2021 CULTIVATE WHAT MATTERS POWERSHEETS | How I Use Powersheets | Pen Test

hi everybody welcome back to my channel this is kristen with monarch plans and this is my second video in my short series about the 2021 powersheets so last week i went through and i showed you all of the physical changes to the power sheets that have been made compared to the 2020 version of the powersheets and i showed you the inside and what has been updated in the prep work what has been updated in each of the months the quarterly updates everything like that so if you are interested in seeing all of that you can find my video i'll put a link up in the corner here and that will give you kind of a rundown of the kind of specific details in the 2021 planner this video though is going to be a lot more about how i've used my powersheets to achieve some big goals this past year and i'll show you my 2020 version of the powersheets that i have used i'll show you an example month i'll let you know how i specifically use the 2020 version because it was a little bit different than it was designed and then i will talk a little bit more about the 2021 version as well as some questions that i've gotten from people so some of those are who should use the powersheets i'll do like a little pen test and then i will also talk about how i use the powersheets with my regular weekly planner so let's just get in to how i've used the powersheets to accomplish some pretty big goals this past year when i got the powersheets i was really nervous the 2020 powersheets were my first set of powersheets my first year using them and i knew the prep work was pretty intense so i dove in i went at a pretty slow pace and i really narrowed down what was important to me and that is really the purpose of the pre-work in the powersheets is narrowing down not only like ideas for goals at the beginning but throughout you really really take a look at what matters to you who you really are what you actually want to accomplish because i think a lot of times we feel some pressure to you know chase some goals that might not actually be important to us whether that's like something that our family is forcing on us or something that we think society is forcing on us this really helps you narrow down exactly what you want in in your life now in your life later so i did the pre-work last year and i enjoyed it it was a little bit difficult um there are some things that i definitely took my time on because they were challenging but i was able to narrow down some pretty big goals what i did last year and i mentioned in my prior video that the process i used last year was way more similar to how the 2021 power sheets are structured than how the 2020 powersheets were structured so really quickly let me use the 2021 to explain how i created my goals so here's a section to create a rough draft of your goals you can choose one to eight yearly goal ideas so i had chosen eight yearly essentially yearly goals i wrote them down and instead of writing goals like an actual goal statement i chose categories so i chose like physical health um relationships finances um i think one of them was like mental health hobbies monarch plans i had eight different categories and then what i did with that is sorry let me flip is i took each of my categories and i broke them into really small action steps just for one quarter so that's exactly how this is structured so you take your yearly goal or in my case it was a category you fill out all the details and then you have many goals just for january through march so in my 2020 powersheets i had my categories and then i had three action steps for the first three months of the year and i knew i was going to come back in april and i was going to create three new like mini goals essentially under that category so that's how this is set up i'm really glad that they changed to this kind of structure previously you were supposed to set a yearly goal and that yearly goal could be broken into kind of mini goals and action items but there really wasn't a lot of structure each quarter for kind of refreshing those mini goals so that was a big struggle and that was why i kind of decided to do it by categories and many goals each quarter so i went through i had my eight goals and i got started with the year i very quickly realized that i didn't actually need eight goals and that's my first thing i'll say is there's room for eight different goals in your powersheets seven eight you do not need to set eight goals you don't if you only have five that's great if you only have two that's great only set the goals that you want to see through 2021 that's my biggest thing i thought i had to fill out all eight spaces i created like two different categories of things that really didn't matter to me that much and they were just like extra little things on my to-do list and i realized really quickly that that was not the purpose of the powersheets at all so by about february i actually realized that i only had six goals so my big focuses for this past year were my finances i wanted to pay down some debt i wanted to increase my savings and i just wanted to get into a good routine with our finances like i wanted to be able to find like a budget system that worked for me i wanted to know exactly what was going where and i also wanted my fiance to be involved in our finances a little bit more um healthy living like physical health was a really big deal for me this past year i had huge goals to lose some weight get more active feel better feel healthier that was just a big one so i was really focused on like nutrition and physical activity and part of that was like mental health and having and growing my self-confidence all of that stuff the next really big one was um monarch plans and so i started my instagram and my youtube channel last fall um yeah in like september october