My Planning System (2017) -Part 3: Putting it all together

Over the last few posts, I've told you what paper-based items I'm using for planning 2017 and given you a bit more detail about each of them. I realise it was a huge amount of information and probably seemed impossible to follow. So, here is a walk-through of what I do each quarter, month, week, day. Some of you might feel that doing something daily, weekly and monthly is over-kill. Quite a bit of me wonders if it isn't too much at times too, but, this is the system that has (mostly) kept me on track for the last 5 years and maybe some of you will find it helps you too. If it doesn't, no problem! Every one's unique.

My Planning System (2017) - Part 2: Weeks to Days

In this post, I outlined what I would be using in 2017 for planning. These are:

• A book outlining Goals to Projects to Next Actions
• A monthly planner
• My TN with a week + notes diary and a notebook in it
• An A6 Clairefontaine notebook for day planning

In the last post, I gave a bit more detail on the first two elements of my planning system. Today, I'll outline how the last these parts fit together.

My system is essentially the same as it was in this post, but with different paper-based products to achieve the same results! (Incidentally, that post is my most popular post by a country mile!! At the time of writing, it had well over 45 000 hits!).

At close of play yesterday, I had outlined how I got from Goals and Projects to Next Actions and a Plan for the Month. How does this then relate to the other two parts: the TN and the A6 Clairefontaine?

My Planning System (2017) - Part 1: Monthly Planning

In my last post, I outlined what I would be using in 2017 for planning. These are:

• A book outlining Goals to Projects to Next Actions
• A monthly planner
• My TN with a week + notes diary and a notebook in it
• An A6 Clairefontaine notebook for day planning

In this post, I'll outline how the first of these parts fit together into my planning system. This is essentially the same as it was in this post, but with different paper-based products to achieve the same results! (Incidentally, that post is my most popular post by a country mile!! At the time of writing, it had well over 45 000 hits!).

The core of my system is exactly the same as it was in that post, published almost 5 years ago. I have a set of life-areas, and within those life-areas have a set of goals and those goals are broken down to projects. The steps needed to achieve the project are then listed as  next actions.

One thing I've not been good at and need to reinstate, is having the following, clearly visible when I am working on these goals and projects.

Is it my dream?
Is it essential?

Time is finite

When I first posted about my system, my life areas were: Writing, Health and Happiness, Chimwemwe and (Work) with work in brackets as it wasn't really anything I wanted to do, but had to learn how to live with. I have since left that job (hooray!) and so my life-areas are just the three now. Within Health and Happiness there are a number of areas (exercise, social life etc.) but those are the three things that I want to spend time and effort on.

How these goals to next actions are then dealt with, takes a bit of time to explain. Grab a cuppa!

What will I be using in 2017?

I've pretty much settled into a system now and so I'm all set up, ready to go for 2017. In this post, I'll tell you about the components of the system; in the next post, I'll show you how it all fits together.

The System:
One carry-around. This is my Meadowgate TN and it contains a week + notes diary, a monthly insert and a notebook
An A6 daily planner
A separate notebook with Goals to Projects to Next Actions.
An A5 day per page diary to write up my day in

Back in a Ciak (again...)

A5 day per page Ciak diary

Most years, I've had an A5 Ciak which I've used as a daily diary/journal. It's not used for planning, but used to record the day and also my thoughts. One year I made the terrible, terrible mistake of buying a Moleskine. I still shudder when I think about 2013.

2014 saw me back in a Ciak, as did 2015. This year, I won a Quo Vadis Forum page per day diary. I've been struggling womanfully through the year with it (see this post and this post for how well/badly it's been going). I won't buy another though. It's been okay to record highlights of the day and a quick summary, but what I really want is somewhere to not only do that, but reflect on the day too. I used to do that in the Ciaks and will go back to it next year.

As ever, I got my Ciak from The Journal Shop (no affiliation, just a happy customer). I was amazed to see that they were only £4.99 when I got mine. And... I had a 20% off code so in fact, I got it for £4 which is just amazing! They are normally about £15 and seemed to be back up to about £13 when I next looked.

Why do I love the Ciaks so much? The paper quality isn't fabulous and back in 2012, it was the paper quality that pushed me to a Moleskine (which was then even worse than the Ciak). I'll try it out, but I'm not convinced it will cope with fountain pen, but then I'm not sure there are many A5, day per page that do cope with fountain pen. Ciak seems to have stopped claiming that it's okay for fountain pen.

One thing that I demand from a diary/journal is that Saturday and Sunday each have their own page and don't get forced to share a page!

Separate days for Saturday and Sunday

I also love the horizontal elastic closure which is snug enough to hold a pen against the edge of the pages.

All in all, I'm pretty happy to be back in a Ciak for 2017.