Latest / JOY LOVING HOME - SAHM, Productivity, Home Organization, Declutter, ADHD Mom, ADHD SAHM, ADHD Brain / 252: Intentionally Flexible Planning: A Planner That Works for Your Brain

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252: Intentionally Flexible Planning: A Planner That Works for Your Brain · JOY LOVING HOME - SAHM, Productivity, Home Organization, Declutter, ADHD Mom, ADHD SAHM, ADHD Brain

• 0:00
  Welcome, or welcome back to the Joy Loving Home podcast.
• 0:03
  We are in the middle of a five-episode series in which we are building ourselves
• 0:09
  a runway to be able to take off in 2026 smoothly in a way that hopefully will
• 0:15
  help us to be a little more successful with our aims and goals and plans for the year.
• 0:20
  So if you have missed any of those, this whole series starts on episode 250.
• 0:26
  The first day we talked about our five W's and sort of just getting our brain
• 0:30
  around why or why not we do the things we do.
• 0:34
  The second day we zeroed in on...
• 0:38
  Just having fun dreaming. If we wanted to have a word of the year,
• 0:42
  if we wanted to have visual reminders of that, if we wanted to create a 26 for 26 list,
• 0:50
  which I highly recommend over any kind of resolution.
• 0:56
  Quick note on that. I have mentioned many times before on this podcast,
• 1:01
  another podcast that is called Happier with Gretchen Rubin.
• 1:05
  It happens to be that today she dropped her episode all about the 26 for 26
• 1:11
  list, which is where I learned about it.
• 1:13
  That is episode 568. And I will try to link that in the show notes.
• 1:18
  But in case I forget, after you're done listening here, you might want to pop
• 1:21
  over and listen to again, the podcast is called Happier with Gretchen Rubin.
• 1:26
  And she has this episode is on her 26 for 26 list. So it's a great way to listen
• 1:31
  in way more detail than I have been sharing.
• 1:34
  All right. Also, today I want to dig into a very specific way that I think is
• 1:43
  best when we try to plan for our brains.
• 1:45
  If you are anything like me, you have tried every single planner out there on the market,
• 1:52
  and then some expensive ones cheap
• 1:55
  ones decorative ones basic ones
• 1:58
  bullet journals which is probably the
• 2:01
  stretch of time I had the best luck but then
• 2:04
  we all go through seasons and that whole setup of my bullet journal was just
• 2:08
  I wasn't feeling it this year and so I am working inside of a it's lovely but
• 2:17
  It's a basic planner that I purchased to target. It's from the sugar.
• 2:23
  Hold on, I've got it in front of me.
• 2:25
  It's the sugar paper brand. And I'm going to dig into why the way I plan will
• 2:32
  work in any planner, even just a notebook if you want to grab one.
• 2:36
  But I'm going to dig into the points that I think are essential for our brains
• 2:41
  to latch on and to utilize and to stay successful with are just the best planning for our brains.
• 2:51
  And I call it being intentionally flexible with
• 2:55
  our planning because we never know what kind of day we're going to have and I
• 2:59
  don't know about you but in my life no two days look alike so the fact that
• 3:03
  we have these very elaborate planners where they believe all of our days are
• 3:08
  the same even similar is just not the way my world works and I'm guessing probably
• 3:13
  not yours either so But stay tuned for how this works right after this.
• 3:18
  A wise person once said, Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its
• 3:23
  ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it's stupid.
• 3:28
  Well, Fish, quit trying to climb trees while getting advice from well-intentioned monkeys.
• 3:33
  It's time to jump in the water and learn how to swim with the current of your life.
• 3:38
  I'm Joy, a professional organizer, mom of four, and fellow Fishbrain.
• 3:43
  If you're looking for a place to get understanding, encouragement,
• 3:47
  and ideas for your home that actually fit how your brain thinks,
• 3:51
  then I'm glad you're here.
• 3:53
  Let's ditch the type A advice and embrace what makes our brains and our homes unique.
• 3:59
  Together, we could have a joy-loving home.
• 4:04
  Before I jump right into explaining this, I should share that because podcasting
• 4:09
  is not a visual medium, I will post pictures of what my monthly spread and my
• 4:15
  weekly spread look like, and just my planner in general,
• 4:18
  inside of my free community.