and i instantly fell in love with it so by the time january rolled around i knew that i wanted to continue to grow both of those social media channels and i just wanted to connect with more people the other huge goal that i had starting in october september october of 2019 was i knew i wanted to start an etsy shop um i had a goal to open by november 19th of 2019 and that did not happen i was really upset with myself for not opening on that date but it was just not a good idea because i was going on vacation the next week it wouldn't have been good to like open a shop and leave so i pushed that off then the holidays came all of a sudden it was january and i still hadn't opened my shop so that was another huge goal for 2020 was opening up an etsy shop on top of growing my monarch plans channels and then i had a couple other goals um they're like a little bit more personal so i had like a relationship and marriage goal we were planning to get married in 2020 which we had already planned our entire wedding for april obviously covid came and that was cancelled so my focus really for relationship and marriage changed a little bit to just kind of nurturing our current relationship and then some of the other goals i had was like creating a cleaning routine and like a maintenance routine for our house and other than that it was like hobbies so i wanted to read more i wanted to journal i wanted to draw all that stuff i'm trying to think there are any other ones but those were the main ones so i had those goals but there were some that was like that were really really really important to me so let me show you an example in my 2020 powersheets of what my month looked like so here's the month of may um this page is the same essentially in the 2020 version versus the 2021 version so here's february you can see important to do's i'm excited for on my mind and i'm hopeful that and so i filled it out i essentially just brain dump on this page i don't make this pretty i just get everything out that i need to get out um this is just to clear my head so i will get everything out here i also sometimes use this when i am actually doing my tending list but this is really just kind of like getting me ready for the month and also making sure and looking back at the prior month and seeing like maybe i didn't get something done so that needs to move from the prior month into the current month so in may i also continued using the monthly spread as essentially like a one good thing a day tracker i know that's not a good word for it or a good name for it so i wrote down one good thing or just like one thing that i did every single day in the month of may and i also kept track of some of the good things that happened you know just some of like the bigger milestones and the month of may was a really great month for me i felt like may was an absolutely wonderful month so i wrote one thing every single day and this is really really nice to look back on i did that you know i've done this every single month and i have a ton of fun looking back at these monthly pages i'm just kind of whenever i'm feeling down or whenever i'm feeling like i wasn't very productive it really helps to have this and be like oh actually i got a lot of stuff done so the next page or the next spread is the kind of planning and brainstorming page so this page looks a little bit different in the 2021 power sheet compared to the 2020. you can see here that in 2020 it was just like a goals to focus on and action ideas over here it has monthly weekly and daily so in 2021 it breaks it down so you actually are brainstorming specifically for each section of your tending list i love this layout way more than i love the 20 20. i think like this i don't think like this so i was just writing a list here and then i would have to go through and be like well is drinking water like a daily thing okay yes it is is a new budget format like a weekly thing where i like try it every single week or is that like a monthly thing um you know stuff like that i'll just have to go through and really figure it out versus over here you're really focusing on like just monthly just weekly just daily so you can see here i created my tending list and i feel like this month was really really good this was one of my better months a lot of times not everything is filled out a lot of times these are way less filled out um this was a good month for me the other thing is by this middle part of 2020 there were some very key things that i was already able to accomplish because of my powersheets so every single month i was really focused on making some type of progress towards opening my etsy shop whether that was designing new things or sharing with friends or whatever it was i was constantly trying to figure out when and how i can open an etsy shop from january through april of 2020 my work was absolutely insane i had no extra time i was constantly working i had to redo a bunch of work due to covid it was just impossible so every single month i would have really good intentions of like working towards my etsy shop and it never happened in may i took a look at all my past months and i was like wow i have had this on my list forever and i haven't made progress in may i was like that is my that's my thing like if any one of these get done it's gonna be the sticker shop i don't care about anything else really it can all move to the next month so in may i was able to open my etsy sticker shop on may 28th so that was my first really big goal that i accomplished this year and i honestly think it was because it was constantly on my radar every single month and not only every single month it was on my radar every single week when i would look at my power sheets and see that i wasn't making any progress in all these prior months you could see that like any of my monthly action items relating to etsy were never