How Planners Helped Me Manage My Life

What’s up? How are you doing today? Life has been pretty redundant these past couple of days as we are still in community quarantine. Nothing new there but every day is a good day to do your goals. We have all the time in the world anyway (note the sarcasm).

For this week’s blog, I want to talk about how my planners have become a huge part of my life. Last Saturday I uploaded a vlog on my Youtube Channel showing my planners in the past 7 years. I never really know when I started using it but I think it goes way back when I was in high school. I always see my mom using this same small A-5 planner every single year up until now. As a child, my mom is always stressed to see how disorganized I am with my schedule so she always tells me to fix my everyday routine. During grade school and high school, we have this “diary” or “handbook” where I can write all my homework and activities throughout the school year. It is mandatory to have this so when I went to college no one said that universities don’t give stuff like handbooks or diary to their students lol. So in my first year of college, I did not bother to buy a planner and my year just went out of hand. In my second year in college, that’s when I started to be mindful of my schedule. Extracurricular activities started to pile up and professors were giving deadlines like madmen so before the school year started, I got my first “adult” planner. It was university themed and it helped me a lot. Ever since then, I have never stopped using a planner every year because I became extremely dependent on it.

As you can see, we are now in the digital age where desktop and phone calendars are the more practical and sensible thing to help people organize their schedules. But for me, writing down your tasks intentionally in a notebook makes a huge difference. It makes thinking about your schedule more mindfully and of course, you won’t forget about it if you can see it every day without distractions. Every time I put some reminders or schedule on my phone, I tend to ignore it and sometimes, forget about it completely because the moment I viewed the reminder or what I’m supposed to do at that time of the day, all I have to do is click done or ignore it and continue to browse on my social media accounts. I try my best to lessen my screentime every day too and writing my plans ahead of time in a planner makes me organize, plan, and do it because there’s no distraction. 

Right now, I’m already set for my 2021 planner set-up. Before I just use 1 planner each year but as I discover more ways to document my life, I finally started creative journaling last 2017. Aside from the fact the planners and journals are a great way to keep up with the highs, lows, and everything in between of your life, it also gives me a sense of joy to look back at what I wrote in the past years. I love to browse my old planner sometimes to see what I was doing in during certain days of the year. Creative journals also helped me reminisce about some of my travels and activities that amuse me sometimes.

In this changing world where everyone is competing who has more gadgets or technology in their household, it keeps me grounded to know that somehow, my feet are still glued on the ground through my planners. Finishing one book and looking back on my entries made me see how much I’ve grown, improved, and what more can I learn in the following years. It has been part of my life and I’m sure it's not just me who feels this way.

What are your ways to organize your life? Do you have a planner system too? What is your favorite planner to use? Share it with me in the comment section!

See you on my next blog :)

By the way, you can check out my Planner Vlog here: