Category

Lifestyle Planning

October 13, 2021

The Four Rules of Planning Part 2 – (Podcast Ep. 2)

Implementing the Four Rules of Planning

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Posted in Lifestyle Planning, Mindset, Planner Tips, Podcast Episodes

In our second episode, we dive into the final two rules of planning: train your subconscious and maintain a flexible mindset. These concepts are simple to implement, yet extremely effective for crafting an intentional lifestyle. Listen on Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts.

Our “Four Rules of Planning” —

  1. Write down what you did. For several days or weeks, use your planner to record what you did. By starting with the rhythms and habits you already operate in, you can recognize patterns, and evaluate what’s working and what’s not. You can then design incremental change that serves your family, makes sense for the season you’re in, and builds into a sustainable lifestyle. 
  2. Build your repertoire of planning skills. Think about it like becoming a skilled cook in a kitchen. You must build your planning and productivity skills over time, as you come upon new challenges. Learn as you go, practice patiently, and you’ll soon feel equipped to adapt your new skills to fit any given situation. Just as a skilled cook would not feel the pressure to use every technique they know every time they prepare a dish, you shouldn’t feel the pressure to exercise every single time-management or efficiency muscle you have every single moment of every day. You simply build your repertoire of skills for when you need them.
  3. Train your subconscious. The more you write down your goals and priorities, the more you are teaching your brain to focus on what is important to you. This builds a “working memory” around your priorities, enabling you to waste less energy on deciding what you need to do next in the day-to-day, so you can give more brain space to bigger goals and projects.
  4. Maintain a flexible mindset. Even with the best planning, life still throws punches and things play out in ways you could’ve never anticipated. Instead of mislabeling yourself as “failures” because of circumstances out of your control, you have the choice to strengthen your positive influence in any given situation. You can take a proactive approach to these challenges—whether big or small—by adopting a mindset that inspires you to pivot and handle the inevitable changes to your plans in creative and life-giving ways.

Remember, these rules are not a once-and-done process, they are a cycle that you can move through again and again. The truth about intentional living is that it has to be adaptable, because your life will change constantly. The schedule rhythms you were following in January are likely not the ones that will work well in September. These four rules will help you to constantly adapt, change and perfect your planning processes, while doing it in a way that is unique to your lifestyle, season and needs.

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The Evergreen Planner system is comprised of three unique pieces: the Cover, the Annual and the Monthly. Here at Evergreen we believe in self-compassionate planning and want to inspire women to craft a lifestyle that both fuels their dreams and serves their daily rhythms. Learn more about our system here!

October 6, 2021

The Four Rules of Planning – (Podcast Ep.1)

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Posted in Lifestyle Planning, Mindset, Planner Tips, Podcast Episodes

Listen on Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts

You want to start getting organized around the things that matter most to you. But where do you even begin?

In our first episode, we offer an effective shortcut for diving into the world of time-management and productivity—without getting overwhelmed. Listen above or on Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts

Our “Four Rules of Planning” —

  1. Write down what you did. For several days or weeks, use your planner to record what you did. By starting with the rhythms and habits you already operate in, you can recognize patterns, and evaluate what’s working and what’s not. You can then design incremental change that serves your family, makes sense for the season you’re in, and builds into a sustainable lifestyle. 
  2. Build your repertoire of planning skills. Think about it like becoming a skilled cook in a kitchen. You must build your planning and productivity skills over time, as you come upon new challenges. Learn as you go, practice patiently, and you’ll soon feel equipped to adapt your new skills to fit any given situation. Just as a skilled cook would not feel the pressure to use every technique they know every time they prepare a dish, you shouldn’t feel the pressure to exercise every single time-management or efficiency muscle you have every single moment of every day. You simply build your repertoire of skills for when you need them.
  3. Train your subconscious. The more you write down your goals and priorities, the more you are teaching your brain to focus on what is important to you. This builds a “working memory” around your priorities, enabling you to waste less energy on deciding what you need to do next in the day-to-day, so you can give more brain space to bigger goals and projects.
  4. Maintain a flexible mindset. Even with the best planning, life still throws punches and things play out in ways you could’ve never anticipated. Instead of mislabeling yourself as “failures” because of circumstances out of your control, you have the choice to strengthen your positive influence in any given situation. You can take a proactive approach to these challenges—whether big or small—by adopting a mindset that inspires you to pivot and handle the inevitable changes to your plans in creative and life-giving ways.

