The lovely Leonie Dawson workbooks!

(Affiliate Link, just so ya kno)

Guys guys guys.

I had a super-hard 2014, and when I got here to 2015, i decided that I've had enough. So I went to find ways to help me get out of that track--the one where I'm angry and trapped and poor and sad all the time--and into a new one where I'm happier, healthier, more balanced, more alive, more myself. I found a handful of workbooks that I'm working through now, and I love these particular two so much I had to say something about them. 

I did the Biz Workbook last week, and it clarified a whole bunch of things about my nailpolish business that I hadn't even thought about, and has already helped me lay down a plan of action for the year. I'm going to run through it again for this blog to see if I can parry it into a business of some sort, and again for my self-publishing / writing career. And then I'm going to find a way to smoosh it all together into one unified Plan.

I started on the personal one last night. It's harder, looking at the more personal stuff that consitutes "life" rather than "work", but it already makes me feel calmer, stronger, braver, and more open, just reading through it and answering the questions, and it's amazing to feel that way when I haven't actually changed anything yet. 

If you're looking for clear, caring, honest guidance that happens to also be really uplifting and super-pretty, click on that picture up there (or the same link under it), and let's get started! Sometimes all it takes is someone outside yourself asking the right questions, and things get a whole lot more clear.

Here's what I did:

It comes with a calendar that's supposed to go on the wall, but I already have a wall calendar, so I printed it two-pages-per-sheet and folded it accordion-style, taping up the edges to it's a book. 

Then I put that calendar into my home-made makeshift Midori-style planner (I'm calling it my Jankidori because it's pretty janky, but it gets the job done!), and as I work through the workbook, I'm putting dates, notes, deadlines, days off, ritual days, whatever on that calendar.

The month-in-review pages are paper-clipped to the back, waiting. The reminder pages are in the front folder. The pretty poster-pages, I'm keeping out and hanging around my room. And the pages of the workbook itself, which I also printed two-per-sheet, I'm taping and stapling into a notebook as I work through them, section by section, so I can see everything and have an easier way to look through it all later, when I  need to re-evaluate, remind, check, remember, or anything else. She says at the beginning of each book that we should aim for a well-worn workbook, and I so am. And I'm loving the basic creativity of pasting and taping and stapling those pages into the notebook.

Have you ever used one of Leonie Dawson's notebooks? How do you use it? Do you use any other workbooks to get your ducks in a row each year? Share in the comments below!

How to schedule when you hate scheduling

Confessions:

• I love office supplies
• I love datebook supplies
• I hate scheduling
• Without a schedule I flounder

This is a tangle of love and hate that I have to deal with ALL THE TIME. When I was in school, scheduling was a must--I had to make sure I had enough time to get everything done on time, as well as whatever I had to do in my life. In Highschool and in College, I had those planner books that come with being a student, and that made things easier; in Gradschool, I not only didn't have one of those books, I also didn't have physical classes, and for a large chunk of it, I didn't have a job, so there was no external way to force a schedule, and I had to learn to schedule myself.

What I learned was that I hated it.

I don't like imposing deadlines on myself. I don't like the feeling that if something goes long, or if I can't sleep at night and oversleep in the morning because of it*, I've messed up the whole plan. I don't like the idea that things can only happen on one day at one specific time. I don't like the constant failure-feeling standard sorts of scheduling was giving me.

But I also learned that I love little pages that tell me what needs doing, I love lists, I love looking back through my notebook and seeing what I did do. From a lifetime of dealing with myself, I've learned that I need a framework to hang my days on, but if there's more than that I start feeling trapped, and then I start feeling like I'm failing, but to stay creative I need to feel like I'm succeeding, and like I have the flexibility to go with new ideas when they come.

So I adapted the old school-style scheduling, and I allow myself to look at it each week and see what does and doesn't work for the week coming up, and to change it totally if my needs change.

Here's how:

Sunday is weekly-schedule day. My week starts on Monday, because I like to keep a weekend together on a schedule, not split it up, so the day before, I do the schedule.

• I look at what needs doing, and any non-negotioable deadlines I have--usually due-dates for bills, or appointments, or my babysitting schedule.
• I look to see if it's a pay week, and when money is meant to clear from Etsy or wherever.
• I set up the things that are the same every week.
• I look at the wall calendar and the future-dates list I keep to see if any of those things are happening in the week I'm looking at.

And I write all that stuff down--even the routine things, because I WILL forget to write my four pages, forget laundry, forget to do the week's blog posts. I'm super-easily distracted by things like whims, weather, allergies. If it's written down, it has to be done. These all go on a week-at-a-glance sheet. They're available all over the place, but right now I'm using one I found at the Target Dollar Spot last year, the red one in the pic above.

