Importance of Planning - A Preamble

This topic excites me because I love planning and organizing. Making order out of chaos is one of my favourite things to do. In light of the blog I published the other day, “Intentionally Planning Your Future,” I thought I would follow up with suggestions for practical tools to help you plan and organize parts of your life.

I want to highlight the concept of planning for your best life moving forward. This helps you create a sense of purpose and can fill you with joy as you experience your plans coming to fruition. In addition, planning is a way of charting your progress or growth and having the ability to measure it creates a visual record that helps you understand your personal history.

A cursory scan of Google searches tells us that planning and organizing are topics ‘du jour.’ Entire businesses have been created, and people have made fortunes by designing planning and scheduling tools and systems. That has all happened because we said we wanted them. And we use them in record numbers.

Their products range from books to magazines to apps for phones, tablets, and computers. Beautiful paper products encourage you to write down your thoughts, plans, goals, and to-dos. I discovered a company in Sweden—Mal Paper—that makes beautiful paper products.

Blogs and courses have been developed to teach you how to set goals and create effective strategies. There are also ways to track your progress.

It is all incredible and mind-boggling. You could spend hours going down the rabbit holes of systems, methods, and tools.

No Plans Create Loops

Because you are a woman over fifty, you have had many experiences in your lifetime - ones where your planning was impeccable and others when there was utter chaos.

It would be best if you were more organized. Maybe you have had constant mind loops, such as:

“I am so disorganized. I am trying to figure out what to do next. I can’t accomplish anything. I am a failure. I want ice cream.”

And you would wake up in a cold sweat and vow to do better.

It does not matter what area of your life you need to be more organized. The mind loops play out in the same way. And they can be excruciating in the self-recriminations and torment you endlessly.

Another problem that plays in the background is how you live your life. You may feel adrift and regret some things in your past that could have been different had you known where you wanted to go.

In addition, you have yet to have the time, energy, and know-how to help you set your life more intentionally, deliberately, and purposefully so that you can travel in the direction you want.

I am here to help.

Where Do We Start?

The Mind Tool Content Team created an article on MindTools called Personal Goal Setting. They start by writing:

“A key reason they feel this way is that they haven't spent enough time thinking about what they want from life and haven't set formal goals. After all, would you set out on a significant journey without an accurate idea of your destination? Probably not!”

The article goes on to extensively explore the idea of setting goals. Check it out if you want some background information.

My Approach - My Ladders

But I am starting at a different place and taking a more organic approach to helping you learn to live your life with intention, purpose, and joy. This is by no means a comprehensive list. However, I do want to tell you about how I go about planning my life.

1. I will begin with the idea of exercise and activity. It is a crucial tool to get yourself in a positive vibrational mindset. I like walking, but that is only sometimes possible. I have an app called ‘Pedometer’ on my iPhone that keeps track of my steps and miles/kilometres. I am learning Tai Chi and taking a seniors’ exercise class twice weekly. But my foundational strategy to feel good in my body is to use a stationary indoor bike. I can get on it whenever I want to or need to, and I get on it even if I don’t want to. The best time is almost straight out of bed while still in my pyjamas after I feed my cat, Roger, and do my get-set-ready tasks. It starts the day off right. I have set a goal to cycle 1,725 miles this calendar year. Have fun holding me to this.

2. My daily meditation practice is an excellent tool to help me plan. I have a timer set for 20 minutes, and I settle myself into my posture and ground myself by consciously relaxing my muscles and being aware of my breath. I slowly calmed down. Surprisingly, many thoughts and ideas float through my brain around planning - for the day, the week or beyond. Solutions are found.

3. An excellent tool is my journalling practice. In my journal, I write about what I did yesterday, how I feel about it and where I am mentally ‘sitting’ right then and there as I journal. I then write about my plans for the day and beyond. It is a valuable tool because when I journal, I am also talking about my feelings, and I am paving my future ahead of me. It feels like I am laying the brickwork for a path I will travel. I always want to focus on paving it with love.

4. Each year, I write out my New Year’s Resolutions that have turned into my New Year’s Intentions. This process happens over the week between Christmas and New Year as I review the year that is coming to an end, celebrate victories, and think about the lessons I learned along the way. I then have a better understanding of where I want to go during the following year. I set my intentions and create goals and plans. They are written down and referred to at regular intervals.

5. I also keep myself aware of the moon’s energy - from an astrological point of view. At the time of the new moon, I write down my intentions for the coming 28 days and the following six months. At the time of the full moon, I create a list of energy-type things I want to release - such as ‘worry’ or ‘negativity.’ I then burn that list to help me release what I no longer want in my life. It feels freeing.

6. I use a paper agenda where I write down my plan for the month, week and day. I also record my victories at the end of each month and my goals for the upcoming month. It is more about my daily personal life. It gets messy as plans change, entries are made on the fly, and I find more things I want to record. I also like to use colour markers for some entries and a pencil for others because then I can erase quickly, and I use a lot of stickers as favourable reinforcement. Seeing a week start bland and end up full and colourful is fantastic.

7. For my business, I use an app on my computer called Monday. It is a visual planner app that helps me organize my projects and tasks. I use the free version, which is enough for me. I like it because it is colourful, easy to use and easy to learn. And I love that I can brain-dump my ideas and then organize them. I enjoy moving around my tasks, deleting some, adding more, and getting more precise about what I want to accomplish. It always feels smooth, keeps me on track and organized, and has helped me move forward exponentially on my projects.

8. In the decluttering/household organization area, I like visiting FlyLady.net for inspiration. I find her funny, practical and good at what she does, as she advocates realistic plans for keeping things running smoothly.

9. And for my financial health, I like the Buddy app that is available in the app store on my iPhone. It is colourful and user-friendly. I also use a spreadsheet to track different things of interest. Paige Brunton, who is the person who developed courses that I purchased to teach me how to set up my website, sent out a link to a video she made and posted to YouTube, “How I paid off $45K of student debt in 1.8 years,” that I found very inspiring.

This Is Only The Beginning

Planning is an ongoing learning experience. Many tools are ‘out there’ that can help us. It is also about developing processes and a determined mindset to carry our lives forward more intentionally. Getting your head wrapped around the bits and pieces that will help you move yourself and your life in the direction you were meant to travel in is crucial.

On Purpose Advisory, a site from Australia, there is a fantastic blog post, “How Do I Create A Life Plan?” It helps you create a life plan that “is the finished product at the end of an emotional and engaging process of self-discovery.” It is chock full of excellent ideas and tools and a fabulous resource to explore. It helps with creating goals and envisioning your life moving forward.

Effective planning is a dance that moves you from the big picture to project management to step-by-step tasks to a list of to-dos. Learn the dance rhythm and enjoy the process and the movement around the dance floor of your life. (Cheesy - I know!)

Are you ready to do more planning? Creating plans and working ahead to plan your life is not meant to chain you down. On the contrary, a great sense of freedom comes from knowing exactly where you want to go. Then, you are more relaxed when you wish to take detours and check things out as opportunities arise. Enjoy.

A Challenge For You:

1. Pick one area of your life that feels off balance.

2. Visualize where you would like to be - in a day, week, month or year.

3. Research tools that fit your personality and will help you get there.

4. Create goals to get to your destination.

5. Make plans to bring those goals to fruition.

6. Record your journey.

7. Celebrate.

8. You are amazing!

Please consider sharing a link to this blog or site with people you know who could use it and/or pass it on to others. Also, please share your thoughts with me. And … I would be appreciative of a coffee and croissant.

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