filled out like i just wasn't doing anything so i honestly think that having that in the forefront every single month really helped me realize like when i finally had time in may that's what i needed to focus on so that's what i did the other thing a little bit later this year that i've been able to accomplish due to powersheets and it's a lot of you know like budget meetings with andrew it's june budget weekly budget check-ins no spend i've constantly focused on finances in probably the middle to i guess like september of this year i really honed in on finding a budget system that worked for me so i was able to find the budget mom's budget by paycheck but i was able to kind of find a system that actually worked for me and that's a huge goal accomplished we saved enough money to put a down payment down on a house we are still saving a lot of money for our house in terms of like buying furniture and all that and we are focused also on paying down debt so though we haven't like paid down all of our debt and become debt free and all that stuff i honestly think that we have accomplished a huge goal with our finances so that is another thing that i think has really really helped having it constantly on my radar finally i think that the power sheets in general have really helped me stay the course through all of this stuff with kovid i think that and this is my personal opinion on my personal experience and i know everybody has had different experiences with this when things were getting kind of scary like in march and april in terms of like tons of cases and the news was just so morbid and overwhelming i did withdraw a little bit i couldn't focus on things it was really really hard to continue caring about this stuff when it seemed so small and i still kept in my powersheets i still kept up i still planned i kind of paired things back a little bit and focused on how the more important stuff and i think that that helped a lot because it continuously brought me back to the stuff that matters most to me and it was stuff that i can control and i think that was the hardest part for me is with kovid i felt really out of control and so when i filled out my tending list i made sure that these are action items that are mine and i can get them done or i can choose not to get them done i honestly think that that has helped me so much throughout this entire year when it has been so uncertain and i know it's different for every single person in terms of just circumstances and what's going on but that is one reason that i really enjoy this system is it's brought me a lot of stability so i think that is kind of just like an amazing thing that i wouldn't have noticed any other year but i definitely noticed this year just due to everything that's going on and so with that being said um you know those are the types of things that i've accomplished i was able to do my month in review i didn't fill out everything sometimes i do sometimes i don't but one great thing about powersheets is you can use it however you want to if you want to fill everything out every single page fill up everything you totally can if you don't want to you don't have to so that's what i also like is you can use it however you'd like um the next thing that i wanted to talk about and that i got a question about was who should use the powersheets who benefits from using powersheets and i know this sounds cliche but i honestly think that it could be beneficial for anybody i think that they made some really good changes to the 2021 version to make sure that it would be beneficial to more people and as i've mentioned i changed the 2020 version to be beneficial to me because i'm a really like nitty-gritty i need lots of directions type person i do not do well with the big picture i need to break things down into smaller goals i need to really do that to focus and actually accomplish things and the 2020 version didn't do that very well but the 2021 version i feel like is a lot better for that if you're kind of a big picture person i think this is really really a good system i think it could be difficult to get through the prep work if you're kind of a bigger picture person because quite honestly the whole front part here is all like super nitty-gritty getting into the details type stuff when you're actually doing your goal setting though you can do things as big or little as you want so if you're a bigger picture person you can really focus on your monthly action items you can make things as general or as specific as you want all of that i think plays to someone who is really just looking for like some general guidance but like i mentioned it's the nitty gritty in the beginning that's a little bit difficult the nice thing is is that you can pick and choose i know this probably isn't how it's suggested to be used but if there is something where you're looking at it and you're like like this is gonna make me quit like i will not do this this is a waste of time i'm not going to then maybe it's something you skip and come back to maybe it's just something you skip all together it just depends on what's going to work for you but if you're someone who really likes the details like me the prep work is really nice because you can really really get down into it and pick exactly the things that you want to work on and then you can transition those into your actual months and get into the really really deep specifics in terms of like your weekly action items what is like the exact thing i need to get done every single week what is the exact habit i want to accomplish you know every single day so honestly like i said so cliche and i'm not just saying this to like make everybody buy one but i think that you can tailor the system to work for you regardless of kind of how you think whether it's big picture or you know down into the details another question i got was whether