• 4:21
  And if you would like to see the visual of this, you can go to bit.ly slash
• 4:29
  joylovinghomecommunity and it will bring you to my free community,
• 4:33
  which is hosted on Facebook.
• 4:35
  If you're not a Facebook person, I am going to,
• 4:40
  I hesitate to say things because then my follow through isn't always fabulous,
• 4:45
  but I may actually drop this in my Instagram as a photo as well.
• 4:53
  So if you're curious to find me there, go to instagram.com slash joylovinghome
• 4:59
  and give me a minute because I'd,
• 5:04
  have not posted on there in so long, it may take me a beat to figure out how to post again.
• 5:09
  We all get rusty. But yeah, I might challenge myself to get that out there as
• 5:13
  well. But for sure, it will be in my free community.
• 5:17
  All right, let's jump into how this works. So like I said, I call the type of
• 5:22
  planning I do, the intentionally flexible planner.
• 5:26
  And it will honestly work with any planner that so if you've already purchased
• 5:31
  your planner this year, do not kick yourself, You can conform your planner to work for you.
• 5:38
  It does not have to be the boss of you just because the lines and things are already in there.
• 5:43
  You can participate in any part of your planner that you're excited about,
• 5:47
  and you can ignore parts that don't interest you.
• 5:49
  And you can scroll out words and put new ones down on headings.
• 5:55
  It's really okay. You own it. You get to do what you want to with it.
• 5:59
  So let me just sort of break down the things that I think are key points that
• 6:02
  are important. And number one, and the most important thing is,
• 6:05
  please do not stress about aesthetics.
• 6:07
  I think when we purchase these expensive, beautiful planners,
• 6:11
  we get so panicked that we're going to mess them up that we don't use them in
• 6:16
  a way that they should be used. So kind of get over it.
• 6:20
  I will share that there are times when I can write beautifully.
• 6:24
  I'm a former teacher. I have beautiful penmanship when I want to.
• 6:29
  I can write in calligraphy. I've got all of that down in my planner.
• 6:32
  It is the most scrabbly chicken scratch you've ever seen because I purposely
• 6:38
  need to make it unfussy. I need it to be just a workhorse and I hope that I
• 6:43
  can give you permission for that.
• 6:45
  All right. Second, I personally always, always, always use a pencil.
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  Life is constantly changing. So if you are struggling to get over the aesthetic
• 6:56
  piece of it, and then you put an appointment down, and then somebody gets sick,
• 7:00
  and you can't get the appointment, you got to scratch that out,
• 7:02
  you got to say cancel, you got to move it over.
• 7:04
  If that stuff stresses you out, use pencil.
• 7:07
  It's a beautiful thing that was invented with an eraser. So those are sort of
• 7:11
  two things I do. If that works for you, great.
• 7:14
  If you're like, the whole reason I did this is I wanted the cute stickers and
• 7:17
  I wanted the colorful pens and I wanted to make it pretty, cool.
• 7:21
  You do you. I'm just saying...
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  Don't stress if you start that way and then you fall off of it.
• 7:28
  You can always start back up again.
• 7:29
  I have done various versions of like color coding family members or color coding
• 7:34
  events or writing it all in pencil, then highlighting it with highlighters after
• 7:38
  the fact when I knew what my colors were.
• 7:40
  You can do all the things. None of it is wrong.
• 7:44
  I'm going to point out the key points and then your how, as I explained on episode
• 7:49
  250, your how is up to you.
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  Nobody is policing your how. I'm just going to tell you why the things I'm teaching
• 7:56
  you right now I think are really, really important.
• 7:58
  Okay, so the first step is each month you would open the month page and you
• 8:03
  need to get down the important events right away so that you can kind of work
• 8:09
  through the structure of when everything else might happen.
• 8:14
  I love when I do pick out my planners to find something that has a notes box
• 8:19
  or a notes column or a notes row or somewhere where I can be brain dumping as
• 8:25
  I'm putting things on the calendar because I don't want to find another page
• 8:29
  or find another scrap paper or lose my scrap paper or do whatever.
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  So if there's a notes section within that calendar page, to me,
• 8:37
  that's a winner when you're picking something out if you happen to have not pictures out yet.
