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April 27, 2022

Why You Need A Hub for Your Brain – Podcast Ep 13

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Posted in Lifestyle Planning, Mindset, Our Story, Podcast Episodes, Podcast Season 2

Listen to episode 13 on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

A few years ago, I read this crazy statistic that shocked me. It said the average person spends 5,000 hours in their lifetime looking for misplaced items. Ladies, that’s over 6 months solid spent feeling totally disorganized, simply trying to unblock your progress. I think the reason this hit me so hard was that I completely identified with this statistic. I knew it had to be accurate based on how I tended to feel in that season of my life. I also knew that this disorganized, fretful overwhelm was seriously holding me back from accomplishing the big goals I deeply cared about.

I realized I needed a hub for my brain—a one-stop home for #allthethings I was trying to juggle. I knew that if I could capture the important details of life in one place, then I could arrange the tasks I needed to do into my schedule, and my brain would have everything it needed to prioritize and stay intentional with my time. The Evergreen Planner was born out of this desire to finally feel truly organized.

Now, when I’m feeling spacey, I have a single place I can come back to in order to know what tasks I need to tackle next. This tool has saved me so much of the precious time that I used to waste spinning my wheels, and empowers me to be more present in my home, stay on top of my daily todos, and weekly make progress on those bigger goals and dreams that motivate me to stay intentional.

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March 2, 2022

Quickstart Your Planning – Podcast Ep 9

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Posted in Lifestyle Planning, Planner Tips, Podcast Episodes, Podcast Season 2

Listen to episode 10 on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

You want to create a personalized time-management strategy and maximize your planner. But you’re not sure where to start or how to keep making the space to figure it all out when you’re still trying to juggle everything you already have on your to-do list.

If that sounds like you, then you’re our people.

And you need the Quickstart Your Planning Guide.

About This Episode

If you listened to the first season of our podcast, you’ll remember our Four Rules of Planning. Those rules were a helpful start, but in the months after publishing those episodes we realized a couple of things…

First, we don’t like rules. We like planning strategies that are personalized to each individual, and rules can rarely accomplish that level of customization.

Second, we couldn’t easily remember the four rules… and we wrote them. We knew that wasn’t going to work; we needed something easy to grasp that was memorable.

Lastly, we realized there was a crucial element missing (spoiler alert: it was the brain-dump!).

So we went back to the drawing board with a goal to make this process simple and memorable. Enter the PLANS Acronym. Once you know this acronym, you will be equipped to execute a process that will be easy to come back to again and again. The steps listed below are foundational for creating an effective, personalized, and simplified planning strategy, while still executing all those day-to-day responsibilities you can’t let slide while you figure out how to maximize the use of your planner.

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September 15, 2021

Planner Hack: The Amazing Paperclip

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Posted in Planner Tips

One of the biggest pain-points we personally had during the years that we were testing out #alltheplanners was simply this: it was too dang easy to get lost in your own notebook!

The most amazing brainstorming session would get lost in a moment as we moved on to fill out the next prompts and schedules, rarely to be seen again. This was annoying at best, and actually radically complicated our lives at worst when our week’s agenda was inaccessible in the moments when we needed to make quick decisions during the course of our days. We solved this problem in a big way with our innovative dutch door layout.

As we became more skilled in the use of our own planner, we began using a simple tool – a paperclip – to aid us in our ability to navigate, mark and reference various key pages. This one hack put an end to getting lost in our own planner for good, making the navigation of the Evergreen Planner a real dream. Our planner system is minimalistic, yet dynamic. We love that you can effectively use a simple ballpoint pen to get your thoughts organized on paper, or that you can just as well bust out your entire collection of microns and washi tape for beautifully curated designs.

Our paperclip hack follows that same principle that makes our planner system gold—you can go simple or you can go elaborate—either way, the functionality remains.

Here are some ideas on how to leverage the paperclip to up-level your planning game:

Bookmark this Week: A paperclip can also be used to mark the current day on your vertical week’s agenda (and hold old weeks closed).

Bookmark Today: Hold the extra day spreads closed so your Monthly easily opens up to your current day!

Secure Keepsakes: You can paperclip keepsake papers or polaroid photos to the pages of our Monthly or Annual & turn them into memory books.

Flag What’s Important: Ordinary paperclips can be customized using your favorite washi tape and they can be used to flag specific pages.

Maximize Cover Functionality: You can paperclip receipts or other bits of paper you need easily accessible onto the outside of your Cover’s pockets!

Keep Them Close: Paperclips can easily be stored on the back cover of your Monthly, ready to whip out whenever you need one!

The paperclip provides so many great advantages to the planning process. We are constantly grabbing paperclips to use in different ways, which is why we’ve curated a fun and varying collection to include in our subscription boxes.

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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!

September 8, 2021

Time-Blocking: Your Framework for Productivity

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Posted in Planner Tips

One of the most essential features in our Monthly booklets is the time-blocking section on the day spread.

When researching how to increase productivity — especially when needing to balance multiple roles in one day — there was one practical skill that came up again and again: time-blocking.

It’s highly recommended by productivity experts, and after using it in our own lives, we get why. When you make space to get realistic about your time availability, set up habits and rhythms, thoughtfully organize your tasks, apply prioritization and batching methods, and pad everything with ample margin—your productivity will increase.

With our Monthly booklet, the time-blocking feature on the day spread is completely customizable to your unique schedule. You can write in each hour to reflect your ideal rise and sleep schedule, or focus on only your working hours.

Think through your body’s energy, productivity, and rest rhythms (and for mamas, the rhythms of your kiddos). Then line out your tasks accordingly. Do you have the most creative energy first thing in the morning? Slot your most creative and important work during that time. Are you working during the day and making progress on your side hustle in the evening? Focus your time-blocking on those evening hours, writing in the key project you plan to tackle in the to-do column. Do you capitalize on your kiddos’ nap time to get work done? Slot that as your predictable working hours.

New to time-blocking?

A great way to develop this habit is to start by writing what you did do at the end of each day. Do not pass over this tip, it may seem simple, but it is a powerful tool for tracking the rhythms you already operate in. The truth is, you can’t wipe your current rhythms away and start over with a brand new schedule you think would be awesome. We are creatures of habit, and it simply won’t work. You have to begin to make change by first evaluating what you currently do, and then incrementally adjust the things that need adjusting. This will also help you see what is currently working well in the way you go about your day, and continue those life-giving habits you already have. By writing down what you did, you will be able to:

  • gauge what is realistic for you to accomplish in this season
  • spot the areas where you could use some discipline (we all have them!)
  • note the days or hours you tend to run errands, plan appointments or take care of home tasks
  • chart out the natural rhythms you (& your family) already operate in (meals, naps, school, work, etc.)

A few days (or even weeks) of this, and you will have loads of insight you can then use as you start to plan days before they happen. The practice of writing down what you did is a trick you can pull out again and again whenever you hit a season of transition (new job, new baby, new home, etc.). When things feel a little off, just take a few days to evaluate your rhythms and see what insights you can gain about what is working and what needs changed.

If you’ve never made a habit of time-blocking, start today! Flexibility is always required, but you’ll be amazed at how much time-blocking will enhance productivity. It’s the gift that just keeps giving.

Want to keep it fun? Highlighters, colored pencils, or even washi tape can be great ways to visually track the different sections of your day.

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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!