The Power of Planning – and how to do it!

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Big on Planning. Little on Doing. You see, we don’t need to do anything – not as long as we plan!

I’m joking – of course. Doing is a big part of success. To most, it’s the biggest. To the best of the best, it’s probably the second biggest. This is because of planning.

Most people don’t understand the clarity that comes with planning. Most people assume that planning is a waste of time – it’s something that is only used by influencer’s who are sponsored to talk about the planner that they are using.

(Or some other crazy people who have no idea what they want from life – because, surely, if you know what you want, why do you need to plan?)

I plan out every single day in advance. I might not always use the plan – but at least it’s there if I have no idea what to do.

So, what actually is planning?

If you search ‘define planning‘ in Google it will come up with this:

So, according to Google, planning is the process of making plans for something. Not very insightful, right?

Well, according to me, planning is creating plans in advance for something, which will help you in the future to understand exactly why you should not be scrolling through TikTok or YouTube or Instagram, or whatever else you have.

Part of planning is also to develop systems.

What are the benefits of having a plan?

Preparing for the future allows us to see potential obstacles in advance and develop strategies to overcome them. This minimises the risk of failure (although you could still fail).

It helps us to stay focused because we don’t have to think about what we should do next – we only have to check our planner or calendar or to-do list.

We are able to use our time and resources to the best of their ability because we know what we need to do.

As you can probably already tell, knowing what to do is the biggest thing here.

How can we plan?

There are many types of planners and organisation apps out there, including:

• Bullet Journaling (my personal favourite!)
• Daily planners
• Weekly Planners
• Yearly Planners
• Academic Planners
• Digital Planners
• Calendars
• To-Doist
• Notion
• Google Calendar
• Excel/ Google spreadsheets
• A To-Do list

There are SO many!

However, I’m only going to be reviewing Bullet Journalling, Academic Planners, Notion and Google Calendar, as these are the systems I have used, and can give actual advice on.

Google Calendar

I do love Google Calendar. I still use it (probably because I have a Chromebook, so everything is attached to my Gmail), even though I now use a different system, which we will discuss later.

What I like:

• You can have your daily schedule emailed to you! This is so useful if you check your email in the morning, because your daily agenda is right there, sitting in your inbox!
• Google Calendar is really flexible – you can attach To-Do Lists to your tasks and you can more your events around if timings change
• Nice for when calendar blocking

What I don’t like:

• Time blocking is difficult when you don’t have control over what you’re doing almost 60% of the time and it can have a lot of unrealistic expectations attached to it.
• My school doesn’t allow us to use phones so I can’t check it or add to it throughout the day.

Academic Planners

I used an academic planner in Year 8. However, I probably only picked it up a couple of times compared to my current planner. Here’s why:

What I like:

• They come with a space for your timetable, homework.
• They have a page a day, and one page for a weekend.

What I don’t like:

• It’s not very flexible.
• It’s not customizable.
• I prefer to have weekly spreads.
• It does not include calendars, or habit trackers.

Notion

I believe that I will use Notion in the future. I use Notion currently for planning blog posts and taking notes whilst I do my Babbel lessons. But I do not use it for planning my life, like I did for the first 3 months of 2022.

What I like:

• It is very flexible. The most flexible system I’ve ever tried.
• It can be really aesthetic (which is a big thing for me).
• There are so many things you can do with it.

What is not like:

• My school does not allow phones, so I cannot add to it throughout the day.

Bullet Journalling

As I mentioned earlier, this is my personal favourite! I use my bullet Journal everyday.

What I like:

• It’s customisable.
• I can check it and add to it in school.
• It’s aesthetic.

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