Look what I found for you.

A gorgeous 2012 calendar over at Creative Mamma. I seriously love it

Print out on card or paper, punch two holes on the top, hang by a ribbon on binder rings or through the punched holes just as is, if your ribbon is thin enough.

There are other calendar formats on that same page if this one doesn’t suit your style – it’s my favourite though because there’s enough space to write notes.

(if you’ve got a few minutes, go browse her archives – she has tons of free and gorgeous things. I’ve used her handmade circle stickers for months.)

And now… my contribution to setting up your year for success…

I set goals every month – no surprise there.

For 2012 I decided to make a cute goals page for every month. There are two forms on the one page – one page with all the goals listed (I’ve restricted them to 15 and I think even 15 is PLENTY) and another with the goals separated into categories.

This free download will be available to all the subscribers of my list as I’ll be sending them out in the last week of the month, for the month ahead.

Go here to sign up and get your January pages.

The idea is to print, write and stick it up somewhere. If you see it, you’re more likely to do it

What are your top 3 goals for 2012?

PS If you’re already on my list, you’ll get an email from me later today

Amanda from Michigan, USA writes I love all your posts but I especially enjoy the ones about your planners/notebooks and how you organize them.

I’m secretly very glad Amanda wanted to know about the planning aspect since it is one thing that really works very well in my life.

First and most importantly, I do weekly planning – of our household, my business, socially, etc.

I firmly believe that doing only daily planning will drive you nuts – it certainly did for me – because you really feel the pressure of the to-do list every. single. day.

I do my business planning on Fridays because that’s when my accountability partner and I chat. Household planning usually gets done before the grocery shop – these days that’s a Thursday – but when I go back to work (I’m still on maternity leave), it’ll also move to Fridays. And then, the social and personal stuff gets done on a Sunday late afternoon.

My tools

I use both a paper and an electronic (Outlook) planner. Outlook is mainly to remind me to pay bills and not miss appointments especially when I’ve had busy days where I haven’t even opened my paper diary.

We also have a ginormous calendar in our kitchen where we mark off any socials but also things like when we need to phone in the electricity meter reading, when the gardener is due (we only get him in twice a month), when I start a new bottle of vitamins for the babies, etc, etc.
Household

I get an immense sense of satisfaction when I can use up stuff in the freezer and pantry so I first have a look there before I do my menu plan for the week.

Usually after I see which basic items I have, I add to my grocery list. E.g. if I have chicken in the freezer and I want to make Apricot Chicken, I may have to add a can of apricots or a sachet of brown onion soup to the grocery list.

Then I do a quick check through the house to see if we have things like breakfast and lunch goodies, cleaning stuff, baby items like formula and nappies and personal items for D and me.

Business

Quickly, in a nutshell, because I’ve written a whole system on organising your business, I review goals and set some action steps every week.

Personal and social

On Sunday nights I check all the calendars and see what’s etched in stone (doctors’ visits, supper with friends, etc.) and what still has to be done but can be moved around (gym!) depending on how busy we are. Also we don’t like to be too busy in any one week, more so than ever now with the babies because sleep is our number 1 priority.

I then plan when I will work on which business tasks because I don’t like feeling stressed out with too much to do. You see, I’ve realised my limitations

I usually coach clients on Mondays so I’ll do a freezer meal (almost no kitchen time). Tuesdays I write my weekly newsletter so I won’t make any social plans. And so on.

My other notebook

I also carry around a notebook to jot down basically anything that strikes my fancy:

• things to blog
• talk to nanny about ________
• things to buy
• website changes
• birthday cards to write out
• etc

If there’s anything that needs to be transferred to the planner, I do so on a Sunday evening so that there’s actual allocated time to attend to it.
Next year’s planner

I’ve already seen the planner I want to get for next year – the only problem is it comes in two gorgeous colours – deep purple and deep red. Both delicious, yummy colours. Both are absolutely lovely to the touch (I’m a tactile person) and so, because I can’t choose, I haven’t bought mine yet.

Which colour do you think I should go for?

Have you bought your 2010 planner yet?

If you’re undecided, here’s a series of 5 posts I did to help you out (with pics)

Choose the perfect planner

P.S. I will write about the babies in another post – it takes military precision to organise those two

Happy Monday everybody!

I work off of “To Do” lists and I prioritize all my projects ABCD… using the system from Swallow that Frog. My to do list keeps getting invaded with other projects and requests.

How do I maintain my lists so that they are effective? Everyone and everything wants to be in my A file and I can’t find my balance. Do you have any suggestions?

Marcie Rowan

Hi Marcie

Yes, I have some suggestions.

1. Get really clear on your main purpose/ focus for your life at this point
This purpose may change from time to time, or it may not, but it’s still a good idea to check in with yourself regularly to make sure you still know what that purpose is.

E.g. this year my main purpose has been to have a healthy pregnancy and birth two live babies.

2. Use only one to-do list
When you use multiple lists, it’s very easy to forget about some things on “the other list”. I understand about different categories of things so what I do is I have one list with sub-headings like Personal, Business and Household. I can still see it all but it is ordered on paper and therefore in my mind.