• 8:41
  Okay, so the things, obvious things that you would put on here,
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  if anybody's having birthdays or anniversaries or, you know,
• 8:48
  special events like that, if you have any doctor's appointments laid out or,
• 8:55
  when your kid's school starts back up or if there's a teacher workday,
• 8:59
  things like that obviously are going to be important if any,
• 9:02
  you know, family members traveling in and out of town, Whatever.
• 9:06
  Obviously, all of those things are going to help you see the structure of days
• 9:10
  that have actual events and days that are just yours to do what you're going to do with.
• 9:18
  So that is, I want you to look at dates as things.
• 9:22
  If they're time-bound, there is a structure to that day.
• 9:26
  And any white space, hooray, that's yours to see. That's all I deal with on my monthly.
• 9:33
  I don't do any kind of task planning or to-dos or anything like that on my monthly spread.
• 9:42
  Okay, so that kind of covers monthly.
• 9:44
  Then we go into the weekly.
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  And what I love about my weekly spread, and it can be vertical rows or horizontal
• 9:53
  rows or all the things, like it can be however your calendar looks,
• 9:58
  there are three points that I like to have in any weekly spread is there is
• 10:03
  the segment that covers the actual date, the Monday through Sunday or the Sunday
• 10:09
  through Saturday, however yours is laid out.
• 10:11
  And then whether I have to carve it out by drawing a line or whether it happens
• 10:17
  to have separation of places where you would have time bound things and notes,
• 10:22
  I like to have my pending list and my tackled area. And.
• 10:30
  That's all I worry about. And I look at it as a week. I don't look at each day individually.
• 10:35
  So the first thing you do is you take anything that was time bound from your
• 10:39
  monthly and you put it down on those dates.
• 10:42
  So for instance, in this particular week, my daughter had a doctor's appointment
• 10:46
  on Monday and a different type of doctor appointment on Tuesday.
• 10:49
  I wrote those down and immediately because time bound things I am bound to,
• 10:54
  especially when it involves things like other people or professionals or things
• 10:59
  like that. So I got those down.
• 11:01
  I don't have anything else actually timed out on the rest of the week.
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  So those were just my Monday and Tuesdays are there.
• 11:08
  Then I have my list of I break mine into personal versus work,
• 11:12
  just because that's how I like to categorize.
• 11:16
  You can categorize any way you want.
• 11:18
  So personal covers things like, you know,
• 11:21
  stuff I wanted to get done for my health this week, stuff I wanted to get done
• 11:24
  for my home this week, stuff I needed to do for my family,
• 11:27
  stuff because it's the beginning of a new year and we're trying to maybe pin
• 11:30
  down some vacations and I need to make some phone calls based on how to do a
• 11:34
  vacation in July, but I need to make calls today.
• 11:37
  Not today, but anytime this week. So anything that I would like to get done
• 11:42
  this week, it's like a secondary brain dump.
• 11:46
  So you can look at all those notes you made on your monthly page and if anything
• 11:50
  you're like, oh, oh, I should do this and this this week, move them over to
• 11:53
  the brain dump that is in front of you for that week.
• 11:57
  Ideally, the month is there to just kind of glance at, but your planner would
• 12:01
  sort of stay open somewhere in your face all the time that you walk by with
• 12:05
  your weekly spread open because that's all you have to worry about. Then you're
• 12:09
  the flexibility begins. Like, you can go, oh, okay, well, she's got to be at
• 12:14
  the doctor's appointment at 1030, but it's almost an hour away.
• 12:17
  And so really, the whole first half of the day is gone. And so is there anything
• 12:21
  I hope that I'll do in the afternoon?
• 12:24
  And for me, it was like, I still needed to take a bunch of the Christmas decorations
• 12:29
  apart and sort of get them ready to go back into storage.
• 12:32
  So I didn't write that down as a to-do. I don't do to-dos.
• 12:36
  I just have that type of thing in my pending list.
• 12:40
  And then what I do on that day is I write down anything that was actually tackled.
• 12:47
  And this to me is the ding, ding, ding, most important part of an ADHD planner
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  is that you write down the things that you completed as those tasks where you
• 13:00
  would normally default to people who tell you write down everything you want
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  to do, write down your top three.
