The Well-Appointed Desk

March, for me, was a bit of a planner/journal mess. I traveled a lot in March which threw off both my rhythm for regularly updating my planner while I was on the road but also made getting caught up in the time I was home difficult because I was also trying to catch up on work. Oh, and I caught “con crud” — twice. So, that also threw my cadence for keeping up with everything way off.

I tell you this to encourage you not to give up or blame your planner or system. Sometimes, stuff just gets in the way. My solution for planner/journal mess-ups are as follows:

• Try to do a little back filling: if you can remember something that happened on a particular day that you can go back and add in your journal or planner, do it. Even if there are 4 blank pages or slots in between. It’s better to document a few things then nothing at all. As you add in those one or two things, other memories might come back to you. Maybe you have to jump around. “Oh yeah, we ordered that delicious take-out on Thursday and Tuesday I spent an inordinate amount of time on hold with tech support.” Maybe there’s nothing for Wednesday? That’s ok.
• If you are traveling or sick or something else majorly disrupts your regular writing, go to those days and just write “SICK!” or “In Chicago”. Later, it will at least trigger reminders of the big events, even if you weren’t able to remember anything else.
• Use the start of a new month, or your birthday, or the day back to school after Spring Break as a chance to renew your commitment to keeping up your journal or planner or memory keeping.
• Find the right time to write. Some people are morning people and want to get all their to-do’s into their planner first thing in the morning. Some people just want to drink coffee (that’s me). I find I am most planner productive at lunch. So, I grab my lunch and my journal and sit somewhere that is not my desk and update whatever I need to. On particularly busy days, I may wait and do it after dinner. I have a lovely lap desk that I will set on my lap while sitting on the couch in the evenings and add doodles and what not while watching an episode or two of a favorite show.

The bottomline is that you want to write or doodle or memory keep or whatever brings you back to those lovely paper notebooks, pens, washi and whatnot. So let yourself love the time you set aside and don’t punish yourself or throw the planner out with the bathwater (that sounded better in my head) just because life got away from you.

So with all that said, this month, I will walk you through my not-so-well-done planners and give you a little insight on how I plan to reignite my planner passion in April.

What am I using:

Notebook:

• Stalogy Editor’s Series 365Days Notebook B6 Size
• (leather cover is no longer available)