Trust The Planner

I'm thinking of changing the name of my blog from "Giftie Etcetera" to "Do As I Say, Not As I Do." Sigh. 

(Just joking about that, by the way...mostly.)

After decades of using my planner, I am well-trained to use it regularly. I am disciplined about writing things down as they come up, creating a system to fix anything slipping through the cracks, and checking it daily.

What I struggle with is trusting my planner.

Yesterday I showed you a way to use post-its to deal with high stress weeks. The truth is that I ended up doing something with a hole punch and little notepad instead because the post-its covered too much of my week's writing.

Basically, in addition to my normal daily and weekly task lists, I moved my ton of household responsibilities before the school holiday starts to a home list and my excessive number of Christmas errands (many more places to go than during a normal, non-holiday week) to an errand list. This made sense because I suddenly had so many errands, but won't after Christmas, so changing how I use my planner overall would have been a mistake.

TIP: If you regularly have tons of errands, go ahead and make a regular errands list.

This morning, I checked today's Monday entry for any day-specific errands and then checked this new, temporary errand list. 

As is my normal philosophy, I don't do double entries. Everything either goes on a day-specific list - if it is day dependent - or this week's master errand list.

TIP: Don't double up on planner entries. Instead, either write the task or appointment on the monthly or weekly page or somewhere else. If you write it in two different places, you might do it, scratch it out, and then question if you have done it or not yet.

As some point, as I was driving by the bank, I randomly thought, "hmm, I don't see 'bank' on my list. I need to go to the bank and take out cash. How did I forget to write it down?" So I detoured and wasted time waiting in line and withdrawing cash.

It was two hours later when I realized that going to the bank was on my Tuesday list. There was a good reason that it was on that list, of course. I needed to deposit some checks that I will receive this afternoon, on Monday, after I receive them.

I should have trusted my planner! My entries are consistent, thoughtful, and reasonable. But I didn't and I wasted time as a result. Sure, it was only a few minutes. But those minutes could have been spent reading, Facebooking, or napping! That is precious time for a busy mom.

Don't be me. Use your planner every single time - and don't doubt your trusty companion.

Etcetera.