For year 2023, the planning tools I will be using would mainly consist of a desktop table calendar and a planner that cost 35 baht (about USD1) from B2S bookstore. Below is the video of the planner and calendar that I am using:
It is not the price but how we use the planner
Each one of us have preferance of the kind of design and look that we would like to see in our planner. If you prefer planning on paper and you work in corporate world, you would probably need a thicker executive planner which looks more regal. I have shared in another post on how I used a diary for my planning at work.
Now that I am a full time caregiver, my life is more simplied. With simplicity, so would my planning tools be. For the past few years, I have used a table calendar and a simple thin monthly spread planner for my planning. I have chosen both a calendar and planner that seemed childish in design but that inspires me as I am always drawn by art and colour.
Table desktop calendar
The calendar is located in my room. I have important appointments and deadlines written on my calendar. That is why I would always select a desktop calendar that contain space for me to write on.
Monthly Spread Planner
The main use of the planner is to plan out my online content. Rather than to have all the ideas all in my head, I would rather list down on the planner. I use a mechanical pencil or sometimes an erasable pen when doing my planning so that it is easy to make changes.
Early last year in my 2022 planner, I was actually planning my content ie publishing schedule, and setting targets and deadlines for myself. However in April 2022, my mom got admitted to hospital with serious lung infection and her condition was life threathening. I was her caregiver and stayed with her in the hospital. When she was discharged after 3 weeks in hospital, I decided to cease all my online content creation to focus on caring for my mom.
Hence, sometimes despite the best of our plans, life may have unexpected turns. If it does, we should never be hard on ourselves and learn to focus on what that truly matters.
The monthly spread planners I have used throughout the years:
Literally every year I would visit bookstores to look for these monthly planners of A5 size that are thin and easy to fit into my carry on bag. The above are all acquired after I left corporate world hence I use the planner mostly for my online content planning such as:
- setting publishing schedule for my different blogs
- recording earnings and other analytic metrics
- when I revived my YouTube channel, I also set a publishing schedule to my YouTube
- setting goals and target, followed by steps I would take to achieve those goals
For longer content such as content drafts, I would either:
- create a draft within my site to write the articles
- have a simple physical notebook to jot down ideas
I do not use a notebook with a fixed year because there is no specific time that the book will run out.
Let me go through the monthly spread planner layout. I would use example of me someone who creates online content:
The front and back cover:
This A5 size planner does come in 4 different colours which you can see in my YouTube video. When you open, the first page looked as per below. There is a partial page where it consists of stickers.
Project planner 2023 page:
A calendar of each month is attached to the left side. I have the same page in my 2022 planner and I used it to jot down video topics I was going to upload for that month- earlier in 2022 I would produce videos when I had the time and schedule them for publishing. The page enables me to see at a glance what are the videos I have published.
Note: As mentioned in April 2022, it all came to an abrupt halt when my mom was hospitalized and I decided to cease all online work to focus on nursing her back to health. Hence with the empty columns, I actually wrote down my earnings each month together side by side with the previous year’s earnings.
A year at a glance
I use the page to jot down important holidays and the time that I need to produce content for that period. Without planning, I tend to be late in getting up content related to a particular festival or celebration so a year at a glance is helpful.
Monthly spreads:
The monthly spread is something that I refer to a lot. I still prefer doing approximate planning using paper than digital. As I am using this planner for my online content, I would write down important holidays or festivals as some of my content is seasonal. Then I would plan and then write down topics of content that I would be publishing that day.
Since I am referring to this page often, I also include important appointments for example my mom’s medical checkup dates in the calendar. I would write down some analytics data based on the metrics that I am tracking as well as write on the day when I achieve certain milestones.
On the left side, I would usually list down some topic ideas which I have not implemented. After I have done it, I will strike it off.
The same process would continue for each subsequent months. After the monthly spreads, the planner also contain the 2024 Year at a Glance where it can be used to list down important dates and approximate goals that one need to achievel
After that, there are some pages with different design for one to customize to use as one wish.
Then the end of the page, the calendar for 2024 is attached. With the last page saying to ‘see you again next year’.
You can compare this to the 2022 planner.
HAPPY PLANNING regardless of the planner you are using. If you have some old and unused planners, here are what you can do with them 🙂
For more ideas related to planning, you can check out the Planning section in this blog.
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