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.

How I use my digital journal and planner

My digital planner journey has been like a roller coaster ride.

I am learning to draw in Procreate. I am learning to create PDFs and templates in Canva. I am watching classes Skillshare.

While doing all this I am using my digital journal to make notes and record ideas and write about my progress and plans.

This is a page from my journal: It is so easy to add photos

I use my digital planner to mark in important dates. I also use my weekly page to write my focus for the week and write in what I am grateful for. I also keep track of my achievements. I log my receipts for personal and business items and I add in notes to self like an image of a shop page with something I want to save for.

This is a page from my planner: I had just finished making my Spring sticker set!

I use the monthly page and the weekly pages. I don't have a use for the daily pages. 

I love that it doesn't matter how messy or crowded the page is. It is so easy to move and resize and delete items. If I need to write something on one of the days I can just delete or move the stickers.

I just finished designing an open book style planner. Being retired I find I don't need to squeeze in lots of meetings or deadlines so I find the open book design nice to use because it looks like a book. 

The smaller pages just look nice. You can insert the calendar pages into this notes book or you can add them to the Planner.

The planner in my shop has blank monthly pages starting with Monday or Sunday and notes pages with dots or lines in various combinations.

I plan to use the same background for a little collection of books so the covers can be changed around and the pages can be mixed however you choose.

I have started with this planner and will offer the blue My Notes one soon.

You can find it in my shop.

Happy Planning and Journaling,

Val

Organising my receipts with my digital planner

Until I got my digital planner I would have trouble deciding where to put things to keep them safe.

Only when I got my digital planner did I finally decide that I only needed digital copies of my receipts.

Until this year I felt that I had to have both paper and digital records but since most of my receipts are in email form I felt it was time to make all my receipts digital.

I now take photos of paper receipts and screen shots of receipts that were emailed to me.

It is such a relief to have finally made this decision. I am of an age where keeping receipts in a box or folder was the only way to keep them. Times have changed and I have finally moved on.

Using my digital planner to keep my receipts in order is so easy and convenient.

I use the Monthly Spending pages to keep receipts for my business supplies and personal purchases.

Each month I select those pages in Goodnotes and export them as a PDF to save in the cloud and on my desktop. I feel safe that I will be able to access them when I need them. However, I have weighed up the chances that Apple cloud will disappear compared to my house burning down and destroying paper items. The likelyhood of either happening is slim.

So how do I do it?

1. I take screen shots of my emails so they end up in Photos.
2. I then go to my planner Spendings page and add the screen shot to the relevant page.
3. I then fill out the index page with the item and cost and date.

Crafting the perfect digital planner

Looking for the perfect planner

There is probably no such thing as the perfect planner - digital or otherwise.

However, I have spent a couple of months working out how best to include space for all the things I want to record.

Some of these things are:

• appointments
• receipts for things I buy for myself or the household
• recipes I find in the Coles magazine
• receipts for major bills
• records for the payments of subscriptions
• photos I take on my morning walk

• something I learnt about goal setting in the email I read this morning
• an idea I have for a new doll dress pattern
• things I am grateful for
• a list of achievements for the week or month
• cute doodles I drew in Procreate
• a folder tree for the items I am creating for my digital planner shop

My calendar section is a self contained 12 months. All dated for ease of use.

Wherever you are inside the calendar section you can click on the little house icon and get back to the first page with the whole year calendar.

After spending every day for a while now using my digital planner I have come to the conclusion that tabs like a paper planner are not all that useful.

I find it easier to go back to my documents sections and click on a new notebook for the thing that I want. I don't have to swap from pen to stylus which I find annoying. Just touch back to documents and touch the section notebook that you want.

I have all the notebooks I am using for my planner marked as favourites to make them easy to find.

Being organised makes me happy

Well... you get the idea. There are lots of little things that can make my life better if I have a place for them and I know where they are.

Something I tend to do a lot is start an idea that I want to come back to later. Trouble is, bits of paper get lost, journal pages get forgotten, space for more thoughts is used up for something else.

With a digital notebook I can put an idea on a page, list that idea in a contents page then add in as many pages as I need for that idea or future ideas. If I have a 31 page notebook with an index I can fill that notebook with 31 ideas and start a new notebook if I have more than 31 ideas and everything is sneatly aved in one place.

Here is one of my 31 page notebooks. This one has photo frame layout pages and is perfect for journaling every day of the month. You can export it each month as a PDF to keep in your iBooks. The quality of the photos and text is really good and it even prints out quite respectably.

Use the index page to see what is inside with just a glance. No need to write something for every page but some pages will have items you want to come back to.

What I like about this is that it doesn't matter if I don't look at those ideas again for 6 months, 12 months or 3 years. I can store them in a Goodnotes folder called ideas and come back to them whenever I like.

If I have more than one note about the same idea I can easily bring them together too.

Choose the sections that you want

• I created my new planner with separate notebooks for each section.
• I can easily insert extra pages.
• At the end of the year I can store the notebooks into folders by section or by year.
• To set up for the next year I just need a new dated planner notebook and copies of all the other sections that I already have saved in my clean copies folder.

The sections that I use all the time are:

• The calendar planner with dates and weekly pages and monthly expenses, goals, review.
• The Bills and Budget notebook
• The Recipe notebook 
• The Goals for 2021 notebook
• The Daily Journal notebook
• The Places to Visit notebook (for the day when I can feel safe on a plane again for domestic travel)

I also have a notebook for my 5 year plans.

With big titles for each book it is easy to open the one that I want. 

Happy Planning,

Val

Digital sticker of Christmas baubles

 I am venturing into the world of digital planners and digital stickers.

My planner is almost done.

I plan to launch it December 16th 2020.

Look out for it in my Etsy shop.

This is my first go at digital stickers. It is such fun.

Happy Planning,

Val