Intentional Planning

For many years I used a planner. I loved my planner. It was pretty and sleek and I carried it everywhere. Well, everywhere I could. Sometimes that bulky thing just wasn't easy to cart with me, and when I got my palm, I found a way to get my lists on there and carrying around a planner became a thing of the past. 

I found all of these little lists on my computer recently. These are the lists I used to print out each week to help me stay focused and avoid having to write out everything I wanted to do on a daily and weekly basis. 

This is what my lists on my palm looked like. I colored each week and would check it off with my stylus and then start over again each month. It was nice to see that I didn't have to rewrite the lists each week. This was the first time I really started to see the benefits of reoccurring tasks and liked the time it saved me when planning. 

I started separating my days each week into different focus days. While there are many things I do every day, having my days and the activities in them focused has helped me know when to plan tasks of the same nature and has created a routine that my entire family has benefited from. 

Last August I took a trip to visit my sister and her new baby. By myself. I was really excited to go and have some time by myself. I was gone over the weekend and into the following week. When I came home, I found my house basically clean. Because I have had "cleaning day" on Mondays for so many years, my husband and children all pitched in on Monday and did the laundry and basic cleaning around the house. Floors, kitchen, and bathrooms were all clean. Pretty amazing, especially since I did not expect this or say anything about it. 

Sit at the computer and get all the same types of tasks and chores done. 

My family knows that telling me things they need me to buy on Wednesday morning is the last chance they get until the next week. It has made me less of a crazy person running back and forth and saves me time and energy. 

This is just the last stuff to make sure I have a free day. Planning your day of rest and focus on yourself makes the rest of the week of work seem okay because there is a fun day coming. This one trick of planning my fun has been one of the most amazing changes in my life. 

Planning a day of renewing myself. Every week is different, but I focus on doing what I feel like doing. Sometimes it's rest and sometimes it's play - but every week it is something I WANT to do.