freebies

SMART Actionable Goals (Plus a FREE Downloadable Template)

What are SMART actionable goals and why are they crucial to your business?

It can be overwhelming trying to grow your small business. There are a lot of moving parts to running your own business. And this is why it’s important to set SMART actionable goals as soon as you can.

Use the SMART Actionable Goals Template to break your goals and objectives down to bite-sized, actionable tasks. Remember, your actionable tasks must be just as SMART as your goals. This template can help you make sure your tasks are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely. [Read more…] about SMART Actionable Goals (Plus a FREE Downloadable Template)

Free Printables: Week Planner 01

As I’ve said multiple times on this blog, I am not an organized person—or at least not in the traditional, borderline OCD sense. Don’t get me wrong, I like being prepared; I like planning (I mean I write scripts ahead of ANY phone call, complete with an outline of my main points—yes, even when calling family!) and I definitely strive to always be on top of everything. The problem is, my system is—as many have pointed out—utterly chaotic. Organized chaos, of course, is my argument and it has worked for me for many years.

With ever evolving career and personal life roles however, I am starting to come to terms with the fact that I might have to dial down on the chaos and work on adding more organization into my daily life. My first step: finding a planner that works for me.

Back when I was still in high school, it was mandatory to have a planner to write every reminder and homework into. It worked. In fact, high school was probably when I was most organized and highly effective (which, in retrospect sounds pretty sad). I’ve tried keeping a planner with me throughout college and university and even now but it has never worked. I find that theres days, my planners are often not up to date and for a while, I couldn’t figure out why.

The thing is, my high school planner worked because it was specifically tailored for a high school student. The planners that I have been using the past few years weren’t working because they just weren’t for me and my highly flexible lifestyle. So I looked around for one that would work for me—from a Starbucks planner that I had my sister send me all the way from the Philippines to a handful of phone apps. No luck.

It wasn’t until recently that I finally gave in and decided to experiment with making my own planner. I haven’t quite figured out a perfect one for me yet, but I figured, since I’m already drafting them anyway that I could share them on this blog. Below are a couple of weekly planner pages. (Click the images to download.)

The pages are half letter sized and you can either pre-fill the interactive PDFs before printing or print a few and hand write. An idea is to pre-fill the weekly planner with recurring tasks before printing then laminating the sheet. You can then use a dry erase marker to write the rest of your tasks. That way you can reuse the same sheet over and over. Alternatively, if you don’t have access to a laminating machine (Is that what it’s called?), you may insert the page into a sheet protector.

I’m still in the process of brainstorming & prototyping my perfect planner and I’ll be uploading future versions if anyone find them useful. So, if you have any ideas or suggestions to make these planner pages more useful or effective, please let me know. You may also be interested in a few blog planner sheets, included as free printables in this older post.

If your using a planner that you find highly effective, let me know about them through the comments below.

Starting the Year Organized

Oh, hello 2013!

I’m really excited to see and experience all the new adventures and challenges that 2013 will bring. But before the excitement completely takes over and overwhelms me, I have decided that one of my main goals for 2013 is to learn to stay focused and organized.

Keeping organized is definitely not something that comes naturally to me. I always have to make a conscious and determined effort if I want to think and work in an organized manner because I guess my brain isn’t naturally programmed to think that way. One of the greatest ways I keep organized: a planner.

Usually, I’d just pick a planner from the store. This year however, in an effort to simplify I decided to make my own all-in-one planner/organizer/blog notebook. I started with prototype monthly calendars and monthly summary pages (seen in the image above), which I have yet to refine and make digital versions of. I also made a few blog post planner pages and templates available as free downloads.