How To Actually Use Your Planner

hey guys welcome back to my channel if this is your first video hi I'm Elena and this is the organized money where we talk about planning life managing money and monetizing what you know today's video is going to be on how to actually use your planner I've got this question a couple of times over the last two years and I thought that this would be the perfect time to give you some tips and strategies on how to actually use your planner because we're about to start a new cycle in July so I'm going to give you just a few things that I do to make sure that I am using my planner every single day and staying as productive as possible my first tip is to choose the planner that's right for you a lot of times we will look and see what other people are doing what type of planner that they have and feel like because it works for them that it's going to work for us also many times I have jumped on a bandwagon just because a bunch of other people are purchasing a planner only to get that planner and realize that it was a waste of money because it just didn't work for me I do have a video comparing the happy planner in the Erin Condren so I will link it there just in case you want to see the differences between those two but I definitely say try and look at a bunch of other planner videos to see their specifics and what qualities of that planner would work best for you my next tip is to keep your planner visible if you take the time to plan and decorate your entire week and then put your planner up on a bookshelf or in a bay then it makes planning the week pointless so I would suggest to keep your planner visible in the place that you are going to see every single day for me it's my home office I'm always in this space I'm constantly in here throughout the course of the day and I usually will keep my planner my desk open the always open to the current week so in that way as soon as I get up and I walk in my office it's the first thing that I see it's so much easier to plan your day if you have it open and visible in a place that you're always in my third tip is to set a time when you're actually going to plan your day or plan your week so for me its first thing in the morning as soon as I get my coffee I come in my office I see my planner I sit down and I plan out my day if you don't have a set morning routine you may have to plug it into your phone to remind yourself to actually open up your planner and plan your day well once you get into the habit of opening up your planner and planning your day then you will see how productive you are and you will create a routine around it so I do this for my day and I also do it for my week every single Saturday or Sunday I am looking at the very next week and I even have it in my planner to make sure that I plan out the next week so I plan when I'm going to plan my next tip is to use your monthly section as an overview for your money if you make this a space where you right now are your appointments and tests it will automatically refer you back to your planner anytime you think of something that you need to do so once I have set up my month then throughout the course of my month I'm always jotting down different things that are coming up appointments birthdays anything else so that I automatically refer back to my planner anytime anything happens throughout the course of my day those are friend calls and xv2 going to dinner on Friday I automatically refer to my planner I can check my monthly calendar and since I know I keep all of my appointments there and I'm always going there then I can honestly say if I'm available or not you can definitely still do this in your phone if that's your current habit I actually like to do both my next tip is to use your sidebar in order to plan your next week or your next month under my weekly planner I use my sidebar in order to schedule anything that's coming up in the next week and on my monthly calendar I schedule anything that's coming up in the next month having this space gives me freedom to write down anything that's coming up and when I'm getting ready to plan the next month I automatically have to come back to my planner which means I'm using my planner my next tip is to make add value to-do list in your planner and start with the harder task first I like using an hourly happy planner in order to schedule out my entire day but at the very top of the planner there is a box where I can write down any to-do list that I want to complete for that day I will always start off with the bigger task the bigger things that I need to get done for the day and then I will taper off into the smaller tasks so it's the morning right now the beginning of the day is usually a time when I will film a video because filming videos take a lot of energy from me so since I know that that's the case it's usually at the very top of my planner and it's always the first task that I do on a specific day but making sure that you added to-do lists to your planner will ensure that you look at your planner every single time you complete a task my next tip is to make sure that you keep it simple any times when we jump into planning especially when we start looking up videos here on YouTube we start seeing all these pretty planners that are fully decorated and we feel like we need to do the same but when you start getting into color coding and adding a bunch of stickers a lot of times it can take you away from the purpose of your planner which is actually to be productive but even though I love decorative planning and I love stickers and I love color coding a lot of times I would just keep it simple and I will use a black pen and a red pen and a few functional stickers maybe even at the end of my planning week you have to figure out how you can balance the functionality of your planner and a decorative side of your planner but you just want to make sure that you don't overwhelm yourself so that you actually use your planner a messy planner is way better than a blank one so I hope that this actually helps you to use your planner if you have any other additional tips make sure that you leave them in the comments below and in next week's video we're going to get into the different things that you should write in your planner until next time keep organizing your life so that you can achieve your dreams bye guys

Channel: The Organized Money

Views: 1,073,755

Keywords: How to actually use your planner, how to use your happy planner, how to get things done with a planner, being productive with a planner, functional plan with me, functional planner, how to make your planner functional, how to use your planner more, planner newbie, beginner planner setup, beginner planner, happy planner beginner, happy planner plan with me, the organized money, budget planner, how to use a planner for beginners, starting a planner, happy planner functional

Id: fRTaOqiTq9c

Length: 6min 32sec (392 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 16 2020