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timeblocking

February 2, 2022

Setting ROOTED Goals: Tailored to Your Lifestyle

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Posted in Goal Setting, Lifestyle Planning, Mindset, Our Story

Sustainable, Lasting, and Life-Giving Goals Are:

Recap:

Last week, we talked about how to make sure your goals are clear and actionable, so that you can make significant progress whenever you have the time. Today, we’re going to talk about that time, about how to create a symbiotic relationship between your goals and your lifestyle so they mutually support each other over the long-haul.

Step 4 is all about how to Tailor Goals to Your Lifestyle.

Other goal setting systems might show you how to reverse-engineer your goal (what we talked about last week), but then they end there and wish you good luck. This system shows you how to look at your goal in the context of your daily life, and then make strategic shifts in your schedule in order to make space for this goal.

Learning From Experience

When I (Shelby) was seven months pregnant with my first, my husband and I decided that I would work from home. At the time, designing a planner was nowhere on my radar. I had a complex system of to-do lists and digital calendars that makes my head spin to think back on. But what was worse than my lack of a cohesive system of organization was my total lack of understanding about the concept of trade-offs.

That’s why, at seven months pregnant with my first baby, I signed the biggest freelancing contract I’d ever seen. Without fully realizing what I was doing, and with one tiny digital stroke of the pen, I had committed the next two years of my life to the completion of a very rigorous and mentally straining project that would teach me the concept of trade-offs through the hard knocks of experience.

On top of it all, I had a severe deficit in my personal time-management skills. Unsurprisingly, this turned into a years-long season of overwhelm that bubbled into every area of my life.

Even so, I have to admit that I am thankful for that insane season of life. It was genuinely good work (a dream project, really), and I learned SO, SO much from it.

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October 27, 2021

How We Plan Our Days – (Podcast Ep. 4)

How we plan our days

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Posted in Lifestyle Planning, Planner Tips, Podcast Episodes

Listen on Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts.

Before the Evergreen planner system, I (Clari) had never used a true day-planner. I had tried a myriad of different planners when I worked as an executive assistant before having kids, but they were the types that only had a small box, a column, or a couple of lines for each day. I also used a digital calendar to coordinate meetings and make sure nothing was double booked, but other than getting binged with meeting reminders, I didn’t really reference it or use it to effectively plan my days. My thoughts, plans and tasks were scattered among digital notes, emails, sticky notes, a half-used planner and to-do lists written on random pieces of paper.

But then I became a mom and quit my traditional job. It never occurred to me that a planner could be used to plan rest, to form life-giving family rhythms, or to plan intentional time with my kiddos—just as much as it could be used to make sure critical work projects or mundane home tasks were completed. I again wandered through my days doing what was in front of me, and working off one endlessly long to-do list.

Annie Dillard, in her book The Writing Life, wrote, “How we spend our days is of course how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and that one is what we are doing.”

The reality is we have a lot of agency over whether we live our days intentionally, with purpose, or whether we let them pass by, moving from task to task based on emotions or a crushing sense of urgency. But we can just as easily fall into the trap of trying to squeeze every moment of productivity out of each day, neglecting our needs for rest or even the ones we’re called to love. But in order to find that middle way, we have to begin by planning each day.

The beauty of planning each day (especially when you have an entire spread and can plan with the context of your week in view, like you can with our Monthly booklet), is that you are able to plan each day in a way that honors the season you’re in, the ones you’ve been given to love, and the work you’re responsible for.

And planning a lot of days, over several weeks and months, enables you to begin forming life-giving rhythms that work to breathe life into your family and help you make progress on those bigger goals (revisit our Four Rules of Planning and R.O.O.T.E.D. Goals episodes for more on these concepts).

In this episode, we walk through how we each plan our days on the day pages of our Monthly booklet. If you’d like to follow along, you can download our free printable below. This printable has all the major elements of our Day page, enabling you to see exactly what we are talking about as we plan the different elements of our day using the time-blocker, top targets, prompts, etc. Because it’s the tool we each use, we talk about our specific planner throughout this episode. However, the principles we talk about can transfer to a lot of different planners, so whatever planner you use, we believe this will be an episode you find valuable!

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If you haven’t yet, please take a moment to rate and review this podcast or share it with a friend! It’s the best way to help other women find this life-giving content. We’re so thankful for you!

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 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!