My Most Important Planner Tip - "You"

I love my planner, not because it is pretty or perfect, but because it makes my life better. 

I am thoughtful about how I use it, striving to achieve the right balance of usefulness without getting overwhelmed. Over the life of this blog, I've shared many of the little tips and tricks that make my planner work for me, instead of me working to maintain my planner.

Here is a grand tour through some of my favorite planner tips (linked to the original blog entry):

*Have a portable place for papers that you need to keep with you, but that are too big to fit in your planner. These days, I use a see-through plastic folder.

*Think about YOUR organizing and planner problems and choose a solution that works for YOU - not for anybody else.

*Know the difference between a Calendar entry and a Task entry.

*Have rules for your planner. They must be flexible, but jot them down and follow them.

*Use blogs and facebook and other sites to help you design the planner that works FOR YOU, not for others.

*You need a place to plan Projects, even if you don't work outside the home.

*Make forms or custom pages that work for you.

*Identify your needs in a dream planner, and then try to match those needs, not someone else's needs.

*Use codes that mean something to you to save space in your planner for details.

*Use your planner as more than just a calendar, like for meal planning or archiving medical notes.

*Know when you reach the dreaded Planner Fail and deal with it immediately so that you don't get out of the habit of using your planner.

*Put your planner in an order that makes sense in your life - not merely the order that it was in when you bought it.

*Use your planner daily, do weekly reviews of your planner, and schedule a yearly reset for your planner. 

*Follow the planner tips in this post, if they work for your life. My favorite is to make your planner portable enough for you.

*Use inks and spacial set-ups that are pretty to your eyes.

*Know why you write it down.

Ultimately, planner success is about YOU and making sure your planner works for your life.

If you have specific issues that you are dealing with regarding your planner, comment and let me know what the problem is and a little about how you use your planner (or post a picture), and I'll try to respond with suggestions, either in the comments or in a blog post dedicated to you.

Etcetera.

P.S. I hope you truly enjoyed this journey through my blog. Every now and then, I write something worth sharing. Blogger lets me know when you share on Google+, but you can also pin my post on Pinterest or share on Facebook. I hope that this post is one worthy of sharing.