Cozy up with this first episode, & you’ll hear:

  • A little about team Evergreen and our heart behind starting this podcast
  • Our shortcut for understanding and getting organized around your unique dynamics
  • A practical tip that helps you shift your mindset from never feeling like you’re doing enough
  • How planning is a lot like cooking—and how learning on the go is a super-effective approach

We’ll be back with The Four Rules of Planning – Part 2 next week!

Please rate & review the podcast!

It does so much to help other women discover the show.

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To celebrate the launch of our podcast, we are giving away a Getting Started Kit (our Annual and two Monthly booklets) + our brand new 2022 Month stickers! Write a review by Friday (Oct 8, 2021) and email a screenshot of your review to helloevergreenplanner@gmail.com to enter the giveaway!

Follow us also on Instagram @EvergreenPlanner (there are ways to enter the giveaway there, too!) and Pinterest @helloEvergreenPlanner.

September 29, 2021

Self-Compassionate Planning + We’re Launching Our Podcast!

Self-compassionate planning

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Posted in Lifestyle Planning

Planning, Pressure & Shame

When we launched our business in 2019, something caught us off guard. After years of field-testing different prototypes with ourselves and friends, we finally had our planner system on the market. The planner had become an indispensable part of our own lives, and we wanted to get it into the hands of others. Orders poured in and we were thrilled to see how other women would use this tool to fuel their goals.

But then we started getting emails and messages from women wanting to know how we thought they should spend their time. They weren’t just wondering whether they were doing this planning thing right—they were wondering if they needed to overhaul their entire lives in order to justify having bought a planner in the first place. These women were feeling both pressure to make perfect plans and shame when their days turned out differently than they imagined. Some were even feeling weighed down by the perception that their planner should look beautiful, even in the midst of their planning.

Now, don’t get us wrong, we’re down for an artful planner spread any day. And we believe there is so much to be learned from the planning community–hacks, tricks, best practices, etc. But we don’t believe that intentional living—and planning as a means to form an intentional life—has to be laden with pressure and shame. We believe quite the opposite.

Using a planner is not about super-womaning our way to an awesome life, or about forcing those around us to bend their lives to make our dreams happen. It’s not always about making a lot of money, or reaching an impressive personal goal, or cramming our life as full as it possibly can be. It’s not about making inflexible plans that don’t adapt as we go.

But we also know that giving up all of our power to be proactive is a sure path to overwhelm. We believe planning is about forming a rhythm that leads to a lifestyle that fuels realistic and life-giving goals, so that those goals can in turn breathe life into your rhythms. We’ve found this is only possible if you take a self-compassionate approach to planning.

What is self-compassionate planning? It is making the best plans you can—consistently over a lot of days—and yet having grace on yourself as you go, knowing that plans do change and that flexibility is key.

Friend, we don’t know your biggest dreams, your biggest pain points, or the goals you’ve set for yourself this year. But we’re excited to put the Evergreen Planner in your hands as a tool that you use to reach those goals.

And as for a self-compassionate mindset?

Well, we’ve got something for that too.

Our Podcast

We’re passionate about helping women craft intentional lifestyles that empower them to achieve their most life-giving goals. When our team gets together to support each other, we end up having these amazing conversations that encourage each of us to stay focused on the things that matter most.

So we decided to throw up some mics so we could share our conversations with you.

On October 4th, 2021 (that’s this Monday!), we’re launching our podcast: Make Space to Thrive.

Self-compassionate planning

Our first season will run for eight episodes, and will be available on all the major platforms.

