Posted by Sue Landsman on Mar.03, 2009

©iStockPhoto.com - Ahmad Hamoudah

Right around now I usually look at my personal planner and feel like crap. Because it’s usually empty. The beginning of each year I buy day-view or month-by-month view pages for my binder, and vow that I’ll use them, and then I don’t and feel like I’m a loser and a tree-killer. February is when I usually clear my desk of last year’s stack of unused “day-at-a-time” sheets and vow to do better.

My problem is that I either fly by the seat of my pants and don’t plan things ahead, or the things we do (music lessons, karate, etc.) are the same time each week so there’s no point in my writing that down on a gazillion pages. I’d imagine most moms with young kids are in the same boat. Do you really need to write down your Tuesday morning Gymboree class on every Tuesday in your planner? Even worse, do you find yourself writing things in after the fact just so your planner doesn’t look so pathetic and empty?

I decided to make my own customized planner, and so can you. Here are some tips and considerations:

• Do you prefer a paper planner or an online one? I flirted briefly with keeping my schedule online, but I found I never checked it. I really like having something that I can flip open and look at, or carry with me.
• Do you find you need both a paper planner AND an online one? As much as I find it easier to plan my time with physical, paper planner, I find it so much easier to enter events and todo’s on my iPhone instead of hand writing them into the planner that, to be honest, I’ve usually left at home. I wanted to find a way to be able to coordinate both of these aspects of running my life.
• What kind of binder do you want, and how often do you change your mind? I love the feel of a leather binder, but in reality found it too bulky to carry around. Instead of an expensive book, I used a pretty, pink, Mead Five-Star three-ring binder. If I suddenly decide pink just isn’t me anymore, I can change the binder without feeling like I’ve wasted a lot of money.
• Make your planner beautiful! The more you like your planner and the more pleasant it is to use, the more you’ll use it. This seems obvious, but as busy women we often underestimate how much these things matter to us, or just don’t bother putting in the effort when it’s “just” for us. There are a wide variety of gorgeous papers and stationery items out there these days. I printed out my Outlook schedule and glued the monthly calendars to pretty paper backgrounds with rubber cement.
• Tailor your planner to your needs. I home school my kids, and often my lesson plans change from what I’ve intended. Or even worse, getting a week behind means that every single week following has to be pushed one week along. So I only print out a month’s worth of “weekly” pages even though I might have the whole season planned. Rather than erasing whole weeks or crossing things out, I can just print out a new weekly sheet as I need it and stick it in my book. I’ve always got a month or two of my weekly schedule clipped onto pages next to my monthly view, and I can reprint them easily without feeling like I’m making a mess.
• Do you need more than just a calendar? Why not print out things that will help you run your household? I’ve always had a “control journal” (a FlyLady term) for household management, but (you guessed it) never used it because it was never in the same place as my planner. How could I plan meals if I didn’t know what day it was or what I was doing that week? Having important information in two different places is just a big lose for someone who’s time-challenged or already has her hands full managing a fleet of small people with even more primitive time-management skills.

All of this is wonderful, but being a mom is hard enough; you don’t want to reinvent the wheel. You can make your own planner without having to start from scratch or do all the work yourself. There are some great sites that have templates you can print out and tailor to your own planner, including to-do lists, weekly schedules, meal planners, freezer and pantry inventories and anything you can possibly want.

Some very nice-looking printable forms

Weekly planner pages

Diyplanner.com has some great information and reviews. For anyone interested in David Allen’s Getting Things Done philosophy, or the Franklin Covey methodology, there’s plenty of information here about how to implement these with your own personally printed and designed planner. What better way to be productive than to have a system that you’ve tailored to work for you?

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Posted under About Mom.