Are you ready to plan out your whole year in advance and feel the most prepared you’ve ever been? When I started doing this with my spouse during our second year of marriage it really helped us be on the same page!
Christmas break is drawing to an end and I feel like I am sighing in relief! I love Christmas and I love the festivities and family time that come with the holiday season. I have to be honest though, the crappy food and late nights plus constantly being on the go leave me feeling exhausted. By January 1st I’m dying for some routine, schedule, and goal getting to whip things back into shape.
Now the biggest question of all: How do I do that? I want to be focused. I want to start the year off right. So where do we start? We are going to plan our next YEAR in advance to get a head start.
Get a Planner!
Buy a planner that you love so that you want to use it and carry it with you everywhere just to show it off. Make sure the format is one that will work for you too. Experiment with a few different styles and layouts at first to find the one that will work best for you and then stick with it. This planner will be your buddy for a whole year so lets make sure its the right one.
I am a paper person. Every year I buy a cute new planner and I fill in January and I’m doing great and life is good and goals are happening. Then BAM somewhere down the road I fall off the wagon and stop filling it out. This year I’m trying something new and you’re welcome to try it with me. I’m going to explain more below so keep reading.
2022 Planners
Grab Your Phone and a Calendar App.
Whats the one thing you have with you ALWAYS? We feel like a piece of us is missing when we don’t have it. And as distracting as it is, I’m not sure how people got along with out it to be honest. YOUR PHONE!! Now I like the generic calendar app that comes with iPhones but maybe you like google calendars or some other fancy app. Great! They’ll all work. If you’re married or with someone you want to share your schedule with though make sure you can share your calendar with them, (you can in the iPhone app).
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Create Categories
Now you are going to create a category for each major section of your life. Each section is going to get its own “Calendar” in your phone and a color that is assigned to it. (You can also separate people by colors. Everything from my husband is yellow in my phone.)
The categories I use are:
- Church
- Work
- Social/Personal
- School
- Blog
- Shared
So most of these are self explanatory but just a quick explanation in case you have questions.
Church
Church is anything religious related like going to church on Sunday or a church run activity or even having to remember to plan something for a lesson. You get the point.
Work
Work is simply my work hours, depending on your job it may not be that simple.
Social/Personal
Social or Personal is things like meeting a girlfriend for lunch or going shopping with my mom.
School
School was when I had classes but also study groups or reviews. (I’m no longer in school but thought I’d leave this section in here as another example of a section that may apply to others).
Shared
Shared is all social events that affect my husband and I. So if we are meeting friends together or going to a family event or date nights all go here.
Other
I have a section for blogging as well because I schedule posts and if I ever have a blogging related get together or meet up then that would go in this section. You should personalize your calendars to your needs too!
Now create a “Calendar” in your app of choice for each of your categories. Try giving each category its own color so that when the events show up you’ll know at a glance what categories have things going on each day. Below is where to find “Calendars” in the Apple app and what my calendars look like.
Get it all out.
Now you are going to plan your whole year in advance. I use this technique from FunCheaporFree (one of my favorite bloggers/influencers) and I feel it works well. She has a YouTube video and blog post you can check out but I’ll go over it here. So on your own, go through your whole year and write down in your paper planner everything you know is coming that year as well as things you want to make time for.
I suggest taking one topic at a time and going through the whole year before moving onto the next topic. For example, start with birthdays. Write down every single birthday you want to remember for the whole year. Take it month by month. Then move onto vacations (including 3-day weekends) and write them down. Keep doing this with things like: date night, church responsibilities, goal setting, kid events. Everything you can know in advance and write it down.
Include Your Spouse
Now it’s time to sit down with your spouse or significant other and put things into your phone. Robin and I do this so that we’ll both have access to what is going on. Neither of you will ever lose your schedule. It is so nice to both be on the same page and have your entire year in advance in your phone.
Schedule a set time together and get serious. Put everything you wrote down into your phone and categorize it into the categories you made earlier. You’re going to share your calendars with each other (assign one color to everything that is the other persons to simplify) Now you’ll always know what they have going on. When you plan your months and weeks you’ll just supplement the small things in each category as you find out about them.
A Year in Advance
Now its early January and you have your whole year in advance planned out to the best of your ability! Doesn’t that feel so good! I know I for one feel ready to go get some goals and really live this year to the fullest. I want to take my blog further, live in the moment more, and be more prepared for big events and holidays this year (I’m a huge procrastinator). What are your goals this year? Tell me in the comments.
Don’t forget to set a couple New Year’s resolutions to help yourself improve and reach your goals this year. Did you know that writing your goals down makes them more likely to happen? It’s true. I have a few FREE goals printables to help you track your New Year’s resolutions!
And hey if you need help with a goal setting system check out this awesome podcast!!
