My Planner Binder

I'm probably one of the only millenials that carries around a paper planner. Scratch that, it's not a paper planner. It's a 3-ring binder that I lug around in my purse. But in it, I made the perfect planner. It has three sections: a monthly calendar section that I print from this website, the weekly section by Passion Planner, and my favorite part- a daily productivity schedule that Donald Miller made, called "The Storyline Productivity Schedule."

Here's what I like about each section:

Monthly:
I am really perfectionist about my planners. If I have to see erase marks or white out or crossed off plans or mismatched pen colors, it makes me crazy. When you just print out the page, you can print another one if it starts looking not so nice.

I also need to be able to write out my appointments and see the whole month at a time. Otherwise I will not remember. I did have a couple month period where I would quickly add an appointment by only writing the time. For example, Tuesday the 10th, 3:00. What was happening at 3:00? Who was I meeting? Would I need to prepare for this meeting? Where was I supposed to be going? No one knows. I'm sorry to anyone I flaked on by accident!

Weekly:
Same as the monthly, it helps me visualize all of my plans for the week so I don't forget them. It also helps me plan out how to use my time. There's a section for a weekly to do list for home and work, and that helps me be a little more realistic about how much I might possibily accomplish in a week. There are some other fun things too: a fun things that happened section, a place for notes and brainstorming, and something to focus on each day.

Daily:
I have a hard time focusing. I want to work on 10 projects at one time. I just closed a bunch of windows on my computer, so now I only have 8 open. I've checked Facebook like 15 times since I started writing this. The storyline planner is the best for people like me. I write in it almost every day to help give me focus for the day, and to give me a fighting chance of doing more meaningful work. It limits you to projects to 3 and to put them in order of most mentally challenging/ most important. There's a spot for daily appointments and a to-do list, which are both nice, but the best sections are the, "if I could live today over again, I'd..." and the "things I get to enjoy today..." ones. Having to answer both of those questions in the beginning of the day almost always helps me to approach the day with a better mindset, more gratitude, and a little less regret.

If you want to make my incredible planner, it can be yours for like $1.99 (costs: a regular binder and printing off some free pages online).