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.)
