Planner Pad Organizers

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Planner Pad organizer

Pros:

money back guarantee (6 month)
nice layout – monthly & weekly
good division of schedule & to-do lists
focuses on a “funnel down” prioritizing

Cons:

size constraints
spiral or binder in middle of weekly view; can get in way of writing things

Review:

When I was in high school, my father insisted I start using the Franklin Covey organizers. I continued to use these organizers through college and for many years after. It wasn’t until my shoulder and back started giving me troubles that I began to reconsider what I wanted to use – I always carried a purse big enough to hold the classic size organizer. Although this was the breaking point for me, I was struggling with the system – it was no longer as helpful.

From other professional organizers, I heard about Planner Pads and was definitely intrigued with their layout. I even set up a spreadsheet that replicated their design; I was still too frugal to order one. This turned out to be a good decision since I won a Planner Pad in a contest – and have had the chance to actively use the executive spiral organizer. This organizer has a monthly view as well as a weekly view. I’ve come to value the weekly view – it provides a great way to review your week and track your tasks and appointments.

funnel planning for the week with the Planner Pad

Planner Pad funnel planning

One of the things I like about this particular organizer is the layout – the top section, spanning the two pages of the weekly view – is for you to list your categories of projects or type of activities. For me these were things like: Business-usual, Business-client, Business-other, Household, Volunteering, Personal. I could then identify my priorities and tasks according to these categories – not worrying about putting them into specific days. One of the strengths of this area is the limited amount of space – the thing I see most often, even with myself, is thinking and trying to do more than what is realistic – so this helps to control that inclination. 🙂

Top section of the weekly view of the Planner Pad

The second section, below the first section, has the days of the week for your daily to-dos. This is where you can put in the tasks you absolutely must do on specific days. I also would record what I did from the above section on the corresponding day. I appreciate the openness since I sometimes feel limited by trying to decide when I will do certain things. It’s also easy to see how I am coming with my tasks as the week progresses.

Middle section of daily to-dos of the Planner Pad

The final section is for your appointments – with the executive size, showing time from 7 until 9 with lines for the hour. Ideally, you want to use this area for the time specific appointments – whether meeting with someone or time chunks for dealing with tasks.

Bottom section of scheduling for the Planner Pad

Along the right side is a column they’ve divided for “Notes/Calls” and “Expenses” as well as 3 small month views for the prior, current, and future month. There are also pages in the front and back of the organizer for some of the more typical things you’d like to have with you – address book, future year planning, notes, and goals/projects/calendar. The pages throughout the planner have a dotted line along the upper page corners, which I would cut off to help me get the pages I needed more easily.

If I were to purchase one at this point, I would lean towards the smaller, personal size. I do have concerns that it would be too small to be as useful. I also would prefer the spiral, as the binder lends itself to the temptation for overfilling. It then can become heavy and cumbersome. The spiral occasionally makes writing in things near it more challenging – not enough that I would not use it.

Although my primary calendar is electronic, I find it useful to have a physical list of my current activities, even including calendar events. An organizer is meant for planning – this is extremely challenging to do with a digital device. I haven’t yet decided whether I want to carry around a paper organizer, although I’m seriously considering it. Next month, I will be reviewing another planner system.Continue reading→

Decide on the Next Action

I’ve mentioned before that I can be a procrastinator, haven’t I? Now, I’ll admit that I have piles of books that need to be dropped off. We’ve had various ideas about what we want to do with them. Yet the piles continue. Then I got fed up and decided to take one box each week to Half Price Books – at least with most of them. One day I headed to the pile, ready to grab a box and go. Only they’re not all in boxes, a bag was the easiest to reach, and the bag disintegrated in my hand. Guess what, none of those books made it to the car, nor did I go to Half Price Books.

Often when we’re stymied by our stuff, we’re undecided about what we need to do with it. Sometimes when we procrastinate, we’re reluctant to tackle this or that item. These things require us to make a decision. Too often we aren’t even aware of what decision we need to make.

