Moon Phases and planning

Designing in Canva

I was reading Steal Like an Artist and read the bit about leaving the screen and playing with paper. I thought it might be fun play with bits of paper and words rather than just do it all on the computer.

I took out one of my favourite note pads and cut up some pages to make little rectangles. 

I already has notes about the influence of the different moon phases on our energy so I started with the New Moon and put important words and phrases on my paper scraps.

I then had some fun just moving them around and trying to make some ordered sense out of the bits of paper. I guess I was trying to make a paragraph of sorts that summarised what I had written about the New Moon.

I loved that it really helped me make more sense of it all.

I then taped it in my A4 notebook so I could take the chart to my computer desk.

I've made several pages of my moon phases journal already. I'm designing it in Canva then I'll add the images to my digital journal in keynotes. The plan is to add some journal prompts for the 4 main phases so it becomes an easy way to utilise the moon cycle as a framework for achieving goals.

I'm still exploring the affect the moon has on me so I will write some more about that at a later date.

Happy Planning,

Val

Best paper for printable planners

Love me Love my cat

There is nothing more satisfying than printing planner pages that you have chosen because you love them.

Ready printed pages are ready to go but they don't always suit my style of planning or journaling and many just don't get used.

When you print your own you also get to choose nice paper.

Regular printer paper is 80gs. (21 lb)

It's too thin to make good planner pages. You can see the next page through it.

I like to use 125gsm. That's about 32 lb Bond paper (120gsm)

This is the heaviest paper my printer can handle. It is just right for double sided printing too.

It's not see through at all ...

and this one is printed on the back too.

I get my paper from Officeworks in Australia but you can also find it on Amazon.

There are various sellers in the US. Just search for 32lb printer paper.

These pages are from my"Love me Love my cat" Printables and Digitals on Etsy

Val Spiers Organise on Etsy

Happy Planning,

Val

Planner hole punch - 6 hole punch

I love my 6 hole punch. 

I have lots of Kikki-K A5 planner binders and I love adding my own pages.

I went for the industrial style with a metal frame and lever handle. 

It's the Paper Punch PU-462

Search for this in Google.

It's made in Japan as far as I can tell.

That's $30AUD (Australian dollars).

You can get ones half the price on AliExpress but I'm not prepared to recommend them.

Happy Planning,

Val

Page size in Canva

A4 is 8.6" x 11.625"

A5 is 5.75" x 8.375

I have been experimenting with slight page size changes while making planner pages in Canva.

I always thought it was easier and just as safe to look up the size of an A4 page but it turns out it is easier and more accurate on the ground or in the printer if I just take my ruler and measure the paper I'm using.

I changed my A4 page size to 8.6" x 11.625" (I did inches because I used my quilting ruler).

When I went to print, my print preview set it at 96%. When I set it to 100% it filled the page nicely with a very small print margin. For the page I did in my cats and flowers planner with a full background I got less than 1/4" of white printer margin on my printed out page.

My A5 pages are 5.75" x 8.375. In Canva I can set crop marks on the PDF. 

I then print it on A4 paper. 

You have to set the print size to 100%. The PDF is set to A5 page size so 100% makes it A5. It prints in the middle of the page and you use the crop marks to cut it to size.

You can see the crop marks here:

I have set the print % to 100% here:

I don't have US Letter paper so I just use the size I get from the internet. I can't experiment with it the way I can with the A4 and A5.

Happy Planning,

Val

Take charge of your life quickly and easily

A simple digital planner that enables you to get organised fast. You can get it now.

There is nothing like that feeling of overwhelm!

You know you can be organised. You know you can be confident.

If only you could get things under control.

If you want to know what appointments you have, if you want to know what chores or tasks you have to get done and when, if you want to create a better future for yourself you need a calendar and a notebook.

To feel in control you need to have your tasks, appointments, dreams and goals, problems and solutions written down.

Hold on a minute. You weren't thinking of getting a paper planner were you?

You need to keep these items easily accessible and the best way to do that is to have a digital calendar/notebook that goes everywhere with you. Paper planners are fun but not always practical.

I like to journal about everything and I like to create systems for creating and reviewing my goals and daily tasks. I like to write about my dreams and values and purpose in life.

You can read more about how journaling helps improve my self confidence here

However, you don't need to go very deep to get your life under control. 

To start with, you need a calendar page for appointments and time bound tasks.

Next you need a notebook page for writing to do lists and writing about your thoughts on problems and how to solve them as well as your successes and how they make you feel confident.

I have created a simple digital planner to help get you started. It is very minimal with no confusing sections or thousands of links and tabs.

