How To Maintain Organization of Your Planner

Hello! Whether you’re a seasoned planner or not, there are certain things you can do to help make your planner stay organized and neat. Now, I do believe that having a messy planner is better than not having used it, or not having a planner at all, but read on for some tips to help with organization!

1. Use it! Maybe you think that the more you use your planner, the messier it will look. Maybe you don’t like you’re writing? First, it doesn't matter, because it’s your planner - no one else will judge you if they don’t see it, and they shouldn’t be judging anyway. If you really don’t like your writing for example, challenge yourself to write with a new pen, or change your font. Practice cursive if you only print, or vice versa. Using your planner will obviously bring more benefits than leaving it sit on your desk, collecting dust. (This leads me to my next point)…

2. Do a regular inventory. If you’re using your planner regularly, you know what you have in it and what you don’t. You will know where the sections are that you use the most, and you might keep those sections marked by tabs or dividers. I set up a new theme in my planner each month. That might mean I change the binder/cover, or maybe just the insides. Either way, I go through my planner at the same time and I figure out what’s been working for me and what hasn’t. The easiest way to know that is to see what tabs or sections you always go to, and those that you don’t flip to as frequently. Evaluate if you still need those sections. You could “destash” your planner, and make it more straightforward to use by keeping fewer sections, or maybe (like me) you find yourself needing new sections that you haven’t previously used before, and find a need to use now. Either way, if you do this on a regular schedule, you will find that your planner becomes more useful to you over time and chances are that it will increase your efficiency and productivity.

3. Use dividers or tabs. This is the age old way of sectioning off your planner so you know where to find things. If you use a binder or un-bound system like me, dividers are perfect. You can use side, top or bottom tabs to help in your organization. If you have a coiled or bound planner, you can do something similar by adding post-it tabs to the edges to show where to flip to for your different sections. This will allow you to get to sections quickly and easily to save you time and energy.

4. Have an inbox. Have something important to write down, but not the time? You can do this in two ways. First, use a piece of paper and label it with an “inbox” tab. Whenever you have a note or important reminder, write it here for future reference. The other way is to have a plastic dashboard; add a post-it note to the dashboard for easy reference at a later time. Now here’s the important part: come back at that later time to put that reminder where it needs to go. Maybe you want to add an appointment to your monthly or weekly calendar? Or, maybe it’s a task that you need to get done in the current month, but it doesn’t have a specific time to be done. Copy it to your master task list for that week or month. Just make sure you write it down and then come back to it later to put it where it belongs.

5. Keep Your Main Sections Together. You wouldn’t keep your monthly calendar under “lists” for example, but under a main “schedule” tab, you might keep “future log”, “monthly”, “weekly” and/or “daily”. The same goes for Personal. You might want a health section, reading section or something else, and you wouldn’t keep that under the finance or budgeting section for example.

The more you use your planner, you will soon find out what works for you and what doesn’t. You might prefer to do something in one section and something entirely different in another, and that’s ok! As long as it makes sense to you, and you know how to find the sections or information you’re looking for!

Thanks so much for reading and we will see you again next week!

❤️ SAN