Grasshopper New Media Presents...

Lazy people do not like to use planners. They would rather pretend that they’re going to remember everything later even though they know very well that they won’t. If you’re a lazy planner-less type and you are tired of making yourself and everyone around you miserable by missing appointments or over scheduling then you must start using a planner and you must start today!

Finding a planner that is just right for you can be difficult. Do you want something big or small? It depends how bulging your biceps are. Do you want to spend $3 on a cheap paper planner or $200 on a deluxe leather model? It depends who’s paying for it. Are you so busy that you’ll need two pages a day or do you live a sad uneventful life like me? In that case you’ll do fine with two pages a week. It took me years to settle on the right planner for my life; a small, cheap, two page a day version. If I ever start feeling important then I will definitely splurge on a beautiful leather bound planner but I don’t envision feeling important any time soon.

I spent years training myself to write events in my planner. I really struggled with this until I resigned myself to the fact that I had to take it with me every where I went; to the store, to Church, to the gym, and even to bed. Next I had to train myself to actually look at my planner. I know it’s a small detail but trust me, it helps!

Looking at my planner every morning and every evening was a habit I choose to work on with the blog carnival, SMART Habit Saturday, that I do every week on my blog, The Lazy Organizer. It only took a few weeks for it to become a habit and now I almost never miss an event or appointment. Almost!

Now I’m working on something new to get more organized; scheduling preparation time. That means planning time to get ready and prepare for an upcoming event. Last month the kids and I went to my sister’s house for a week. I wrote it in my planner so I wouldn’t schedule anything while we were gone but I forgot to schedule one little detail of our trip, time to pack!

Of course I knew the kids and I would have to spend an entire day shopping, doing laundry, packing and cleaning to get ready to go but I didn’t write it on my calendar. I guess I underestimated the laziness of my brain and thought I would just remember it. Nope! Guess what I did?

When a neighbor called that week and needed a babysitter I volunteered to watch her son for her for eight hours the day before we were supposed to leave! I even checked my calendar before I told her I would do it but I didn’t have anything written for that day so I scheduled the babysitting. What a huge disaster! I ended up being frustrated with my kids because they were playing instead of helping me clean and pack and of course they thought I was the meanest mom in the world for expecting them to help when they had a friend over.

The moral of the story is to schedule planning time before any event that will need preparation, even if it is just packing the car the night before you are going to meet friends at the park, write it down in your planner and make time to get it done. Depending on the event, you may need to start preparing a day, a week, a month or a year in advance. Spending the time to write it down will be worth it. At least I think it will be as soon as I start doing it!

[tags]kids, parents, home, planning, planner, organization, schedule, scheduling, events[/tags]
Photo graciously provided by txkimmers, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved