Month

November 2021

November 26, 2021

What Makes Our Planner Different – (Podcast Ep. 8)

Listen on Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts

In this episode, we give you a tour of the Evergreen Planner System.

There are so many planners out there—so did we decide to create another one? What makes our planner different?

We created this system because we couldn’t find a planner that felt intuitive—that brought all the different areas of our lives together. We didn’t want a planner for mom life, and another for our business, and a notebook for our hobbies, and something else for homeschooling. We wanted one tool.

So we created a planner that is minimalistic, intuitive, and extremely versatile. Instead of asking you to change the way you organize your thoughts, this planner was made to change and flex with your evolving needs.

Necessity is the Mother of Invention

When Shelby tucked her homemade worksheets under her arm on her way to her sister’s house on spring morning, she never would’ve believed that their lives were about to change forever. What she imagined would be a quick, casual chat about these personal-development exercises she’d created for herself actually turned into a flurry of innovation.

McCauley had been feeling pretty overwhelmed with her own attempts at getting organized. Her ideas and tasks were scattered between a cheap planner, two different calendars, and a few random notebooks.

What if the countless hours Shelby had been pouring into time-management research were combined with McCauley’s knack for designing aesthetic products that actually worked the way they were advertised?

The two entrepreneurial sisters went to work at the kitchen table—babies swaddled and strapped on—cutting and pasting together a dream planner. Instead of tweaking the hundreds of existing planners, they threw all convention out the window and started over.

The Evergreen Planner was developed to answer to these industry-disrupting questions:

  • What if you could see your week’s agenda at the same time as you plan your day?
  • What if you never felt lost in your own planner?
  • What if your planner could lead you through a simple series of prompts that quickly helped you organize your thoughts—but without overwhelming or distracting you?
  • What if your planner only contained the things you actually need to get organized and make progress—and nothing that you don’t?
  • What if your planner could be so classy that it actually elevated your aesthetic?
  • What if your planner could seem so intuitive, personal, and dynamic that it felt like a natural extension of your arm—a fully-functioning hub for your brain?

The Evergreen Planner System

Shelby and McCauley stopped at nothing to design a system that would effectively answer these questions. Even when it was suggested to them that their booklet designs would be too expensive to even manufacture, they pressed on, knowing that our groundbreaking dutch door layout would be key to planning with real life context.

Before it was even brought to market, this planner underwent a lot of rigorous field-testing. Every bit of feedback our beta testers gave us went into the refinement of this planner through six major prototypes.

The result is our wildly effective three-part system:

The Annual is the doorway to the system. This 12-month calendar booklet provides a birds-eye view of your year with the powerful addition of plenty of flex space to map goals and plan your year. Each month spread is followed by three blank bullet grid pages. Learn more here.

The Monthly is the muscle of the system. It’s an undated 5-week planner booklet with weekly and daily spreads. This is the only planner booklet you’ll find on the market with a dutch door layout that allows you to see your day and your week’s agenda simultaneously. Each week spread has a vertical calendar to write dates, habit trackers, and plenty of customizable flex space to write lists, map week goals or brain-dump ideas. Each day spread has a  time blocking section, correlating to-do list, micro-journaling prompts, and plenty of flex bullet space. These booklets come subscription box style every quarter—or in a year bundle—so you never run out of planner. Learn more here.

The Cover is the glue that binds the whole system together into one unit. Handcrafted locally in genuine leather and designed in a traveler’s journal style, it protects your planner booklets with class. It has six pockets in varying sizes to carry loose papers and lists, extra spine elastics for additional booklets, and two elastic loops to hold pens or washi tape. It’s enduring, and incredibly stunning. It is a piece you will use and treasure for years. Learn more here.

This planner has become an integral part of our intentional lifestyles. It helps us bring our goals into context with the realities of our lives, and translate our long-term intentions into daily choices.

We dive more into this in today’s episode, and share the impact that this innovative system has had on each of our lives. We also invite you to imagine how it might change the game for you.