We’ll be talking about our four rules of planning, taking a deep dive into our R.O.O.T.E.D. goals system, discussing planning while postpartum, how we plan our days & weeks and so much more. We’re so excited to share all we have learned and are learning with you all. But more than anything, we’re excited about taking some of the pressure off, and bringing encouragement to the wonderful women we have met since launching our business. This podcast is for each of you, from our hearts.

xx,

Team Evergreen

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Did you know you can try a piece of the Evergreen Planner system toady for free?! We want every woman to have the tools she needs to be able to begin planning intentionally, which is why we’ve created a free day planner sheet that has all of the major features of our Monthly booklet. Check it out!

July 21, 2021

3 Tips for When Your Day Went Differently Than You Planned

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You had great plans and then… whelp, you don’t know exactly what happened, but none of your targets for the day were accomplished. Your planner looks like a snapshot of someone else’s ideas because it definitely wasn’t the day you just lived.

You had great plans to make plans, but the baby was up all night so you missed your alarm. You threw a brief glance at your planner before you headed out the door, and now you’re home again staring at a blank spread and wondering why you even tried to start using a day planner to begin with.

We’ve been there.

Really.

Just because we started a planner business doesn’t mean we’re immune to the chaos of life, or that we always have days that perfectly match what we planned. In fact, there are days that the planner (you know, the one we spent years developing) is still completely blank as the day comes to an end.

We can’t make all our plans happen, but we have learned a few tricks about reflecting on chaotic days (or seasons) and pivoting to help our planned goals meet our lived reality.

By the time we’re sliding into bed at night with a brain full of noise, we need some perspective. Thankfully, our blank planner is still sitting there, beckoning us to get our thoughts organized once more.

These 3 exercises have helped us turn our brains from overwhelming noise to purposeful reflection:

1. Write out in your planner all the things you did get done that day.

They’re likely not big milestones: you may write in “held teething baby all morning” or “purchased groceries.” Or maybe you did get a lot done because you were hit with inspiration, and you brainstormed and then sketched out your entire business marketing plan for the next three months(!!)… but it just wasn’t the thing you had planned. Whatever you did, write it in. It may not feel like an accomplishment, but seeing on paper how your day played out (even retroactively) will give you perspective.

2. Evaluate how you spent your time.

Did you binge-watch the latest Netflix show? Maybe this means your brain is craving rest and you need to make space for things that will truly revive you. Or, it may mean it’s time to get serious about the time that’s getting frittered away and take your accountability mechanisms to the next level by hiring a coach or getting into a mastermind group. Did life throw you a curve ball and you had to pivot to meet immediate needs? Celebrate that and adjust the next few days to fit in those critical to-do items, dropping the ones you had planned that aren’t essential, and rescheduling the ones you had planned that are. Make notes on what your reflection time reveals. This will enable you to plan more effectively in the future. With your planner in hand, you can even begin, right away, to apply some of the things you learned from troubleshooting your schedule.

3. Learn and plan for the future.

The more you do this, the more patterns will appear. Maybe you gravitate towards errands on a certain day, or find there’s one morning a week you always miss your alarm (thanks to that weekly late night at church). You can change your plans to reflect those patterns. Plan that persistent errand-day for running errands! Give yourself that morning to sleep in (you probably need it)! Get real about how much time you have, and how much time tasks really take. Add at least 15 minutes of margin to pad significant transitions in your day (commutes, nap times, meetings, meals), and make sure you’re scheduling in enough downtime (and actual SLEEP time!)

Your rhythms must inform your plans as much as your plans must dictate your rhythms.

Reflecting on days that don’t go as planned is extremely helpful as you continue to hone a lifestyle that is truly life-giving.

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Are you ready to launch into an entirely new way of planning? We created the Evergreen Planner System because we needed a place to both make plans and evaluate the days when things were off. The Getting Started Kit is the perfect way to try two of our core products – the Annual and the Monthly. Don’t wait until we launch our next subscription box – get the tools you need for intentional living today!