Tuesday Tips: My To-Do Planner

Have you guys seen those amazing planners people are making?  Some people call them bullet journals, but they're essentially fancy planners.  They're all over Pinterest, and they really make me jealous most days.  They have stickers and cool little drawings and they use lots of colorful pens.  Go check them out!  I promise they'll make you jealous too.

Part of what makes me jealous about seeing those planners is that they make me feel like other people are clearly more organized than I am.  I mean, look, they have the right stickers on the right days and everything!  They not only had time to think out their week, but they also had time to draw a pretty picture to illustrate what they're going to be doing, too!  I could never do that in a million years.  Sigh.

Now that's not to say I don't have a planner.  Oh yes, I have a planner.  It's very simple, it's very to the point.  When you lay it out flat, the two pages make up a week and each day has a section to write things it.  It literally cost me less than $2 at Walmart.  I decided to go as cheap as I could because I knew in my heart I could never have one of those beautiful planners.  Nope.

You see, I realized something recently; the more time I spend on my planner, the less time I have to get my tasks done and the less likely I am to reach my goals.  Now this may not be true of everyone.  I'm sure there are actually people who can make beautiful planners and also get all the tasks done.  But personally, I would rather spend my creative energy on my creative projects, my designing, my sewing, my garden.  That's what really matters most to me.

So my tip today is a simple one: don't feel bad if your planner looks like this.

I use my planner as a glorified to-do list.  When I think of something I haven't written down, or that I don't know which day I can get it done, I write it on a post-it note and stick that in the planner too.  Then I use my trusty pink felt tip pen to write everything down and cross it off as I do it.  It's extremely low tech, and definitely not worth putting up on Pinterest, but it works really well for me.  If I have a free minute in my day and don't know what I should be doing, I just go check out my list and there it is in pink and white.  Simple as can be! And because it's notebook sized, it's a lot harden to lose than a loose piece of paper, which is what I used to write my to-do lists on.

So do you keep a pretty planner?  Do you have a special place to write your to-do list?  I'd love to hear what everyone else does!