It’s Time to Take Action

Are you ready to get your hands on this amazing tool?

With 15% off storewide Black Friday through Cyber Monday, you take advantage of our biggest sale of the year.

Now is your time to get organized around the things that matter most to you and finally make space to thrive.

Listen on Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts

November 17, 2021

Planning While Postpartum – (Podcast Ep. 7)

Listen on Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts.

Planning while postpartum? At first glance it sounds over-the-top, almost an oxymoron. In the past we’ve even written about how the postpartum season can be an excellent time to take a break from your planner. So why did we choose to do an entire podcast episode on planning while postpartum?

You have to remember that when we say “planning”, we are talking about self-compassionate planning. And perhaps there is not a better time to practice self-compassion than when you are in a season of recovery like the postpartum season. When we say planning while postpartum, we aren’t talking about planning our biggest goals, or mapping our business’ trajectory for the next year; we are talking about the simple, but extremely useful, form of day-to-day planning that helps us get out of our heads, sort our priorities, and let the non-essentials fall away.

Postpartum should be a season of rest. One where we focus on healing and soaking in those newborn days that pass so quickly. It should be a season where family and friends rally around to bring meals, help with other children, and take over housework. And even when this ideal can’t happen, we can still choose how we will approach our season of recovery. We can choose to set expectations for ourselves a little lower so we are able to focus on what matters most.

But it’s incredibly hard to rest when you have a smattering of to-do’s rattling around in your brain. It’s hard to know what’s essential and what can be left for another day (or dropped completely), when you’re foggy from sleep deprivation. It’s hard to track how well you’re healing physically, mentally and emotionally, if you try to do it all in your head.

And that’s where a planner begins to make a lot of sense.

In this episode, we talk about the unique ways we (Clari & McCauley both had babies this past spring, so navigating the postpartum season is fresh!), and other mamas have used the planner while postpartum.

If you’re pregnant or in the postpartum season, give it a listen. We believe you’ll find it both encouraging, and also inspiring as you navigate the postpartum time. And if you have any friends who are in that season, we’d love it if you’d share it with them!

Listen on Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts.

November 10, 2021

How We Plan Our Weeks – (Podcast Ep. 6)

Listen on Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts

Every Monday is a fresh start.

You have an entire week before you, a clean slate, and it can seem like the possibilities for productivity are endless!

But then you move through each day and it can be easy to slip back into dealing with whatever seems most necessary in each moment, and you find you’re only taking care of the small details, rather than making progress in the most significant areas.

Or maybe you make significant progress on your big goals, but meal planning and laundry is falling off your radar. How do you balance it all? How do you create week rhythms that serve your long term goals, your weekly work needs, and your family?

In this episode, you’ll get a peek into how we (as business owners running a growing company with nine kids under the age of six between us!) plan our weeks. You’ll get to hear how we each approach week planning, and get ideas you can apply in your own unique way. As we say in this episode, we are all about flexible planning that is individual for each person. 

Listen on Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts

A Peek Into Our Planners…

We thought it would be fun to give you all some examples of what week spreads look like for each of us. These spreads are from our personal planners over the last few weeks. Our spreads aren’t always beautiful, and they aren’t always full to the max, but they are always utilized for exactly what we need each week.

That is the beauty of a flexible planning system; it serves you each season you are in, exactly how you need it to.

McCauley’s Week Spread
Clari’s Week Spread
Shelby’s Week Spread

________________________________________________

We would LOVE to see how you are utilizing the day & week pages in your Evergreen planner! Tag us on Instagram (@evergreenplanner)! And if you haven’t already, it would mean so much if you would rate & review the podcast. It’s the best way to help other woman find the show. Thank you!

November 3, 2021

Make Space to Thrive – (Podcast Ep. 5)

If you’ve been following us for long, you are familiar with our favorite hashtag: #makespacetothrive. In a world full of hashtags, this may seem like nothing more than a snippet of motivation, a pithy phrase, or something fun to add on on top of photos. But for us, #makespacetothrive is a reminder of a key practice that moves us from overwhelm—to intentional living. It’s become such a core phrase, that when we were brainstorming names for our podcast, it easily made its way to the top of our list.

