Organise Me: The use of a calendar

When I was younger if you'd asked me what a calendar was for I'd have replied with something along these lines:

For looking at pictures of my favourite boyband/mancrush, duuuuh. *rolls eyes* *huff*

Although I was quite an organised teen (I'm sure my family are reading this and thinking to themselves that they remember me being super messy...ignore them.) but the idea of writing anything on one of precious calendars was utter ridiculousness to me. I kept all I needed to know in my head and scheduled myself each day down to the minute, which subsequently I never stuck to. I had a friend who had a calendar and she used it properly. She had everything on there from assignment due dates to the days she began and finished her period. I remember going to her house before school every morning and being in awe of this life organisation tool she had on her wall.

Life map

Calendars are certainly a life map to help plan where you are going to be in the future. It's hard to keep all that information in your head and when you're thinking about the interview you've scheduled for a months time and you're meant to be working on something else...well, you're probably not going to be bringing your best. I know I haven't and it's the most annoying thing to know you could be focusing better and working harder.  This is something I am working on.

One lump? Or two?

 Is one calendar enough. For me it's not. I made myself a wall calendar and found that I needed space for notes to fill in the blanks behind a Write blog post. In a months time will I remember what that blog post was meant to be about? Probably not, or if I do it negates the point of having a calendar to clear out the head space. My solution to this was to get a separate day planner diary with a page a day and enough space to elaborate and leave myself little notes. It's amazing how quickly you get used to syncing the two, looking to one and then the other to supplement information. It makes me feel super organised already and I've not done that much yet!

A word about colour coding...

Do it! I've begun to colour code everything. The calendar gets the full on colour treatment:

Red = Bills
Green = Life stuff
Orange = Work
Blue = Blog 

I can tell at a glance what I'm supposed to be working on. *high five*

Want to download and print the calendar I made for August? Click HERE.

How are you organising your life? Let me know in the comments or drop me an email.

Organisation Smorganisation: Getting back on track

I am not an organised person. Someone recently used the term "choreographed chaos" in reference to me. And it's true. I have a tendency to put things down in strange places (or the first available space to me!), I rifle through my clothes drawers and mess it all up and resulting in extra work for me on my days off,  and I have a terribly short attention span. I am a whirling dervish of utter calamity.

Keeping myself organised

I have to go to great effort to keep myself in check. I write to do lists all the time. I use Wunderlist at work and have a running list of every thing, no matter how small, so I don't forget to do something. People laugh at me, but I have to do it. Structure is important for my brain. It's like a climbing Clematis (and yes I have one in the garden!). Without a wall or a trellis the stems flail around looking for something, anything, to attach itself to for support. I am that Clematis! Did I just liken myself to a plant? Holy... someone get me a cup of coffee.

Making plans

When I was a teenager, every evening I'd write a schedule for the next morning. 


7am: Get up


7:05am: Actually get up


7:15am: Shower


7:20am: Seriously, get out of bed you lazy bed monster!


Or something along those lines. Was it going a bit far to attempt to structure every little detail of my day from minute to minute? Yeah, it was so I stopped. I came to the conclusion that it took the creativity and spontaneity out of life. So I stopped organising myself all together!

I'm going to get organised again. Not to the previous extent, but certainly gaining balance is a good idea. The essence of scheduling life, I suppose, is to plan and also be flexible within certain limits. What might I do on this day? Does it matter if I don't do it? Can I move it to another day if I need to? To do this I need a diary.

Paper vs online calendars

I love my tech. My smartphone is rarely away from my side and I enjoy being able to access everything quickly. Lately I've been using Wunderlist (which I mentioned before) and Google calendar to organise myself at work. It's worked really well so far. I can set up reminders that ping at me, my laptop and phone sync automatically, and I can access it from anywhere I need to.

There's only one problem. I like paper. Paper is right there in front of you, reminding you that it needs to be completed. It can't be dismissed, or snoozed, or silenced. It can be screwed up and shoved in a bin, but you know, that would be a waste and I don't like waste. You can wander past it day to day, have a quick glance and remind yourself. There is a great satisfaction when you cross something off the calendar or to do list because you've completed it.

So here's a challenge...

Get organised. Simple and yet my head just had a little panic. Organised! What?! Nooooooo...

I'm going to start here and it's going to be on paper.

  You can download the blog planner by clicking right....HERE or by clicking the picture.

Do you have a story about how badly organised you've been or you're super organised and want to share your tips? Leave a comment or email me. I'd love to hear from you.

:)

Laters.

K-Monster
xo

Free Downloadables

Yesterday, before I went to work I had a play around in Photoshop and made myself some new desktop backgrounds and I thought I'd share them with you.

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Hope you enjoy prettying up your computer today! Let me know what you think. Would you like to see more of these sorts of things?

xo