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  Write down your most important one thing you have to get done today.
• 13:08
  Life happens all the time.
• 13:10
  Our energies are different all the time. We may chase a whim and get five things
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  done that are so unnecessary and not the one thing.
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  And then we think we're failures because we didn't get the one thing down that
• 13:24
  we said we had to do that day.
• 13:26
  We're over that. Your tackled list is your way to celebrate yourself,
• 13:32
  to honestly just prove to your brain that you do stuff.
• 13:37
  We have this narrative rolling in our heads that we can't ever get anything done, even though we...
• 13:44
  Thought we were busy all day. So if
• 13:46
  on Monday, and if you want to like retroactively attempt this, go for it.
• 13:52
  You might not remember as well, but give it a go.
• 13:55
  Retroactively think back, did I do anything on Monday? For me,
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  I actually got all of the Christmas stuff down.
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  By that, I mean, nothing's left on the walls. Nothing's left on the porch.
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  Nothing's left anywhere.
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  Like the trees were collapsed. The ornaments were back in boxes.
• 14:10
  All that's not put away. All that was still sitting around, but it's down.
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  That's a huge accomplishment. So I wrote that I took care of that.
• 14:18
  I also, and this is sort of like a side note bonus thing if you want,
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  I create a little grid for myself of the things I'm trying to track,
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  that data I'm trying to pick up on myself.
• 14:29
  I have goals of doing better for my health and doing better for my brain in
• 14:35
  the way of a hobby and in the way of, for me, my own spiritual practice.
• 14:40
  So I am tracking to see each day that I do my devotion,
• 14:46
  each day that I do an exercise, and I have made myself my own reward system
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  of if I exercise, I get to do a watercolor practice.
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  So I am tracking all of that.
• 15:00
  It's not a, yeah, you did it and whoa, you messed up.
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  It's how did that week go? Gosh, I actually worked out four days this week and
• 15:08
  I did four watercolor practices this week. Wow, go me.
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  Wonder what would make it be five next week or is four really good for me because
• 15:16
  that's really all I can carve out.
• 15:18
  Or later in the month, I might figure out I only did it twice and why.
• 15:22
  Wonder what was going on in my world. Like it's data.
• 15:25
  It's data that you can interpret based on watching the ebb and flow of your
• 15:29
  life. We are not all the same every single day.
• 15:32
  And so that is not to punish myself. That is not for me to be like,
• 15:37
  well, I didn't do it every day.
• 15:38
  So now that resolution is over. That's why I don't do resolutions.
• 15:43
  Treat yourself like your own. Life is an experiment. Life is a grand adventure.
• 15:48
  You're taking travel notes and data along the way.
• 15:51
  There are ups and there are downs in life.
• 15:54
  All of it is okay. That's sort of the viewpoint I want you to have.
• 15:58
  But that tackled list is so important because I want your brain to get the dopamine
• 16:04
  hits that you are accomplishing things.
• 16:06
  So as a secondary example, on Tuesday, I carved out the appointment with my
• 16:12
  daughter, and then I put down the things that I accomplished.
• 16:17
  Oh, on my tackled list, I should also say on Monday, I have that I recorded
• 16:21
  and published episode 250.
• 16:23
  On Tuesday, I put that I recorded and accomplished episode 251.
• 16:27
  I am doing 252 now, so I will be putting that on my tackled list as soon as
• 16:32
  I hit publish in about 30 minutes.
• 16:35
  If you think you're with some perfectionist person who pre-batch records podcasts
• 16:40
  and gets them out in some structured way, you're at the wrong podcast.
• 16:44
  Mine are instantaneous. So it is, you get what you get, but I hope you can enjoy
• 16:50
  them and go on this ride with me.
• 16:52
  But anyway, what I did on Tuesday was I recorded and published episode 251.
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  That was like my work tackled.
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  And then my personal tackled is I got all of that Christmas stuff that was sitting
• 17:03
  around everywhere down to the basement.
• 17:05
  It is not stored away, but it was one more step.
• 17:09
  And that's okay. To me, that was still an accomplishment because now I can move
• 17:11
  around on my main floor and Christmas is gone. And that feels great.