Decisions, decisions. Life is filled with them. Too often, we’re racing through life just trying to get everything done and not stopping to think about how and where we are spending our time and energy. Some piles of books on the three-season porch were frequently the least of my worries. You’ve probably heard the saying “When you have to make a choice and don’t make it, that is in itself a choice.” (by William James)

Most of the time we need to consider what the next step we need to take is, specifically. It’s great that you can identify the things you want to do. You want to clear out the basement, or spend more time with loved ones. Sometimes we are talking about a “project,” whether we realize it or not. A project is typically any task that takes multiple action steps to complete.

Regardless of what you need to do – ask yourself “What is the next action for this item?” If you can do this, you will have clarity about your to do list. It also amazingly can motivate you to start tackling items you might have been procrastinating.

In fact, an extreme statement (especially from me) – never make a to do list that includes anything except those specific and concrete next action items. If you don’t write out to do lists – when you’re deciding what you’re going to do next, figure out the action.

If you can consistently take a moment, yes that’s all it takes – just a moment, to ask yourself what the next action is for each task you have, you can reduce the amount of time you spend on tasks and work through your tasks.

Unfortunately, the piles of books are still there. When I decided to deal with the piles of books, my next action was to take one box in. Lately when I look at my to do list, I see ‘take a box to Half Price Books,’ I avoid it. In my current situation, the piles of books moved from an action to a project, since I need to box up the books that I want to take in before I can take them in. I also cannot tackle my to do item immediately – the books aren’t ready to take anywhere. I can see how I’m procrastinating it since it’s more than this easy step. Now the to-do list is modified, my next action item is to box up the books.

What will your next action be?

Guidelines for a Happy Home

Have you seen the “rules” of a happy household – where it starts with “If you take it out, put it away”? Many of them are useful rules for limiting the degree of chaos, while others are to make Mom happy! If we could all put things back where they belong when we’re done with them, we’d have greater organization. Sometimes this is easier said than done.

Mom’s 10 Commandments For A Happy Household

1. If you take it out, put it away.
2. If you eat on it, wash it.
3. If you turn it on, turn it off.
4. If you mess it up, clean it up.
5. If you drop it, pick it up.
6. If it rings, answer it.
7. If it barks, walk it.
8. If you open it, close it.
9. If I cook it, eat it.
10. If I say do it, don’t ask why.

I know from my own behavior that there are times when I’ve taken something out, and after I’ve finished using it, I think to myself – “I’m going to use this again tomorrow…” Then, there are times that I say to myself – “I’ll put it away later…” To some extent, I think this applies to all of us – even the most organized – we don’t always put things away right after we’re finished using it. Nor do I think we have to.

What we do need to work on is getting it put away regularly and before too much time has passed. If I toss my tissues toward the wastebasket, when I walk by it, I then bend down, quickly pick them up, and put them in the trash. If I make a pile for another room, when I next get up and move around, I grab the pile and move it into the right room.

I’ve talked about this before in “Getting Things to Their Home,” and focused on finding ways to “Make It Fun.” There are other ways to work on these applicable rules for organization – use a timer. You might be rolling your eyes at me – here she goes again with that timer. Yet seriously, if you have a stack of CD’s that haven’t been put away, time yourself on putting them away – or time yourself with whatever it is that isn’t getting put away.

Another way to approach working on putting things back where they belong is to set the timer for a set amount of time and work on it until the timer buzzes. Use the timer to help you – whether to time yourself or you designate a specific amount of time with it.

It is easy to say to yourself, “I’ll just do it later” and that “later” doesn’t arrive (or it arrives in a week or a month). If you make it part of your routine, just those few seconds of picking up the trash that missed the trashcan or whatever it might be – your home can be that much more presentable and more importantly, pleasing to you. There’s not many of us who don’t automatically close the drawers and cabinets in our kitchens – and might even dismiss that as easy – yet it’s the same idea – “If you open it, close it.”

Putting something away after we’ve taken it out can be just as easy, we just need to work on making it as automatic as closing the drawers after we’ve gotten something out of it. The timer can help with the idea that it’s more time consuming than we realize. In working to keep things organized:

If you take it out, put it away.
If you eat on it, wash it. (I don’t do this each time, but I do it regularly!)
If you turn it on, turn it off.
If you mess it up, clean it up.
If you drop it, pick it up.
If you open it, close it.