or not i think that the power sheets are good at helping break down bigger goals into like smaller action steps and i definitely think so um i think that it really really helps that there's not just like this overarching goal and you just have like a monthly focus it really helps that there's actual like action items and then you can decide whether or not maybe it's just like a monthly thing it's really general one time whether it's something that requires like weekly attention um or something that requires daily attention i think what really helps in kind of narrowing things down is the fact that you create goals and you carry them through the planner and even if you switch things up to quarter you're still carrying things through multiple months and so that helps you month over month over month assess what needs to change i also think that what is really helpful is in your quarterly updates here there is a section for what goal do you feel stuck on what's holding you back what would you have to change and what might happen if you did move forward and if you didn't there's a constant kind of evaluation that goes along with powersheets that i think really really helps you narrow down what you need and so at the beginning of the year your goals might be super broad and you'll find as you move throughout the year that your goals kind of morph and really end up being like more actionable for you and really more focused on what you actually want and need so i think that just the system in general helps you not only narrow down like each month what you want to do but throughout the year things get narrowed down a lot more too the next thing that i've been asked is to do like a pen test in the planner and i've gotten asked like how the paper is the paper is really thick i really really like this planner's paper i've never noticed any like ghosting from using mildliners but what i will do is i will do a pen test and let me think of a good place for that so let me do a quick pen test right here i'm doing it just on this page because um it's obviously blank here and then it's white with some writing on this page so i think we should be able to see if there's any ghosting there really aren't many pages that are like blank on one side and blank on the other this one is but if there is any bleeding i really don't want to ruin my cultivated life evaluation because this is my actual set of power sheets for this upcoming year so i'm being a little bit choosy where i decide to put my pen test so let me do that really quickly here on this page and then i will show you the results in just a second [Music] okay so here is the pen test i have my mildliner up here at the top i have my sharpie s note here in the turquoise and then from there you can see the names of the different pens um written with the actual pen so let's flip this over and see so really the only one that i see really having issues or actually a couple is this first one this s note which is the sharpie s note had a little bit of bleed through at the beginning and i'm kind of i guess a little bit heavy-handed but not too much so i would be a little bit hesitant to use my sharpie s notes in here the other one that has a little bit of ghosting and might just be the color i chose or something like that is the erin condren dual tip marker i used over here the fine and the medium tips so you can see i don't know if you can see that but there is a little bit of ghosting there in terms of the black pens quite honestly there is not a lot of ghosting so i think if you looked really closely you could see some a lot of it is because i've like written kind of hard uh one thing i'll note is that the pilot 0.7 i just have like a very juicy pen i think i'm not sure if all of them are like this but this one's very inky um it did smear a little bit so it didn't dry very quickly and i believe i let it dry for a while i don't think i touched it until i turned the page um so other than that there's really not any that i would really hesitate to use in terms of like a gel pen or a like regular kind of felt tip pen i think what i might use this year is the micron um i just love how it writes it felt really nice when i was writing other than that i really do prefer like thinner kind of more fine tip pens so i might use the pilot g2 and then i will definitely be using my mild liners so that's another good option i've consistently used mild liners for the past year never had any issues the other thing is uh cultivate what matters is coming out with some color coding pens so you can take a look at those i know some other people have done some pen tests and comparisons to like different colors and everything and those looked amazing i just didn't grab any um for the upcoming year so other than that one last thing i wanted to touch on that some people asked about was how do i use my powersheets with my weekly planner and one thing is i think that the powersheets are great but i would not be able to use the powersheets just by themselves as like a complete goal planning system i need a monthly planner to use alongside my powersheets and one thing i did um this past year kind of at the very beginning of the year and a little bit into the summer was i used the dashboard pages in my planner to really write down my goals and keep track of them so they're in my face constantly so here's a good example this was in january of 2020 and what i did is i put my tending list in here i essentially rewrote it but what you can do is the tending lists are perforated in the powersheets so you can rip out your tending list if you would like and you can put it in your daily planner you can stick it um like on a bulletin board you can do whatever you want with it but it is really nice to have everything kind of front and center constantly so what i did is i took my tending list and i put all of my