You have a few choices of page layout that you can play with until you find what works best for you. I've included Sunday and Monday starts for the calendar pages.

I'm retired but I still have plenty to keep track of so I like a calendar page with a notes section on the side.

I add appointments, trips and due dates and online purchases to my calendar. I like to add things to remember in the notes section.

I journal on pages after the calendar. You can add a page for every day. Add photos. Create your to do list.

Once you download your notebook and save it into your app you need to make a duplicate so you can go ahead and do your custom setup.

Swipe through the pages so you know what is available. There is a Sunday or Monday start for the calendars.

Go to page thumbnail view and start to delete the pages you don't want. Click on the page if you need to check which one it is, then go back to the thumbnail view and delete it.

Once you start using your planner it's easy to get to the current calendar page by using this thumbnail view. You don't need tabs and links.

Never forget your appointments.

Always have special dates at your fingertips.

Plan and organise your life and know that you are creating the future you want for yourself.

Journal about your dreams and gratitude and celebrate as you look back and tick off one goal after another.

Writing things down has changed my life. 

I have been creating my future one goal at a time. Every now and then I look back a year or two in my journals and I am amazed that the things I considered dreams and goals back then are my reality now.

Try it for yourself by getting a simple digital planner and let your dreams become reality.

Set it up to work for you:

1. Make a copy and keep the original clean
2. Customise your copy to suit you
3. Add dates to your calendar and write in your journal pages

I added the year to my cover page.

There is no better time to start planning your life than now.

Get you planner here

Happy Planning,

Val

How journaling increases my self-confidence

 I have 3 big areas that are the cornerstones of everything I do each day.

1. Personal Growth
2. Home and Garden Growth
3. Business Growth

These are pretty broad but they keep me on track because the things I choose to do either fit into the big vision or they don't. It's pretty black and white.

Like right now - writing about my big vision areas helps me with personal growth. I am strengthening my belief that having a vision or life purpose and focusing on it is producing a positive impact on how I think about myself.

Writing about this in my public blog leads to personal growth and business growth for me.

Wanting to buy a mindset journal instead of using the ones I have created does not align with any of my big vision areas. Looking at other journals on the market fuels my thoughts of self-doubt. If I buy one it goes against my goal of saving more and spending less. If I keep looking, I procrastinate about writing this blog. 

Just being aware that some of the things I want to do will have a negative impact on my life makes me feel more in control. I have to choose rather than just let things happen. I have a choice about what my future self will be.

I chose to sit down and follow my plan for working on growing my digital planner shop. Knowing this is a good choice makes me feel successful. When I tick off the tasks I have listed regarding my digital planner business I feel successful again. Each small success builds my confidence. 

That's what confidence is. The knowledge that you have been successful at something in the past along with the increasing surety that you will continue to be successful in the future.

I spent a few months trialing my Mindful Cat Journal and I found that the titled pages for morning, evening and highlights really made me want to fill it in. If I couldn't think of 4 highlights I added some gratitude.

Just by accident I copied the regular journal for my March journal. It just has one page for each day with no special headings.

I've been struggling to do an evening post and I found it hard to find the highlights when I was doing my weekly reviews. Some days I forgot to do highlights and when I did write them down they just blended in with the rest of the writing so I had to read and search for the highlights making it harder to make myself fill them in on the review.

The daily highlights page makes it easy to review my week.

So, how does journaling increase my confidence?

• I write about what I want to achieve in the day.
• I write about what I did achieve during the day.
• I summarise my successes in the Daily Highlights page.
• At the end of the week I write down all my achievements for the week and celebrate by feeling great.
• My confidence soars and I start the new week sure of new successes and so it goes.

Get yourself a great digital journal right here:

Cat Theme Mindful Digital Journal

Sign up to my newsletter to get access to some great digital notebooks and stickers.

Click here to get access

Here's to your own personal growth,

Val

How to be creative and productive

I am a dreamer.

I am happy with being a dreamer.

I came to grips with being a dreamer after reading about the different Meyer-Briggs personality types.

I am an INFP type. 

Knowing more about what makes me tick has helped me create a plan of action for my year that I am comfortable following. It also felt good creating it.

How I use my journal

The beginning of my ideas starts in my head with massive amounts of information, possibilities and intentions.

I don't need to write in my journal to come up with a to do list or help me get my thoughts on paper.

I need a journal to get me writing. The act of writing with a pen slows my mind and helps me to decide where to start for the day.

I use my own digital journals and planners in Goodnotes. I created this journal with a page for the morning and a page for the evening because I find that I need to write more than just once in the day. I fill the morning page with how I feel and what I might like to do or how I slept and why. Sometimes I have a light bulb moment that needs to be recorded for future review.

