencil set for planning. I bought it, it arrived, and now I am figuring out how to use the stencils in my planner. It has several calendar stencils, so I used one of those this morning with my distress ink pads and daubers. I now have an August calendar on page 118 of this planner.

This is a place where I can indicate things that will be happening in the month. For example, I have a conference next Saturday, a paper crafting crop the next weekend, jury duty for a 10 day span, and my family members have medical tests and surgeries that are on the calendar. It takes up half a page, and I will set up my daily workflow list after I publish this post. 

This process is something that helps me keep track of what I am doing each day. It is not for everyone, but for those of us who process better when we write something and then can see that something, it is a valuable technique. This is something that I will continue to do because it works for me.

One of the projects that I am working on is to get my intern webinars back into my work rotation. One of the topics that has to be addressed is professional time management, and that is where this particular system fits. During the Time Management and Organization segment of the intern webinar series, we talk a bit about how to organize, but this might need to be expanded upon (at least, that's what IDs that I know have been saying about interns right now). The problem with time management and organization is that one size does NOT fit all, but there are many options to try to find your own way into being organized and using time wisely.

How do you organize your time? Do you have a system that works for you? Are you a pen/paper organizer or a digital organizer?

For now, I am happy looking at my little August calendar, stenciled in green ink on page 118 of this book. Time to start setting up my work tasks for today because I am a Saturday work kinda person now.

(By the way, someone just published a music therapy planner over on Etsy with digital options available. This is an idea that I've toyed with, but I have never figured out exactly what I want from a preprinted journal, so I haven't moved forward. It is easier for me to just design as I go than it is to use a set page. Isn't that interesting?? I find it fascinating!)

Hope to see many of you next week for the Rhythm to Results: Clinical Innovations in Music Therapy with Adolescents conference. Details here.

Happy Saturday!