items into my january dashboard in my erin condren life planner and i was able to check this off and not have to carry my powersheets around which is another big thing i tend to like to carry just like one planner if i'm going to work or something like that so having it here was really really nice so i didn't have to constantly be carrying around multiple planners you can see in february i also um included my goals and everything here but it looked a little bit different i was really focusing on physical health in february which was something that aligned with my power sheets and so i did my little habit trackers here for my different um daily activities and then i included my monthly some of my bigger monthly goals um for my powersheets in the monthly goal section and then again i had a couple other habits i was keeping track of but ultimately i try to incorporate my goals from my power sheets into my planner somehow and whether that is um including like um like trackers so like i have a spending tracker here because i was trying to minimize my spending or different habit trackers and everything like that it helps to keep you focused every single week on the items that are going to get you closer to where you want to be at the end of the month i'll show you another month here i was really focusing on habits so this month i had more habits that i was trying to focus on a couple down here as well i had a lot of like monthly action items that i was trying to keep track of some of these are from my powersheets some of these are just reminders monthly goals here and then what i would try to do also is include some of my weekly things um in my actual planner so one big thing that i wanted to do every single week and i've had a goal to do almost every month is have a weekly budget check so i might budget check here i made sure i put that in when i was designing my spread so i knew it was there the next week i have my budget check the next week i have my budget check so i'm constantly putting in my weekly action items where they need to go every single week so it's really just a matter of incorporating all of your different items from here and whether that's spacing them out from week to week if you're doing monthly goals um copying down all your habits everything like that that's what i tried to do and that helped me um that helped me a lot one thing i will say is when i got my new plum paper planner um i'm still trying to figure out how the best way is to incorporate my goals in that planner and so there are a bunch of note pages i added note pages into that planner and so one big possibility is i may um like photocopy my powersheets tending list and put it in there i may recreate my tending list in my planner like i did like in january you saw that where i just essentially wrote everything in again um or i i don't know i'm still trying to think about it so that is how i have incorporated my power sheets into my planner the other thing i will say is to make sure that i actually check in with my power sheets every single week or twice a week i actually would write into my planner like um let's see like tending list tuesday so here's a good one tending list um i had that on tuesday so i would double check my tending list i have it again there so that was something that i made sure to do to make sure that i kept up on my actual power sheets itself so that is kind of my best example and my best suggestion for how to use like a weekly planner to keep track of your power sheets powersheets if you have any other questions about that or want to see any other examples please let me know and i'd be happy to show you so i know that was a lot of information and a couple different topics were covered but hopefully that helps a little bit i can do a little bit more in-depth talk on my actual goal setting of my powersheets i can walk you through when i'm actually putting my powersheets together or i can review my powersheets tending list at some point once we start like heading towards the new year so you get a good idea of what this actually looks like and then i'm also definitely exploring how to make things better for myself so i am one that loves learning i love growing i love figuring out things that work better for me so i'm constantly exploring how to use my powersheets i'm constantly exploring other goal systems um so let me know if you'd be interested interested to just hear kind of other things that i find or other systems that might work or anything like that i'll try to keep you guys updated if i do make any changes in terms of like using my powersheets how i use them how i use my powersheets my planner all of that stuff so again if you have any questions please feel free to reach out i will be available to respond to comments i also have a link in the description box below to the new 2021 powersheets so the 2021 powersheets are live at 10 a.m eastern standard time on october 14th so if you're interested in grabbing your power sheets you can use my link in the description box it will take you directly to the site and it is an affiliate link so i do receive a small commission but that will help me in the future to bring you product reviews and help me get product early so i can do these types of videos for you and answer any questions ahead of launches so if you are purchasing your powersheets today i would greatly appreciate if you use that affiliate link but again if you have questions feel free to reach out i hope this was helpful and i apologize for it being a little bit lengthy but thank you so much for tuning in and i hope you have a great day i'll talk to you later bye [Music] you

Channel: Monarch Plans

Views: 3,176

Rating: 4.9349594 out of 5

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Id: utF4Kf3yZto

Length: 33min 55sec (2035 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 14 2020