Good morning! Get out your highlighters and your journals, my friends. The time for planning has arrived! Even though my planning process is basically the same as it was last time I sat down and planned with you for March, I thought it would be fun to take you along for the ride. Who doesn’t love some a good caffeine-infused planning session, right?
PART ONE: CHECK IN
BRAINSTORM
First things first, I always like to start by getting a vision of where I want to go this month. Pulling out my brain-dump notebook, I wrote out all my focus areas—writing, blog, health, finance, creativity, and highlights—and underneath each header, I scribbled down what I wanted to accomplish in each of those areas this month. This stage is also where you’ll want to scribble all your various projects and ideas.
MONTHLY FOCUS
If you remember my plan with me post from March, you’ll know that I try to find a monthly focus. My month of March was focused on gratitude. In April, I sought to find little pockets of joy each week; whether it was the excitement of the Taylor Swift countdown, looking forward to an upcoming concert, or celebrating Easter Sunday with my family.
Going into May, I decided that my focus this month is to be unapologetic. I’m the type of person who says “I’m sorry” too often, and for no reason at all. By this point in my life, my apologies are a habit, a reflex to respond to inconveniencing others. Unless I’ve actually hurt someone, I don’t want to be sorry for being myself. I’m tired of apologizing my way through life; I want to own it instead.
AESTHETIC
And now the fun part! At the bottom of your brainstorming page, you can list out all the music you’ve been listening to, shows you’ve been watching, podcasts that have been inspiring you, and things you’ve been researching or thinking about.
PART TWO: JOURNAL
Alrighty, so now that we’ve painted our month’s goals in very broad brushstrokes, let’s take out our bullet journals. This is the part of the show where you can whip up some creative magic. I’m feeling a lot of yellow vibes from May, so I sketched out sunshine, sunflowers, and lemons in my monthly spread.
On the next page, I created a spread with space to track my goals for the month, the books I’ll be reading, and my favorite memories and highlights of the month as well.
PART THREE: THE PLANNER
Once your journal is looking pretty and we have a clear idea of where May will take us, it’s time to turn to our planner. I use the 2019 planner from Inkwell Press.
MONTHLY
I fill out my commitments and color-code them with highlighters. First I fill out my shifts at work (orange). Next is my blog post schedule (pink), writing goals (blue), exercise schedule (yellow), and other exciting things to look forward to (purple). If anything isn’t for certain, I like to use pencils or post-it notes to keep track of random ideas.
WEEKLY
Once my monthly spread is filled out, I use it as a reference and write out my plan for the week ahead. I’m trying to focus on doing three productive things each day (workout, read, and write) and set aside specific “work days” for my blogging and content planning.
After last week’s post on the Sunday Project, you know I’m trying to keep my weekends free for resting. That means that Saturday is my “day off” to do things like laundry, cleaning, errands, scheduling, etc, and Sunday is my “rest day” to enjoy time with family and friends, get outside, spend more time journaling, and simply enjoy being.
DAILY
Because I have a bit of a perfectionist streak (okay, let’s be honest, a huge perfectionist streak) I like to use post-it notes for each day to keep track of what I want to accomplish. Once I’ve done it, I write it down in pen. That way, everything stays neat.
There you have it! Lately, I’ve been feeling really inspired with journaling, so you can expect a lot of planning/journaling posts coming up in May. I hope you are feeling equally inspired to brew a big cup of coffee and go fiddle around with your journal for a while.
Wishing you a magnificent month of May,
<3 Olivia Grace
