I don’t know about you, but my life and my needs are constantly changing. When I was a college student, I had to keep track of my small amount of funds and my courseload; my work-study job was the same every Saturday and Sunday. In graduate school I added two children plus occasional babysitting, so add family scheduling, meal planning, and the like to that. When we were looking for where we wanted to live and locating a small farm, I was seriously researching housing prices, taxes, cost of auto insurance, cost of utilities, homeschool regulations, and more, as well as assisting my husband with his job search and finishing my master’s thesis When we moved into our fixer-upper I had to keep track of the housing renovations. We added animals — cows, pigs, chickens, goats, turkeys, ducks, geese — and I had to monitor how much they ate, how much feed to buy, and what it cost to feed and house them. Then I added homeschool planning. I started a homeschool group, then later was an office assistant at the school where my children danced, then a vice-president of a dance company, then a marketing coordinator for another dance school and company. A few years later I accepted a teaching position at a local private college while I continued to homeschool; a few years after that I began a small marketing business.
So, what one great planner did I use to get me through all of life’s changes? There wasn’t one. There were many.
There are so many different planning systems on the market today. Rather than being a bad thing that there is no one “miracle” solution to everything, it is wonderful that there are different products to meet different needs and personalities.
How do you find a planning system that is right for you?
You need to give up the idea that you need to find your ONE perfect solution for all aspects of you life in one system. No one’s needs and personalities are the same; the best system is going to combine a few different elements and resources. The key is to integrate your tools so that they all work together.
For example, here is what is currently working for me. As a person who wrote her entire master’s thesis in a spiral-bound notebook with a pencil, I’ve never been one for electronic gadgets; however, I need to access my calendar, tasks, homeschool lessons, and more very quickly. Instead of developing a paper Control Journal as developed by FlyLady, I’ve used her same principles of creating routines and working according to zones by programming Microsoft Outlook’s task and appointment settings with repetitive basic tasks; as I mentally still need to have a paper copy, I print out my to-do list daily and add it to my Franklin Planner. In my planner I carry a basic calendar, address book, coupons, stamps, etc. I use it almost like an Office in a Bag except that it is a classic size. I have considered getting a Palm-compatible cell phone; however, in my remote location, the Palm phones do not get as good reception as a regular cell phone, so I’m hesitant to make the switch (especially since we dropped our land line in favor of cell phones). I use Homeschool Tracker to organize assignments, and a basic notebook to manage each of my larger projects (home remodeling, farming, cake decorating, etc.).
The key is finding the right tool or tools for the job. Homeschool Tracker has a scheduling function, but its application could not possibly keep track of all the non-homeschool roles I undertake. I couldn’t possibly keep all the information on all my different projects in one Control Journal. But what I can do is have a few tools that work together (i.e. Homeschool Tracker and Outlook are computer programs with print options to go into my Franklin Planner as necessary).
You also need to take into consideration your personality. If you cannot stand to write everything down all the time, a Franklin Planner won’t work for you no matter how much its company proclaims to have the best organizing solution. If you are a techno-junkie you probably will do better with a Blackberry or Palm/Treo device. Maybe a simple travel calendar is all you need. Rather than go on the search for a great planning, sit down, think about all the things you need, and then look for what YOU need, not what the “experts” say you need.
Finally, don’t get overwhelmed trying to find the “perfect” system, or think that you need to use a product exactly the way it was designed. Do what works for you — modify things as they need to be changed and don’t worry about whether you are organizing “right” or “wrong” according to someone else’s dictates. The only advice you should be listening to is your own. Take the information that’s out there and interpret it for you.
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