3. Only put things on your to-do list that support your purpose
If your purpose is to create a loving, clean, organised home for your family, then you can’t be serving on every committee in sight and never spend time taking care of your home.

4. Once things are on your list, eat your frog or, as you call it, swallow your frog
This is where your ABCD system comes in. Or what I use with my clients, the time-value matrix where you focus on urgent and important tasks only.

Do your difficult but most important tasks first. If you hate doing the laundry (like me!), just do it to get it out of the way.

I can’t tell you what should be an A priority because we’re all different. But I can tell you that tasks which don’t support any of your goals are definitely not A priorities.

5. Don’t overload your lists
Pick a maximum of 6 tasks a day. When you sign up for the Organising Success Pack, you get a pack of organising forms. My Eat the Frog form only has space for 6 daily items for two very good reasons.

And that’s because

1. Most people can’t get more than 6 important tasks done daily (including me!)
2. I want you to feel good at the end of every day so rather putfewer tasks and actually get them done

Marcie, hope this helped!

Anybody have any more tips for Marcie? How do you manage your priorities on your own to-do lists?

Here it is – my new 2008 daily planner.

Isn’t it gorgeous?

Of course, I think it looks gorgeous because the colours match my website and my business cards.

But the best?

You have to feel it. I’m such a tangible person and I love feeling nice textures. This may or may not surprise you but I often buy things simply because of how they feel. And this planner is gorgeous. to. touch. Mmmmmm….

Why this makes me do the happy dance

1. It has a gorgeous soft cover.
2. I love the beautiful shades of green on the outside and inside.
3. It’s smaller than the other one! And thinner (more space in my handbag)!!
4. Space for appointments and space for to-do notes
5. Financial planner for the year
6. Monthly event planner

Funny – the scriptures don’t really make it for me. I always have a Christian daily planner but honestly, I look at the scripture reference maybe 2 – 3 times a month!

Now, if you’ve already bought your daily planner for 2008, I want to see it!

Please post your photos on your own blog or somewhere online (Picasa, etc.) and link up below so I can come see.

This definitely works for me. If you want to read about more cool tips, visit Shannon.

This is a guest post by my friend, Beth Dargis. Please show her some love in the comments

Tomorrow I’ll be talking about plastic envelopes, another of my favourite organising tools.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have time to spend 30 minutes every day planning my day. So, I like to plan a week at a time. Weekly planning also allows for better balance in the week.

I usually do my weekly planning on Sunday afternoons. Friday afternoon and Monday mornings are good times as well.

Here is my step by step weekly plan:

1. Look over emails and see what still needs to be actioned and write it down in a notebook.
2. Gather any papers from around the house/office and put into your inbox. Go through your inbox and process the papers. Any actions go into the notebook.
3. Listen to any voicemails and put actions with phone numbers into notebook.
4. Empty head of any other insights, actions and ideas and put into the notebook.
5. Put any actions from the notebook into iScrybe.com or use whatever task system you prefer. Computer or paper. It’s helpful to keep your tasks in categories like home, office, errands, personal, family, etc.
6. Decide which projects or goals to concentrate on for the week. Keep it simple. Don’t have too many projects and goals at once.
7. Open up calendar – paper or computer. I use Google Calendar : http://www.google.com/calendar/
8. Check last week’s calendar and see if anything needs to be put onto this week’s calendar. Add any appointments for the week.
9. Now add in time for your projects and goals on the calendar.
10. Next add your physical exercise time and at least 15 min of relaxation time a day. Make self-care a priority.
11. Put in a date with a significant other or yourself.
12. Add one on one time with your kids or friends.

Now daily planning is a snap. Check your calendar to see the outline of your day. I like to get appointment reminders sent to my email. Then pick out the 3 most important tasks from your action lists. When those tasks are done, you can pick 1-3 more depending on time.

Enjoy your week and doing your highest priorities.

Beth Dargis helps overwhelmed women create saner, simpler lives. Pick up a free Declutter Calendar at: http://www.encouragingcoach.com/

A friend, Tracey, received this question from one of her readers and so she asked me for some ideas.

I am starting a new telephone book. I find that as I add more names to my list it gets more difficult to find them because they have not been entered in alphabetical order. What are some effective ways to create one’s own telephone index that can be added to as new names come up?

Now remember that I’m a paper gal so this is what I said:

Microsoft Outlook is of course the easiest option. It is easy to update, delete AND you can print out the pages if you want a hard copy. I use this for all my business stuff – clients, prospects and contacts (that’s another blog post all on its own).

For a paper-based system, this is what I suggest.

1. You can write in pencil only. I did this for a couple of years but I didn’t use a normal pencil – I used the pink, purple and blue lead from Pentel – just so my address book would still look pretty

And then I could categorise (now I’m doing the happy dance) with a different colour for each set – purple for church people, pink for friends and blue for family.

