Finding a System that Works

Fine tuning my organization.

Photo by That's Her Business on Unsplash

I will neither confirm nor deny that I’m where planners go to die. It took me forever to find something that stuck for more than a week. And even then it took multiple tries to get it right.

Part of that is I see so many pretty set-ups for pages and I’m not artistically inclined. So I’d spend way too long setting up pages only to be disappointed with the end result or it actually turned out and I didn’t want to mess it up so I’d put my to do list in another notebook. Or keep a second journal so I had no reason to touch my bullet journal.

Until I gave up on trying to draw anything and just used washi tape and stickers. All of a sudden, I didn’t need to worry about messing anything up. I put my journal in a box at the top of each day and ditched the second journal. The only thing I kept was my extra notebook for my weekly to do list and extra writing.

With it being a new quarter and my old BuJo being filled, I’m tweaking my system again. I’m putting my habit tracker (which I’d forget to fill in when it was in my monthly set-up) in my weekly set-up and cutting in a dutch door so I can see my weekly to do list. I’m hoping it will help me spot patterns in my habits so I can fine tune what I’m doing.

The other things I’m doing are using a monthly calendar on my desk so I can see everything at a glance and setting up rewards for completing everything each week. Because if there are no rewards or punishments, current Dawn doesn’t care that it will help Future Dawn most days. I’m also tracking my writing progress in a dedicated planner only for my writing, just so I can see how much I actually wrote on any given day. As well as setting up my Kanban board with smaller goals to reach my bigger ones.

I’m hopeful this tweak to my way of doing things actually gets me back on track with all of the things I want to accomplish this year as well as for the rest of my life. But I know I will have to go back from time-to-time to check in on if my systems are working for me or if I need to adjust for a new season in my life.

What’s your favorite system for keeping yourself organized and doing all the things?