None of these things would take us that much time – test it out and use your timer to find out for yourself.

Styles of Procrastination

Do you procrastinate? I think everyone does. Period – everyone, at least to some degree or another. The question really comes down to whether your procrastination is interfering with your life – and the degree will vary between people. Some people are guilt-ridden with “minor” procrastination and others can procrastinate with much more tolerance. Some of us want to minimize the procrastination behaviors while others are managing as it is.

My mom would tell you that I’m a chronic procrastinator. I’m notoriously bad about sending letters and packages in a timely way. I certainly see that there are areas where I do procrastinate and in general, I’m fascinated with procrastination. This is one of the reasons I picked up and read It’s About Time!: The Six Styles of Procrastination and How to Overcome Them Dr. Linda Sapadin with Jack Maguire.

As it says in the title, she breaks chronic, pervasive, and deeply-rooted procrastination into 6 styles: perfectionist, dreamer, worrier, defier, crisis-maker, and the overdoer. She provides a quiz so you can figure out which type or types are your personal style. The quiz focuses on the 6 types with 10 questions where you answer the questions with 1 of 3 possible choices: frequently, sometimes, and rarely or never. There’s an easy formula for calculating your scores and where you get a score of 10 or more, this makes that type of procrastination a major style for you. When your score in a type is 9 or less, this is a minor style for you.

Each type then gets a chapter with examples of people who’ve struggled with this type of procrastination and why. She spends most of the chapter addressing 3 areas that will make a difference in changing this type of procrastination: changing how you think, changing how you speak, and changing how you act. For the changing how you think, she has a visualization for each of the 6 types.

I took the quiz, twice, actually! I took it as I started the book, and scored 10 or above in 4 of the 6 procrastination styles. Later I was talking to various people about how I had read this book and how I scored high in several areas (a case when scoring high is not such a good thing!). I decided to retake the quiz, mostly just out of curiosity. That time my highest score was a 6 in one type. My conclusion is that the test is not statistically valid, since I could get wildly different scores and is a reflection of my own state of mind. (For those of you who don’t know me, you might not realize that I have a self-critical nature. ☺) It’s completely plausible to me that I would get different results, and the truth is that my procrastination probably also ties in with my state of mind in the moment.

I appreciate that she focuses on the idea of helping the reader to find ways that work for them – she’s not implying that there’s a “right” way to be, so she’s “inviting you to change from your personal path of avoidance – the BUT path—to your personal path of resolution—the AND path.” The number of case studies, examples of others who’ve struggled is varied and was easy for me to relate to the styles. People’s behaviors vary greatly within each of the types of procrastination.

The visualizations for each type of procrastination are interesting, and create some major repetition since the directions are included in each chapter. I’ve never been one for visualizations, so this did not speak to me much. I could see how the visualizations could be helpful for people though.

From what I can tell, from looking within myself, to working with various people, to friends and family – procrastination is a highly complex behavior. As a whole, breaking procrastination into 6 styles seems too limiting. There are too many other possible issues involved with why we procrastinate. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting look at procrastination as it relates to our personality.

Find Your Motivation

We all have different reasons for why we want to get organized or even to stay organized. There is no one right answer – what matters is why you want it. Do you know what your reasons are? It’s worth it to give it some thought and find as many reasons as you can. These personal reasons are what can help get you going if (or when) you falter.

Some of what I hear a lot is how overwhelmed people feel with what they’re dealing with – from piles of boxes on an unused room to the mass of papers they have to a house that has simply collected lots of things. It doesn’t matter what the size or scope is, what matters is how it feels to you. A few people are concerned about how their loved ones are feeling and reacting to the state of their home. Others are adjusting to difficult transitions in life – from the death of a spouse to downsizing (voluntarily or not) to new health issues.