Listen to episode 5 on Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts.

The story behind the phrase…

Back in 2016, Shelby was living in a non-stop, head-down, shoulder-to-the-grindstone hustle. She and her husband supported their tiny family with a home business and were always behind on deadlines. Every moment taken to just sit down and breathe—even just to eat dinner together without multitasking work—invited a crushing air of guilt into the atmosphere.

But there seemed to be no way to simply hustle more. After brain-dumping a giant todo list that took up seven sheets of paper, Shelby realized she was going to have to upgrade her productivity strategy, or she and her husband would never get ahead of the train.

In her typical style, Shelby turned to Google to help her figure it out. Her husband gave her a couple of books he thought were relevant. They scheduled a meeting with a business mentor. Something, anything had to give. But every tip and tool she found seemed to yield a mere 1% improvement to their current situation. It just wasn’t enough to move the needle.

But then she found it. The missing piece. Shelby will tell you that learning this strategy radically altered how she approached her life in that season, and continues to be a practice she benefits from today. This is the element that has proved over and over again to be THE #1 strategy to consistent achievement and success in her life, and it’s one she’s found so many people completely miss.

And what was this missing ingredient? MARGIN. 

Margin is planned white-space for your day, your week, your home, your brain—space to breathe in #allthethings.

In other words, margin gives you SPACE to thrive.

Margin looks like many simple things in our lives:

  • daily space to sit down, breathe deep, drink a hot cup of coffee, and have a strategy meeting with ourselves using the prompts in our planner
  • leaving for an appointment (or church or event or party) 15 minutes earlier than needed so that when we hit traffic or forget something or have a driveway adventure with a toddler, we’re not melting down ourselves
  • taking time to re-write your goals in your best handwriting, allowing you to fully emotionally process them and then display them so they stay top-of-mind
  • asking: “what can I say ‘no’ to, cull, or renegotiate about this week to make it easier and calmer?”
  • getting up before the children (whether in the morning, or before naptime is over) and doing essential things so they don’t get missed
  • taking time to exercise instead of putting off health goals until your workload lightens or the kids hit a magical age
  • keeping our homes clean, decluttered, and well-managed so that spontaneity feels fun instead of chaotic
  • saying “no” to a stretch goal in the business so we can make a nicer dinner than usual for our family just because we want to
  • turning off all of the notifications on our phones (except for calls from our husbands and mama, of course) and limiting social media so that new information isn’t constantly taking a toll on our emotions
  • using our time-blocker to add 15 minutes of padding to the transitions in the day (meals, commutes, meetings, etc.), so we don’t have to feel like insane people to get anything done on time

Margin transforms your schedule from a never-ending endurance race to a strategic agenda filled with life-giving rest periods. Margin helps you focus on what’s essential, and then protects your intention, so that you can truly show up in the things that matter most. Margin allows you time to process stuff instead of letting it build up and eat away at your mental bandwidth. With a lightened schedule, opportunities to be flexible, and a decluttered mind, margin exponentially reduces your stress—which in turn empowers you to be more creative, make more thoughtful decisions, and tackle complex problems with confidence and energy.

If you’ve been living a life based on hustling as much as you can from when you wake in the morning to when you crash at night, planning margin into your life will feel like a breath of fresh air. Slowing down is one of the easiest ways you can move yourself from a place of overwhelm, to a place of peace. When you begin by ensuring you’re well rested, well nourished (physically + otherwise), and you’ve distilled your commitments to the things that matter most, you are able to show up for the people and responsibilities in your life with zeal. You will bring a life-filled energy that simply cannot exist when you are run down by a never ending to-do list.

When you build margin into your days and weeks, you are giving yourself (+ your family) the space to truly thrive.

Listen to episode 5, all about margin, on Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts.

And if you haven’t already, please leave us a rating and review so others can find this life-giving content! We’re so thankful for you.