Why you don’t need a fancy Planner
You can still achieve your goals without one
I’ve been that person: the one who bought all those fancy planners and ended up filing them away carefully in a drawer at home, after filling out 3 days worth of goals.
At the beginning of every new year, so many of us make grand plans and even grander resolutions. The problem is while many of those plans and goals are probably for the best, they’re not exactly going to be achieved by just writing them down in a fancy planner.
Planning makes us feel like we’re actually doing something worthwhile.
Action is what will make us see results.
No better person to explain this than James Clear himself and he does it eloquently both in this article here and in his more in-depth, must-read book on the subject, Atomic Habits.
One of the things I teach my clients is the art of practical and mindful productivity. In other words, how do you actually make the time to do what you need to do and see the tasks through to completion?
Most people stay stuck in the planning phase. It’s all very well to draw beautiful bullet journal spreads and admire your handiwork. Mind you; it’s not something I can do personally since I’ve got the artistic talent of a dead possum.
Also, I have a great respect for those people who can draw such gorgeous things and explore their creativity too.
But for many of is, it’s more important that we actually DO the tasks that help us move one step closer to goal completion.
Do you need a beautiful planner? The short answer is no.
A fancy planner , especially if you’re not much of a planner person can be more than a bit overwhelming.
Instead let’s learn to focus on action tasks and keep them super simple. In this article as well as the attached video, that’s what I’ve tried to help you understand.
Pick a notebook
Any notebook right now. It doesn’t have to be new. Trust me on this. Open a drawer in your house and look for an old diary or journal that’s been lying unused.
Don’t have a notebook? Grab a notepad.
Don’t have that either? Grab a sheet of paper.
The idea is that the ‘tool’ itself does not matter. The intention is more important. A tool is the helping factor; not the main reason that will make you do something.
Chalk out goals for a two-week period
Now, start writing your goals for your blog/business/job/health/personal growth for the next two weeks. That’s right. Just for two weeks.
Sample goals:
- Study a course
- Walk daily
- Meditate every morning
- Read everyday
- Write in your journal
So many of us choose to overwhelm ourselves by setting very long-term goals. What is the primary challenge with this?
We don’t really get a very clear idea on the end date or what we’re hoping to have achieved by that time frame.
But two weeks? Pshaw, that’s nothing! It’s just 14 days away. And if you can complete a set of tasks in 14 days, that gives you the initial boost to keep it going.
The beauty of this technique is that every day’s achievement builds on the previous day’s work done and propels you forward.
Make each goal specific
Now it gets more interesting. You’d have written a whole series of goals in step 2. Let’s work on narrowing it down, shall we?
Assume that you want to spend the next fortnight on studying a course that you’ve purchased.
Instead of just writing down ‘study a course’, write this down instead:
Study part 1 of Building better offers course
Now we’re getting somewhere. We have an actual course and a specific goal for our business. Instead of spending precious minutes each day wondering ‘what should I do now?’ we can just head to our study material for that specific course and dive in.
Writing it down? Helps to cement the goal firmly in place. It’s there in black and white. No running away from it now.
Add a specific time of day when you will work on that task
Still don’t need a fancy planner, trust me ;)
Now take that specific task from step 3 and add a date and time slot to it.
Study Part 1 of Building Better Offers course on January 6th from 10 am to 11 am
See what I mean? Now you can’t really complain and say you don’t have time because you’ve made it super specific. Come what may, you will show up on that date, at that time to study the course you’ve chosen.
Integrate with Google Calendar
The last step?
Add the task from step 4 to your Google Calendar and set it up so that it synchronizes with your phone and laptop.
Enable reminders (either on your phone or your desktop) to go off 10 minutes before the task is set to begin.
You have no excuse now. You have to show up and see that task through.
Following this simple, 5-step technique saw me grow my income steadily and sustainably in the last 6 months of 2020.
Nothing fancy and nothing elaborate.
Write it down.
Show up.
Do the work.
Remember, you don’t need a planner to make things work. Just the right intention and setting smart goals will do the trick.
I talk about productivity, goal setting, consistent content creation for blogging and social media in my free weekly newsletter. Get it here.