• 17:15
  My goal today, and I say goal, like I, this is my intention.
• 17:20
  I don't know if it'll accomplish it or not.
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  And I won't write it down until it's tackled.
• 17:24
  But I want to vacuum all those spaces that have all the little glitter and the
• 17:29
  bits of pine and all the different things, that's my intention.
• 17:34
  I will or I won't get to it, but I won't write it down on that tackled until
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  I sit down this evening and I pull my planner out and I.
• 17:43
  Log what happened today. And I just, for me, my planner is about looking at
• 17:50
  it in the morning to remind my brain what should be front of mind and sitting
• 17:54
  down in the evening and logging what did or didn't happen.
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  And if it had nothing to do with my intention that morning, but I still did
• 18:01
  stuff, that all gets logged and we get credit for every piece of that. Okay.
• 18:06
  I feel like I'm just rambling now. I think you get the point.
• 18:08
  The only other piece I wanted to share is I am not great at meal planning.
• 18:14
  It is something I'm trying to investigate in the new year.
• 18:17
  So what I am doing right now is instead of writing a plan of the meals I want
• 18:22
  to eat, I'm logging what we ate.
• 18:25
  Because if I want to then later think of a plan, maybe I'll just open it up
• 18:30
  and go, I could just redo this week. It's kind of already there.
• 18:34
  We did this once. We could do it again.
• 18:36
  That kind of thing. So I just write down for my knowledge what we ate that day.
• 18:41
  And that helps me kind of start to think about the whole meal plan journey,
• 18:46
  but I'm at the very beginning of it and I like to take things in baby steps.
• 18:50
  Final thought, if you're saying, but Joy, I'll forget to look at my planner.
• 18:54
  I'll forget that I'm even doing this. I've tried and then I'll leave weeks and
• 18:59
  weeks and weeks at a time blank.
• 19:03
  I don't know what to tell you. It's going to happen. It's going to happen.
• 19:05
  We ebb and flow in life. That's who we are as fish brain people.
• 19:09
  But what I will say is digital calendars, if that is your thing,
• 19:15
  then let that be your thing.
• 19:17
  If for me, a digital calendar is as good as out of sight of out of mind,
• 19:22
  and maybe I will get to the step one day where I do all this stuff on paper
• 19:26
  because that feels really good and soothing to my brain.
• 19:28
  And then I will input it all into a digital calendar so that I can take advantage
• 19:33
  of things like alerts and notifications.
• 19:36
  But for now, my sort of patch between these two worlds is that when I glance
• 19:45
  at my calendar in the morning,
• 19:46
  if I know there are time-bound things that will go on,
• 19:51
  I will open up the timer alarm section on my phone and I will create alarms.
• 20:00
  I don't know if you realize this, but you can label any alarm.
• 20:04
  So for instance, yesterday I was doing all my Tackle at Tuesdays with my membership
• 20:08
  group and we met at 10 and 1 and 3 and 7.
• 20:11
  And so I have alarms set for myself at 9.55 and 12.55 and 2.55 and 6.55 that say, start session.
• 20:27
  That way, when the alarm goes off and I'm like, what did I set that for?
• 20:29
  I can look down and go, oh, yeah, we're about to start a session.
• 20:32
  Let me go get myself set up with my Zoom so that I can work with my group.
• 20:37
  You can make yourself alarms for anything, to remember to take medications,
• 20:41
  to remember to go to an exercise class, to remember to walk your dog if you
• 20:45
  got a new dog and they need to go to the potty on a regular basis.
• 20:49
  Alarms are a beautiful thing. So sometimes I remember to do this.
• 20:53
  Sometimes I don't. But that is my sort of hybrid attempt to take advantage of
• 20:58
  technology. Use it or don't.
• 21:01
  All right. I think that was everything I wanted to share. I'll put links to
• 21:04
  show notes in the show notes before I hit publish here.
• 21:07
  And again, you can see this photo later today in the free community,
• 21:14
  which is bit.ly slash joylovinghomecommunity.
• 21:18
  And you can email me anytime, joy at joylovinghome.com, if you have thoughts
• 21:22
  about how all this works.
• 21:24
  All right, until next time, which is tomorrow, continue to choose joy.