Planning a Life You Love: Creating, Organizing, & Utilizing an Agenda

1. Introduction: everyone. My name is Kilani, and I'm going to be teaching a sculpture class on how to plan for a life that you love. I've always loved and idolized planners over the years, whether I've been a student or online content creator and having a planner by my side is my number one tip for how to stay organized and achieve your goals. So in this class, I'm going to be sharing all of the different skills I've learned throughout the years and how you can use those skills in your life in order to create a planning system you love and actually utilize it to achieve the life that you want. So I'm going to be breaking up all of these skills into different lessons over this course . And my goal is to help you create a plating system that you love and one that you'll utilize over the years in order to help you achieve what you want to achieve. So throughout this course, we're gonna be working with different topics like choosing a planner system modern day planning, with the online calendars, decorating and designing and planting stuff that you love as well as working on our daily to do list and our long term goals, combining them and creating concrete steps to accomplish both. So I hope you really excited about this class because I can't wait to share everything I've learned with you to. Your next step is just to enroll in this class. In that way, you'll be able to access all of the lessons that I put up and you'll be able to see me the next lesson if you do so, so I'll see you there. 2. Choosing Your Planner System: so the very first step and utilizing a planner is actually to find a planner that you like . Now there are so many different kinds of planers available, so I'm going to cover the basic plane or systems that there are. So the very 1st 1 the one I've been using right now and the one that I think is the most accessible to most people is just any kind of notebook. There are certain brands. Do you have to look for anything that you really need as a requirement for the new book? It could just be a plane notebook. Whether there are plain pages thought it grid lined, the notebook actually used is a gridded notebook, so there are different boxes that I can use for my lines. But it's just a very plain no book leather bound closes, and this is probably the most affordable option and the most accessible as well. Something to keep in mind when you are using a no book system is that you can't add and take away pages as easily as some of the other systems, but you can really store them if you are interested in archiving a lot of your journals and planners that something that's really easy to Dio, as well as just adding anything because it's pretty much a blank canvas. Probably the most popular type of planner is a spiral bound planner. No, you kind of get these, you know, for free at school when they pass the mouth. Or you can buy them a target and Walgreens or any kind of typical store, and these come with a template already inside of them. They have the weekly daily monthly pages, and they were just like a spiral bound notebook full already with the template for a planner. Now this is also really affordable option, but one of the continent's It's not very customizable. I really like utilizing different templates, depending on what I am doing during the day or the week or the month. And when you buy a spiral bound planner, you definitely get the freedom to customize it as much as you could with other planning systems to another planning system that is really popular. And, I would say is the most popular within planing communities is the sixth Ring Finder System . One of the most popular brands out there is the final effects, which is sure a lot of you have heard of before. Six string, leather bound binder and you can open and close the binder system whenever you want to you to add or take away pigeons for the sixth Ring Binder systems. There's actually a whole market on different inserts and templates in stages you can add in and take out. One of the best things about having a six ring planner system is that it is the most customizable. I would say of anything. Once you put something in, it doesn't have to stay there. You can always add and take away from it. Of course, they're more affordable and more expensive option. But I would say that that would be one of the more expensive option. I think that as you grow and learn what you like and what you use, the best starting point for most people in people in this class is just a plain notebook that you can use and just kind of follow along with each of these lessons and customize as you think is right. So that is just the very basic first step of actually finding a planner. Now, keep in mind that once you kind of go through this entire class, learn the skills and practice planning, you can always switch up system. But like I said, I think that the perfect starting point and just a plane, no boat, though. And now that you have your planning system, that will get into the next lesson. 3. Putting Your Priorities on Paper: So now that you have your planner, you are there with a blank notebook and you probably don't know where to start. So this is why I'm going to give you your very first exercise so you can see what you want to include inside of that planner. Now, I have emphasized from the beginning that I believe planning is not just about accomplishing what you need to do today, but is about planning for the future and accomplishing the goals you want to achieve in the long term. So the first exercises, basically, just getting a blank piece of paper and creating a big circle, and that is going to be your pie chart. Now, I want you to keep in mind that you do not only include what you want and feel right now, but what you want for yourself and what you want your life to look like in the picture. So you're going to create a little pine chart of what makes you feel whole jigen a section off different parts of the circle based on what makes you feel happy? What makes you feel whole and what you want to accomplish? You're gonna take that pie chart and translate that into your planner. And the slices are going to become the different sections in five your planner. So you can start focusing on those creating goals and