Do The Things That Help You and Forget The Rest

I’ve been doing a lot of learning and reading recently, since Janes Agenda Masterplan started, and I’ve picked up quite a few tricks along the way, despite already having a great planner system that consistently works for me. I’ve also tried a few things that haven’t worked out for me and I wanted to pass along the tips that I learned about myself.

First off, no one knows you better than yourself. Only you will know how you learn best, how you best consume information, and how you remember. Sometimes paper planners are best and sometimes digital tools work. You won’t really know until you’ve tried something, but if you notice that something just isn’t working, or seems to create more hassle than it’s worth, just ditch it!

For example, a couple of years ago, I found this content creator on Instagram and Youtube called Louise Henry. Right now, she’s really into course creation, and she needs project management tools because she has a team of people she works with and it’s an invaluable tool for her. Well, I decided to try out Trello and Asana when she was promoting them. (Why not, they were free at the time). I committed to it for almost a year, but I found that any information I was putting into Asana, I was also still planning for in my paper planner and I felt like I was just doing double the work all the time. Eventually, I gave up the pipe dream of trying to use Asana or Trello. Honestly, It’s not like I really needed it anyway since I don’t have a team of people that work for me and no need for collaborations.

Fast forward to today, and in Janes course (from Janes Agenda Masterplan), she is talking about the benefits of tech project management tools like Trello, Asana, Notion and Click-up. For all of one second, I tried to convince myself that trying it again might be a good idea, and then I let it go. I realized in my first stint with it that I didn’t need it and it wasn’t for me. That being said, I’ve also tried Notion and hated it, but Clickup is new to me. I might check it out and do some research on it, but I still don’t think I’ll use it in any great capacity.

Some techniques that I’ve tried and also discarded are the Pomodoro Technique and time blocking. I have small kids at home, and both of these things just don’t work for me. Getting distracted 1000 times a day is my daily norm, but my most important job is watching my kids, so that’s something that I’ve come to accept at this point in my life. Sometimes I can’t even do my most important tasks at the beginning of the day, again because of my kids.

For other people, a time-blocked schedule might be the only thing that keeps them productive throughout the day.

In the end, you should keep the tools that help you become the best you can be, or help you achieve your goal the fastest. Discard everything else, because you don’t want to keep trying those things and then get discouraged or unmotivated every time they fail. Trust me, I experience guilt sometimes when I know that some tools work great for other people but I just hate them. I feel like maybe I never gave them enough of an opportunity to work for me, but yet if I keep trying to make them fit, and they just don’t, now I’m simply wasting my time.

There is definitely a balance to finding the right tools that work for you. I say try them once; but really give them your best. Then you can be completely honest with yourself when they don’t work for you.

Thanks for reading!

See you next week!

Sandra