Hi all,
I’m really excited to be here with you today sharing my hints and tips on organising your day.
First, a little about me. I’m a special needs mum, business owner and blogger. Life is hectic, as I’m sure you can imagine. I’m married to a firefighter that also has several other jobs - typical firefighter lol. We have 2 dogs, 4 chickens, 3 rats and a bearded dragon and, until recently, we also had a horse!
In order to survive and try to retain some semblance of sanity, our lives have to be planned meticulously.
Everybody has their favourite organisation tools and what suits one person, will not necessarily suit another but, that’s ok.
I use 2 methods to organise my life:
Google calendar
Filofax planners
Google calendar is a life saver. Absolutely everything goes in it and we sync the calendar across all 4 phones. This enables us to prevent double booking ourselves (almost…….)
However, my absolute favourite is to have a written planner - I’m old fashioned that way.
I find that Sunday evenings are best for planning as events are then fresh in your mind for the week ahead. When you are scatterbrained like me, this is absolutely essential.
Within the calendar section of my planner I have the following sections:
Monthly
Weekly
Daily
You might think this is overkill but each section has a purpose and everything is colour coded for easy identification.
Monthly
This, as the name implies, is my month at a glance. On here I put everything that is booked in and is time specific so, for example, appointments, work etc. This then helps me to identify days that are available for blocking out for other commitments.
Weekly
This is where I really start to structure my time over the week. Appointments are copied over from the monthly calendar and I fill in where each family member is on any given day. So, for example, school times are written in, shifts are shown, important dates for pets are listed etc.
Daily
The daily sheets are where I really get down to the nitty gritty of scheduling my time. I write out a To Do List and note down any time appointments etc so that I know if and when I need to be somewhere. I allow travelling time and time to get ready. Once these are in the schedule, I then start blocking out time. I’ve found that, to maximise my time and be most effective, scheduling tasks is a godsend.
What do I mean by this?
I literally block out time for each activity. For example:
09.00 to 10.00 - walk the dogs
10.00 to 10.30 - shower
10.30 to 12.00 - housework
12.00 to 13.00 - lunch
13.00 to 15.00 - work
15.00 to 18.30 - after school activities
And so it goes on. By doing this, I am more inclined to actually get stuff done and I then don’t feel guilty about sitting down for my lunch in front of the tv!
To the untrained eye, this may seem like a lot of effort and I can understand why you would feel that way but, what I have found is that by taking time out to plan I can make much more efficient use of my time and get much more done!Do you need help organising your day? Why not check out our Organise Happy downloadable planners - CLICK HERE
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