less and priorities around each of those slices in order to create a life you love. So it's important that you really think about what is important to you. And, of course, this pie chart will change over time and can change over time. It's definitely not something that has to stay the same. That is, the beauty of a planning system is that you can kind of change out and customize it as to whatever your needs are throughout the time that you use it. But it is really important just to get this base core part of your planner down so you can start planning and just as it needs to overtime. So once you have your pie chart and you have all of the slices, like I said, this will become the sections in the planner. So you're going to take the pie chart and translate that into a list and you're going toe. Lift down all of your priorities for what you need to include inside of your planner. Now, once you have that list, you can also adjusted by the size of the slice. Meaning that's how much you want to focus on that area. So maybe right now, school is your biggest priority. So you want to take up about 40% of your planner with school, Dale? Now, how do a lot of space in your planner for that area of your life inside? So you're gonna want to keep this lesson mind as we're going through the planner and setting up all the different pages. So in the next lesson, I'm gonna show you all of the different ways and possibilities you could actually physically set up. Your planner. Now that you have an idea of what your priorities are, you can start actually putting pen to paper. You can start creating the actual templates that you will be using every day, every week, every month. So check out the next lesson for ideas on how to do that. 4. Designing Your Unique System: So now we're gonna start talking about designing your unique system. This is going to be actually setting up the planner, writing down the different templates and creating the core of your planner that you're going to be using as we go along in the future. So first off, we want to kind of figure out what our preferences are. There are a few different directions. You can go that all depend on what kind of person you are, how you like to see things and visualize things and how you like to actually completely so in the planning community, they're kind of two different camps of people. And of course, you can go back and forth or being both, but they're basically two different directions. You can kind of go with your planning templates, and that is you are horizontal planner or a vertical plane. Now, to decide between the two, you're gonna want to grab a piece of paper, and then you're just going to you create a template that is horizontal and a template that is vertical for a week, and you're going to see which one you're more drawn. Teoh. Which one you think works better visually and practically inside of your world. And once you decide between the two, we can kind of continue on into the more in depth templates you're going to actually be, including in your planner, based on the preference you have. So there, so, so, so many different ways actually set of your planner. So in this video, I'm gonna go through my actual notebook and share with you different designs that I have actually created. So this way of planning is called the Rhetoric, Carol. It is a vertical method, and you just write down the day and the date and then below you write down all tasks, events and notes you have for that day so you can use different symbols, differentiate between what is going on underneath a day. But this is just a very minimal and simple way of tracking and planning your day. So this is a weekly layout, and this includes Monday all the way through Sunday, and it also has a section for notes. So this is a horizontal way of recording the week, and within each day, I will keep in my tests and events that go on within each day, tasks go on this left side while events go on the right side of this. Leo is also a week on two pages. But what's different about this layout is there's actually one side for events and one side protest, and you can use your priority list that you created when you did that. What makes you whole exercise and write down different categories under which tasks should be done for that week? Now this is an example of a daily page that you can use, and then this is by hours, and you can schedule in events and tasks within the space Underneath. There is room for notes if you want to create room for notes, and here you can do some form of meal track needing water, tracking any accept kindness orange, just general notes you take throughout the day. Now this page is a whole week on one page, and this is where you can put your events in tasks and then underneath of the entire week, which is Monday through Saturday and Sunday. You can include a to us for tasks, your goals that you want to do for the week and you know so these are three different examples in each different column of what you can use your space for. You can use these columns all throughout. You can switch it up depending on what day might work best for what column. But these are great ideas for vertical planners alongside of the time tracking, which would be the daily, weekly monthly yearly. There's also habit tracking, which is something that's really popular and can be really beneficial to include in your planner. So have a tracking could include how many acts of kindness you've done. How many glasses of water you've had throughout the day. There's so many different ways of tracking information and challenging yourself every single day. Do you can include alongside the time template? You're also gonna want to figure out a basic template for goal setting within your planner . You're gonna want to you base your goal planing and project planning off of those priorities. Now I always find the best things to include in regards to projects, planning and goal setting. He's just you include the name of the project or goal, create the actual steps, create deadlines for yourself that you want to dio and then take those deadlines and translate them into your time templates throughout your planner. So that is how you can kind of set up the actual body of your planner. In the next lesson, we're going to be talking about the actual aesthetic touches you can add, as well as the accessories that can help you keep on track and keep you coming back to your planners to check out the next lesson once you've completed your templates. 