National Stationery Week – Get Organised Day

Get organised day?  That can only mean one thing in my books – planning day!  This is clearly one of my favourite themes simply because it means I get to include pictures of the planners that I love for no other reason than to share them with you, because I love them.  Planners are an essential part of how I organise my life.  I have previously shared how I used 3 different planners on a regular basis.  I am currently changing everything up again so I will be sure to share this with you once I have the new set up.

If you’re new to planning or don’t use one – please consider it!  Planning has really helped me to figure out my dreams, goals and to start reaching them.  Without it, I would be lost and I certainly would not have achieved all of the things that I have achieved today.  I love seeing my goals getting ticked off and my dreams coming closer – and I would absolutely love to see the same for you.

So let’s talk about planners today and my thoughts on how to get organised!  Now there’s tons of ways to use your planners – I think I once made a list that was too long to fit on a single page… Whoops!  But these are a few of my favourite ways to get organised…

The 3 essentials – or even 3 in 1:

1. The “Main” Planner – This is the planner that you use as your go to planner when someone asks you if you are free on a certain day.  It should tell you where you are on any given day and what you are doing.  There’s tons of options for dated diaries and you can opt to get one by year (2016, 2017, 2018 etc) or by academic year so it starts when your school starts and follows the school year!  These days, diaries aren’t restricted to being just 12 months long either – I’ve increasingly started to see 18 month diaries.  If you need to refer to this on a regular basis then I’d definitely recommend getting one small (and light) enough to carry around so you can make plans on the go!

2. The “To Do List” Planner – Now I put this sort of information into my main planner currently. However, sometimes I feel like there’s just not enough space on my planner for my insanely huge to do list…  If you have a lot of to dos or not enough space in the main one then I would highly recommend getting something for your daily or weekly lists – and this can be anything from a piece of paper to a bullet journal (it doesn’t have to be a planner in a diary form – there’s tons of cute to do list notepads that I would recommend too!).  I love my to do lists.  I swear by them.  It definitely helps increase my productivity if I know exactly what I need to do that day or week – and nothing quite beats the satisfaction of crossing off something you’ve done, does it?

3. The “On the Go” Planner – Chances are that you’ve already gotten one of these if you’ve got the above planners.  However, I recently noticed that I didn’t have something that was small enough for me to carry around everywhere I wanted – and I would highly recommend getting one.  Now I say a ‘planner’ but a notebook would work here too, depending on what you want to use it for.  If you’re likely to be asked if you’re free on a certain day a lot then something with a diary would be good so you can note down your events.  However, for me, I just need a notebook on me at all times.  It’s great for when inspiration strikes on the train journey to work and you get a great creative idea that you want to do later (but you’ll forget if you don’t write it down!).  It’s also great when you forget to pack a notebook for an event or turn up to an event without realising you had to make notes…  I’ve done this several times, got to an event expecting not to write anything down and then everyone takes out their notebooks!  Luckily, since I always have one on me, I was able to jot down my notes even though I had not planned in advance.  Pocket Notebooks are particularly great here…

It’s definitely possible to have all of these three planners combined in one. Something small enough to carry around, contains a diary for your events and spare note paper for extra to do lists or note taking… However, I’ve also seen them as 2-3 planners and I think it’s really a case of seeing what works best for you and going with that. Trial and Error is your friend here.
The list doesn’t stop there though – there are tons of ideas on how to use your planners and get more organised.  The real question is, what aspect of your life would you like to get more organised or need to plan for?  Here’s a few quick ideas to get you thinking:

• Fitness Planner
• Food Tracker
• Medical / Health Planner
• Work Planner
• Address Book / PenPals Planner
• Specific Projects – such as a Blog Planner
• Study Planner
• Travel Planner
• and many many more…

I would love to see what you come up with and what you decide to do.

For now, do one thing that will help you to get more organised – trust me, you’ll thank me later for it.  Being organised and planning can help you to achieve your dreams, so let’s get organised today and do this together!
I hope this can help give you some ideas on how to get organised or how to use any of the planners that you have lying around but just don’t use (I have tons of those too, don’t worry!).  I’ve tried to cram as much in the post as possible but if you would like me to go into more depth about anything, please do let me know and I’ll be more than happy to!  I know that I need to revisit my planner set up and create some new set ups as I want different things from my own planning system – for example,  fitness planner (I just need to stop procrastinating and go to the gym… But nah, I rather eat cake.  It’s much more fun!).