Right around January, that beautiful idealized time when everyone re-evaluates their life and dreams, I followed up on something I'd bookmarked a few weeks earlier:
I checked out how it works, and printed a few free sample pages to see if I could better organize my February workload if I used it.
It requires a lot of dedication, a lot of planning to the minute detail and date as to how you will accomplish your goals. It takes a focused amount of time every week to not only organize your life by the half hour, but also to evaluate how successful you were in implementing your plan.
Here is the main thing I saw from using a Passion Planner that no other planner thus far has done for me:
I spend a lot of time just keeping the household in order. I am a work from home parent in a a one-car family, which means that the work I get is always balanced with my toddler's nap-times, the vast amount of driving we do in any given day, and a realistic outlook on how many sitters I can afford. I am looking for more work, either virtually or in person, so that might change in the near future, but until then, I finally discovered a planner that helps me understand exactly how much time I have and how much time my various activities take.
I gained a real understanding of my limits, but more importantly, I clarified my priorities. In order to continue with both my Outreach Nerd consulting, revising my novel-in-progress, keeping my toddler and I active within play based educational settings, and eating as healthily as possible, I had to get real on my time commitments.
In no particular order, here are my concrete takeaways using the Passion Planner:
- I have to focus on one writing project at a time. Decide whether I want short term gratification (blog) or to get absorbed into revisions, and plan my writing time that day accordingly (even if it is only an hour).
- Schedule time to prepare food and eat it.
- Plan on Sunday for the following week and discuss the work schedule with my husband where it overlaps with our time at home together.
- Plan on 1-2 days where we don't take the car and enjoy the lack of structured activities to let my son lead our playtime. This also means his nap isn't overlapping with driving time and I then get at least an extra half hour of work time.
- Take pleasure in highlighting the items I finish.
- Schedule time to shower.
- Perhaps most importantly: This is not a to-do list. Each line represents a half hour of my life, and some tasks take longer, some take less time. Adjust accordingly.
If you need better time management in your life and have multiple projects to juggle (including household and relationship ones), then I strongly suggest downloading some sample pages and testing it out for at least a month. I ended up buying the undated planner and it is working very well for me.
I am in no way associated with the Passion Planner and was not solicited to write this review in any manner. If you do want to try one, I would appreciate it if you say you were referred by [email protected] and I'll eventually get a discount.