5. How Creativity Increases Productivity: So in this lesson, we're gonna talk about how creativity increases productivity. Now, of course, having a planner one of your main objectives is to be more productive and more efficient with your time, you can accomplish all of your goals within a certain amount of time that you set for yourself. Now it might seem counterintuitive that adding creative touches and aesthetic touches would help you accomplish more in your time. But I can say from experience that adding these creative touches really brings you back to your planner encourages you to use it more often and look at it. And it also can increase your productivity depending on how you use it. So in regards to planners there so many different plane and accessories that you can use in order to add to the basic templates you've already included in your planner that could be anything from washing tape to colored pencils, stickers and anything beyond that. There's so many different accessories that are available online that people have made, and there's also a lot of D I Y videos where you can make your own accessories, but we're going to just talk about the functions of some of the basic accessories you can use in your planners. We're gonna go through my planner and talk about what touches I've added and how they've helped me in my planner. So one of the things I use inside of my planner is washi tape, and there are so many different types of Washington. And if you haven't heard about it before, it's basically a tape that has some kind of color or pattern on top of it that is removable . And what you take can be used anyone for season two different events just to decorate your pages. But it can also be used as a great way to section. Different areas often can be used to create different headlines in order to better section off your space. This will draw attention to those areas because visually it's a lot more stimulating. But it will also give you a logical way to you. Section often replaces in your planner in a way that keeps you very productive and effective. Post its are also a great way to keep your plane are very visually stimulating because there's so many different types of colors and patterns can use inside, even if It's just a basic post it note. It still adds some texture and color to the page to the great thing about post it is that you can move them around anywhere you want them, and they can become a movable. I don't within your planner. So a lot of things in your planner are going to stay there and you refer back to those pages. But posted are a great way to move things around according to time or what you have accomplished or having accomplished. So like I've discussed. Adding, these little A setting touches can also increase productivity. And when you find the perfect balance between the two, using your planner becomes a lot more fun. And I think that one of the reasons a lot of people start ditching their planner is because there isn't anything in that planner they want to get back to. But by decorating it and customizing it and making it look like yours and making it feel like yours, you're really going to want to come back to that. So now that you've talked about choosing a planner, setting up the planner and then adding customizing the planner, we're gonna talk about modern planning in the next lesson and talk about how online calendars and people planning can work together. 6. Paper Planning in a Modern World: so paper planning has been around for such a long time, and this helps people save tax. But today, there so many online planning systems and online calendars that can help you do the same. So I'm going to dedicate a whole lesson on deciding between paper planning and online planning and how to use both in a way, that's really effective. I'm gonna start off by kind of telling you how I use modern planning and paper planning and how they work together for me. So for me, my paper planner is all about habit tracking, keeping track of my daily to do, list my tasks in my notes, where my online calendar is actually housing all of the events that don't really change so I can have them there while I'm on the go. One example of this is every single night. I make it to do less for the following day in my paper planner, I tracked down all of the small things I need to dio from doing certain work projects to cleaning the kitchen to emailing someone back. All of that will be housed inside of my paper planner. What I do is I also refer to my online planner, and that is where I store all of the events and scheduled tasks. But I need to do every week or every day translate events from my online calendar to my paper planner. So a few of the examples I might include in my own line planner would be doctor's appointments, work deadlines, traveling plans, anything big like that that are scheduled and have a very firm due date. I will keep inside an online planning system. So that way, if I'm ever out and I want to schedule an event and I don't have my paper planner with me, I can always pull out my phone and look through what days have a firm scheduled event on them. So I know when I'm free and when I'm busy, and I find that I get the most accomplished when I use both together. I love having the portability of online planning, but I also love actually writing things down and taking them off as they come along and decorating and designing a paper planet. And it's something that I can easily archive and save for the memories or information. As time goes on. The system that works for me, but you can always customize it for what works for you. So maybe you like to keep your daily tests inside of an online planner system and then keep your long term goals and project planning and weekly yearly monthly templates inside of a paper planner. You can do that as well. Only planning is just another element with hidden paper planning we can really use to help you out and accomplish your goals. I think online creating is a great tool. It can just be another element to add to your paper planning system and your overall planning toolbox that can work for you.