I find it very useful to my personal growth to look back on my musings each week, each month and each year.

I have made the image big enough for you to read if you like.

How I use my vision boards

I discovered recently that there was a different way to use the vision boards that suited me better. 

I don't really need a vision board to create a picture of my dreams and goals. I seem to do that in my head all the time. I do like the process of sitting down and collecting up images or quotes or words that describe my dreams and goals but I don't need the visual reminder to look at later.

I guess the best way to describe my vision boards is like a snapshot of my brain. I start with the big picture and come up with lots of tasks that will eventually lead to the big vision. 

I tend to interchange the terms vision and goal because of the way I think. The vision is my goal. Then I go straight to coming up with the tasks required to get there.

I have always tried to follow the accepted theory that you have a vision then you set up SMART goals then you break each goal into smaller tasks. I also felt like I was just doing it wrong because SMART goals seemed pointless to me. I now know that I am not thinking wrong, I am thinking differently.

The beauty of using a digital planner is that I can enlarge it to write then shrink it down to see the overall image. I like the big picture vision that I can see as a concrete image when I shrink the page to full view.

I am not a purist when it comes to setting goals

The accepted terms for making progress in my life tend to get all mixed together. If I stop and think about how I label things I come up with these definitions.

Vision/Goal: Taking an area of my life and dreaming about how I could change and improve. (Accepted term would be VISION) 

Project: I divide the life areas into 3 related topics. (Accepted term would be GOAL)

Task: Any action or series of actions that will move me towards completing a project. (Many of my tasks would be considered PROJECTS)

Planning: Creating tasks that will lead me towards my vision.

Productivity: Doing the tasks that will enable me to complete a project.

Review and adjust: Make sure the tasks I am doing are part of the plan. Add to the vision board as ideas pop up. Tick off what I have been doing.

How I organise my to do list

I used to think I had to have a traditional to do list in order to be productive.

I used to think I had to have my top 3 written down for each day.

I am naturally a creative person. I am always thinking of things to do and they get analysed constantly.

(As an aside - this is why I need to be still in order to replenish my energy. I have to basically turn my brain off in order to relax properly. Lunch with friends just doesn't do it.)

To be productive on any given day I need a focus. Top 3 doesn't matter to me. My focus is usually to move forward on a variety of tasks/projects.

You might say that I should just put the tasks I intend doing that day on my "to do" list as 1, 2, 3.

This is probably where my way of thinking doesn't fit perfectly with a job that requires reporting to a team about my linear completion of set tasks. Because I like to skip about and work in zig zags it is difficult to convince a boss that I am actually going anywhere. Most bosses want to see progress from milestone to milestone in a lock step fashion.

I like to work on several related projects and tasks in an order that is logical to me. This doesn't mean I can't report my progress in a way that satisfies the boss. I means that I have to expend a lot of energy arranging my progress into a form that the boss will accept. Frustrating at the least.

(As an aside - after many years working for said bosses I am happy to say that I am retired from my job and now I do work that is related to my life purpose in a way that suits me.)

This is what my to do list looks like. It takes shape over several days and when the page is full or finished I start a new page. You might think that it just looks like less of tasks in boxes but the magic is in the detail.

When you look past the boxes you can see that I have a thing that is more like one of those puzzles where you slide the square pieces around so you end up with a picture.

Imagine showing this to your boss to show what you got done. There are no little squares with ticks in them or lists of tasks with a line through them. There aren't even any coloured outlines. I just put those on the image to make my process clearer.

Looking at the red set of 4 boxes in the middle I have arrows from the top corner to the other boxes. 

The top box has a cross through it which means I have done that task. 

The other three boxes have circles round them from my review the day before yesterday. They are not done. 

They also have the blue asterisk in them from yesterday meaning they still have to be done with a little more urgency. They are holding up the next step in a bigger project.

I only have 4 big vision goals so it is easy for me to know that the project being held up is the automated email sequence in Mailchimp for my newsletter subscribers. Automating business processes is my big vision.

Task completed

I enjoyed analysing how I think about my work. I have a strong purpose in life and I love what I am doing.

Thank you for reading. I hope you find some useful insights into your own productivity successes or failures.

I am about to put a cross through the Blog on setting goals task on my desk planner.

Here's to a successful life,

Val

P.S. 

I forgot to add in the picture I took of my desk area. I have found it very energising to sit at a desk that just has the essentials on it. There is a pencil jar of coloured pens out of shot on the left that I use for my planner page.