Then, I make a list. There'll be other lists during the week, but I make a master list at the beginning, while I'm thinking about scheduling, of all the things I'd like to do this week. Sometimes it's just in my notebook, since I'll be sticking the schedule in there anyway, but usually, lately, it's on this to-do list thing I also found in the Dollar Spot, the green one up there. This particular page is great because, for whatever reason, it's divided into three different list sections, and I use them for Blog Topics for the week, Shop stuff that needs doing, and writing stuff that needs doing. I'll also write down about three reminder-goals of how I want to be during the week--things like "wake up early", or "do tai chi before getting started", etc. Sometimes I'll write stuff I'm waiting on that's coming in this week--orders that should arrive that the shop is waiting on, books for review that I might get, a magazine that I'm expecting soon, stuff like that.

The important part is that this list is separate from the schedule, so that none of it is bound to any specific time or day and is therefore available to any day, whenever I have time. And that the weekly schedule is not planned down to the hour--only a list of things I need to do on that day, at some point, in whatever order I feel like doing them.

And some weeks, that's all I do. But I have options for more.

A lot of times, I'll take a pen of a different color, and I'll write down what I actually did do on each day on the schedule--especially if there's a lot going on that's memorable, holidays or visits or movie premiers and stuff.

If a particular day is really busy, I'll put one of those spiral-time chronodex pages in the notebook near the weekly schedule, because I like the shape, but I'll color them in as I go, rather than planning beforehand, so I don't have to change it. I'll also add a list of things that need doing, and check them off as I go, as I add them to the spiral.

A lot of weeks, I have a secondary, sort of aspirational list--the week's journal prompts, reminders to start a new writing project, the arts or crafts things I want to get to this week, stuff like that.

If a whole week is busy, instead of a week-at-a-glance, I'll use a two-page-per-week schedule so I have more room to make notes and add details. 

And sometimes I'll find some fantastic new idea that I just have to adapt and add, and that goes into the week's pages, too.

And that's how I schedule myself without limiting myself.

How do you schedule things?

NOTES:

* Which happens a lot, because literally almost anything can throw off my sleeping schedule, AND, my natural pattern tends towards staying up until four or six and sleeping all day, which is not the sort of timing that works with, like, any real-life business in the outside world.

Starting a new month in your journal

Which is also your notebook and sketchbook. Because reasons.

 I feel like a new month is a chance to start over, and to try new things. It's definitely a chance to add in new pages, to replace the ones you've been using all the previous month with clean, open, fresh ones. Here's some of what I'm doing right now.

Because my journal is the same book as my notebook, my dream journal, my day-to-day list-book and scratchpad, and everything else, I set up a month like so:

• A new calendar for the month. Lately, I've been using the one sent by StarGardener in her Right Brain Planner subscription, and it's great. I'll use this one for scheduling, notes, what I did and what I should do, whatever. 
• I usually also have a second (and sometimes a third) dedicated calendar to record weather, moods, how I feel, etc. I usually use the freebies from LiveCraftEat for that, since they're cute, clean, have a lot of space, and I was using them before I discovered the #RBP.
• I also tend to put a little smudge of any nail polish I use on the day it's used, or the day it's bought.

• This month I'm trying something new: Across from my calendar, I've added in a sheet of things I want to track this month, with a square to fill in for each day--practical things like when I babysit, when I get orders in my shop, when I exercise, and more aspirational things like meditation, reviews, stuff like that. It's also got lines for mood, body, whether I keep to my diet, household chores I tend to forget, stuff like that.
• Then there'll be a page for me to track my monthly spending, because I've gotten bad about that again.
• A page for the first week's schedule and to-do list.
• A page for ongoing monthly notes, things I need to remember during the month, and future dates. Usually also whatever from last month still needs doing, sometimes on its own to-do list, and sometimes just in a general way, mixed in with other pages.
• Then it goes back to being a journal.

I'll mark the pages I need to remember to go back to with little post-it tabs, and I'm playing with the idea of color-coding the edges of pages so I can more easily find things--but that'll probably be more like something I do when I'm closing the book, as part of the indexing process.

Throughout the month, I have my RightBrainPlanner pages:

And I usually have a page a week or a month where I just stick down things I find--lately, it's been things like leaves from the playground, colored bits of paper off the ground, samples of new art supplies / nail polish / whatever, pretty packaging off things I buy, just stuff like that.

Sometimes I put a list of journal questions to answer during the month, a list of goals for the month, a list of items that need buying, a rough financial plan; it all depends on what's going on and how I feel about it, but these are usually all clustered together, set up when I start a new month.

I also like to Take A Moment--I'll think about, and sometimes write about, what happened during the last month, what I learned from it, and what I can do in the month ahead. This is especially useful when the month I just finished was hard or hectic, and it gives a feeling that I've wrapped it up, that I can move forward without dragging all that behind me.

Do you do anything special when you prep for a new month? How do you track the passage of time, either in your notebook, your journal, or your planner?