marcia’s diary

{planning} It’s time to talk about diaries (planners)

Do you still use a paper diary?

Yes? No?

I use both electronic – Outlook at work and my iPhone Calendar for personal – and a paper diary.

Before each work day, I write a list of my meetings and the top 3 things I want to get done (sometimes the whole day is meetings).

Work is not the point of this blog post though.

For my personal use, I still use a paper diary, but a weekly one.

This year I used a daily one until the end of July and then I switched back to weekly from August, and it has been the best thing because my mind thinks in weeks.

Many of us are visual people and we need to see something in front of us to be most effective.

Here’s a post I wrote a few years ago that help you discover what you need in a diary/ planner.

If you have consistently bought a diary and tried to use it and have stopped after a month or so, it may be that you don’t have a consistent habit.

Is your diary visible daily? Do you have a weekly and daily routine to look at it? (set a reminder in your phone) You could try now to just write a daily and weekly list of things to do/ meetings/ appointments, etc. and if you build the habit, then buy one for the new year. If you don’t create the habit though, you’re going to again waste lots of money.

I should technically be using the rest of my diary I started in Aug (and it works perfectly for me – I even like the monthly goals and review section) but I am 98% sure I’m going to start afresh with a new diary, just as I want my life to be fresh in the new year.

What are your thoughts about diaries for next year?

{planning} introducing my 2020 diary

Compared to 2018’s back and forth on the subject of my 2019 diary, I am so pleased that this year there was none of that nonsense.

You can read about my 2019 diary here. Interestingly, it’s the most popular post in November 2018 of the 6 months since May 2018! And here are pictures of my 2019 diary in action on Instagram.

I saw all the diaries in my local bookshop, noticed a few that I liked but one stood out – this one. I thought about it for a few days and then went back to get it.

Things I love in a diary are:

goals page at the front, and one for each month
monthly events calendar at a glance
weekly format
not too big to carry around

This diary had all of these features and the best is that I’ve already played around with the same format in 2018, so I know it works for me.

I also like how it zips up so I can carry a thin bullet journal with me and zip the whole lot up so that it stays contained in my handbag.

For those who are new to me, I love a weekly planner because my brain thinks in weeks and no matter how pretty the daily planners are, I’d never use them as well as I use a weekly planner.

I also like that this diary has a prayer list if you’re so inclined (you can use it for your weekly intentions, which is almost the same thing!), your priorities for the week and the notes for the week section which I use for some of my weekend to-dos.

Perhaps this will be the year I’ll be able to restrict all my weekend to-dos to that one little section? 🙂