may 2018 Archives

Planning May: What’s Staying vs Changing from April

What’s staying vs changing (and why!) in my planner for May. My favorite thing to see from other’s journals are the flip-through segments. I decided to slow it down and do a flip-through of the pages that I like and what didn’t work out for me.

Sneak peeks from the video:

After the pen for “All the Things” page
Journals for my kids (one for each!) and a little flip-through of those
Circle Badges for all the months and days showing off the preview sketches – coming soon to the shop! Thanks to @Darknss (find the handle) for the recommendations!
‘After the pen’ weeklies
Writing on spreads that are ‘too pretty’ – spread from the eclipse after the pen
Habit by number
Declutter my life two spreads (Initial & Updated)
How I bookmark/tab pages with washi tape

Watch the video below and hit the subscribe on the lower right-hand so you’ll be notified when a new video comes out.

Welcome Page

Welcome pages are funny things to me, it took a while for me to start using them because they just seemed like ‘fluff’ pages. They might be ‘fluff pages’ but other planners have welcome pages or monthly separators. It’s usually where the tabs are attached. Last July was my first-ever welcome page and I’ve used one ever since. It almost became a summer seasonal welcome page, but I combined it to the Welcome May and Summer page.

Calendar Page

When I set up my current planner in March, I made the future log pages very large, one month to a page, two months to a spread. I intended to drop monthly pages and just jump straight into weeklies. That lasted all of one month. I need visual planning!

In April I tried again to create a monthly ladder layout, I really love the concept of listing everything in linear form (that’s why I keep going back to it). I think that’s what the original bullet journal was designed with, but a calendar grid works better for me at a glance. In May I’m experimenting with smaller boxes and larger notes areas.

Coming soon! All the months in circular badge format! April’s creation inspired me so much that I sketched out (and started working on the months in this format.

April Weeklies

In April, I chose a common color scheme and theme for the weekly pages. Using a common color scheme across the pages was definitely challenging. It was a fun challenge that I’ll accept month after month. Space and circles dominated my weeklies, I do wish they had a little more structure but that is something I can do in the future. Space is always a fun theme and I like using circles too! In fact, if you didn’t see, I have a whole post about using circles.

May Weeklies

The weekly layouts are the biggest changes for the month. I didn’t foresee using a spread per week as summer nears. So I decided to condense two weeks to a spread. Each day still has space for events and notes, it’s just condensed. So far, so good. The boxes are the right size for all the things I need to do, including tasks and events. This just might be a thing when I have less to plan.

For the month of April, I switched to a Sunday start on the weeklies. In May, I am switching it back to Monday start. The May monthly calendar page shows Sunday-Saturday, but the weeklies are Monday-Sunday. The biggest reason is to keep the weekend plans together, it just seems easier (and I like to make my weekends feel bigger).

Collections

All the Things

I created an “All the Things” page to replace the failed “One Line Per Day” page. It is my new favorite page of all, perhaps ever. It was rare that I wrote on the ‘one line per day’ page daily. Instead, I write in spurts when I have a moment to reflect and think. So I would end up with several blank lines and missed details. “All the Things” uses categories instead of days. One section I’m going to add a “to journal” to keep a blurb for the things to add to my kid’s journals.

Habit Tracking by Number

I started “Habit Tracking by Number” in April. Using numbers to define my habits made a huge difference in tracking them, but not just tracking, but the motivation to do them. Each habit had a definition and something measurable!

That shift plus the shift in perspective that I needed to give these habits priority instead of trying to do them all in the last moments before I went to bed made a significant difference in my attitude towards these acts I am trying to form into habits.

Personal Habits & Business Habits

I’ll track the same personal habits for May as I did in April and add a section for habits for chocolatemusings.com. Also staying: flip-out habit definitions. I might use that idea on other pages too. And I just realized that I forgot to add a quote to my habits page, that is something I miss. I like motivational quotes on the habit tracker page. Especially the one I created in January.

Things I Miss Already & Things I Love So Far

I loved April’s theme – space, circles and the colors. Lavender fields inspired May’s color scheme, and I really enjoy it, but maybe I need to do a lavender space theme. I enjoyed the whimsy and the free-flow of the different pages. I’m looking forward to the structure of the May boxes because I tend to write until I run out of room. Maybe that’s why I like circles, they are whimsical, but have edges to keep me inside, If I want to. I really like the two-to-a-spread weeklies so far.

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