2. For the main telephone book that lives on my entrance hall table, what I personally do is write my real friends (people you’ve been friends with forever) and family in pen and any new ones in pencil for now, so you can erase if you don’t need the numbers any more OR you can just put a sticker over those ones. I don’t like the stickers though.

3. For the yearly telephone pages in my daily planner, I use pen for the permanent names and post-it notes if it’s only going to be for a couple of months . So to give you an example, my gynae would be in pen but the lady I was arranging my new carport with is on a post-it note. (I just looked in my planner now for examples).

4. If they’ve allowed three pages for a section (let’s say J-L), then I use one page for J, one for K and one for L. So at least the names under each letter are together.

This is what works for me.

What kind of system do you use?

Thirteen lists in my daily planner

1. Goals for the year (of course) – when you sign up to my mailing list, you get a free goals page as part of your welcome pack. It’s the purple box on the top right —–>

2. Personal information (I have this typed on a separate page because I’m too lazy to write it out every year, so I just edit as necessary and reprint. Also much neater).

3. Important telephone numbers (like the locksmith, handyman, and so on)

4. Reference numbers (my insurance policy numbers, all my bank account numbers, Jhb connect meter numbers, etc.)

5. Ministry telephone, email and birthday list

6. Birthday list

7. Movies to see

8. Books to read/ buy

9. Favourite movies (just for Dion who badgered me until I made the list! – guess what’s on there besides those on my profile?)

10. Websites to visit

11. Ebooks to read – I have tons, so I do about 4 a month and of course, I schedule it in.

12. Personal shopping wish list

13. Website usernames and passwords (I know I’m not supposed to do this but there are 22 on the list, and I don’t put any involving any money on here)

What lists do you keep?

See more Thursday Thirteen participants

I was tagged by Suzanne to show you my daily planner.

I’ve said before how I like lots of order in my life – 3 desks, each with a different function, numerous blogs and it looks like it’s the same with my daily planning because I have 3 tools!

1. An A5 leather-bound daily planner for 2007.
This is for my personal life and out of the ordinary business stuff.

I LOVE this planner. When they come out in August, I buy mine because I don’t want to take a chance of them running out. I tried other versions over the years but this is the 3rd year I’ve used this one and I am very happy with it.

It’s made by Christian Art Publishers in SA and I buy it at Exclusive Books for about R100 (US$ 14). I had to pry papers loose in the front to check who makes them because I have a habit of absolutely personalizing everything.

In the front, I have my affirmations, goals for the year, personal info (I have it in Excel so I just print a few pages for this planner and our household file every year), reference numbers, and so on.

The success of any system depends on if you use it or not. And for me, what works is how I organise it on a daily basis, like this.

The household organizing file has 3 sections – planning, personal and household. I use almost all of the personal pages, reduce them in size and stick them in this planner, at the back in the notes section.

Now you know why I would rather lose my cell phone than this planner!

Why I love this one:
A page a day except for Sat and Sun (half a page each)
Monthly planner before each month
Budget sheet before each month (I’m big on budgeting so that I can spend on what I want. Make sense?)
Lots of notes pages at the back for all my lists

2. A smaller planner (freebie with the Jan issue of O mag).
This is for business only. It shows a week at a time so I write my weekly business goals on the right and the appointments on the left. It is so cool because if I page back, I can see how much I’ve accomplished over the month or year.

And of course, I also use my business binder. (Jennifer D, did you do yours?)

3. Tiny notebook – the pink one above
This is for miscellaneous stuff I don’t want to lose track of. I write lists of topics to blog, shopping lists, things to chat to people about, quotations, anything really. And it has a pocket at the back where I keep spare business cards (besides those in my wallet)

Now let the games begin.

I’m tagging CoachJ, Laura, Lara, Annie, Jenna, Beth, Ariane, Jessica and EVERYONE else who wants to play along. Even if it’s just a to-do list, I want to know about it.

This is my first Linky thing so have patience if it gives problems – I’m not a techie!

By the way, here is a holiday (!) photo for the moment!

This week I tackled something that has been nagging at me for a while.

And because my part of the organising challenge is done (and I am not allowed to touch the hubby clutter), I’ve been “working alongside him” but doing my own stuff. So I’ve been on a real decluttering binge and throwing away papers, seeing how I can have more effective systems, and so on.

For my tackle, I decided to make a business binder. (This was inspired by Kim – scroll down to 19 March). I had quite a few files and flipfiles and now I’ve compressed all of those into this one file folder. I can’t really post any before pics because I brought things from all over.

I’m not really a paper girl – almost everything that I would classify as reference is on computer/ flash drive. But I do like writing lists on paper with a lovely thick gel pen. There is something so satisfying about ticking things off, isn’t there?

After that are my individual categories, like computer work, projects, marketing, website and so on.

I like this idea because I’m quite ruthless with paper, and everything must fit in here or else a huge declutter is due. I will NOT move to a bigger file or a second one! I do the same with my household filing so when it starts filling up, I grab the file and weed through it in front of the TV.

Go visit 5 minutes for mom for more great tackles.