Although the above are fine reasons for wanting to get and stay organized, some of them are phrased on negative terms. If we went to a list of our reasons for getting organized and saw as a reason “because I’m overwhelmed” or “because my spouse is always yelling at me” or even “because I cannot concentrate the way I used to” it’s unlikely to inspire us.

Find a way to make the reasons positive. If you’re overwhelmed, you are looking for an easier way to doing things, a way to simplify things for yourself. If a loved one is badgering you, you might be looking for a way to improve your relationship and become closer with them again. Sometimes those life transitions are challenging, yet I believe there are positive ways to view your situation. For me, it was a chance to learn new ways of doing things and I love learning.

The point is that you want to figure out the reasons that matter to you for getting organized – maybe you want more time to enjoy life. I’d suggest that you actually write them down somewhere. I don’t think you need to look at them every day, although you certainly can. The idea is that you have them to pull out when you get discouraged or falter in your efforts. It could also help if you find yourself procrastinating working on things.

When you’re feeling discouraged, you not likely to remember the real reasons why you’re trying to change things. You’re also more likely going to remember the negative reasons, which are not usually motivating! By having a list of positive and personal reasons to change, you can refer to it when you need to. You can even add to it as things occur to you – since life is a process like organizing, your motivation can shift and change too.

Knowing what your motivations are for getting organized is probably the very first step you need to take toward getting and staying organized. Just as it’s hard to remember what inspires you when you’re feeling discouraged or overwhelmed, our reasons for being more organized can get lost when we’re struggling. Those underlying reasons can re-inspire us to keep working (or start trying again). When we have a list to refer to, it’s easier to re-energize ourselves.

Getting Things to Their Home

I was working with a client, and I told her to toss her clothes toward the laundry basket. “Um, huh?” you might be thinking to yourself. The point I was making was that we don’t need to be stodgy and particular about how we do something. We can try to have fun with what we need to do – not unlike my entire blog post about “Make It Fun.”

When we’re looking at people not getting things to where they belong – there’s two situations we might be in:

we’re leaving things wherever we’re at when we’re finished with them or
we’re getting them close by, or near their “home.”

Therefore, in dealing with things that don’t move from where they were last used – we can toss things towards where they belong. Of course, you’re not going to throw your CDs at the shelf! The other way is to start baskets/bins of things that belong in other rooms. I’ll admit that I will often drop that bin off in the other room where it will sit ignored for a few days sometimes. At least it’s in the right room, if not it’s “home.”

The situation I described was with a pre-teen girl and I talked about acting like it was basketball. The truth is I’m not into sports and neither was she, but it’s intended as a way to get the items closer to where they belong – making it easier. She had been dropping her clothes on the floor and leaving them there, which isn’t unusual. Yet trying to make a game of getting the clothes closer to the laundry basket makes it interesting. To some extent, it’s also about retraining ourselves to new habits.

Often, I’ll do similar things with paper trash – throwing them towards the basket. I find myself curious about how close, or not, I’ll be. Or whether if I bounce it off the wall just so, will it make it in.

Sometimes we know what we need to do – that item needs to go there, but we still don’t quite get to happen. Right now, I’m not talking about the things we’re undecided on or are still active. You’ve made a home of various things, yet there are still piles. Is there a way to make it more fun – like tossing them?

Unfortunately, we still need some discipline. If you toss things towards a basket – you’ll still need to take some time to put the things where they into the basket. If you move things into the room where they belong, you still need to take some time to put them away within the room.

This is the time when your perceptions of time are likely to be exaggerated – it will take much less time than you anticipate to put them away. Could you time yourself to see how fast you can put all the desk supplies away (once you’ve got them all piled on the desk)? Or set your timer for 10 minutes and put everything away that you can before it goes off?

It takes time and practice to make sure things make it back into their “homes” after you’ve used them. I know my suitcases are notorious for sitting out after a trip – yet we can find ways to improve our behavior in returning things to where they belong. After you’ve identified where you falter – are things left where they “fall” or do they make it partway? From here, you can begin to find ways to get them the rest of the way home.

Use Your Time Intentionally

With that title, do you think I’m going to talk about being more productive? I’m certainly a fan of being as productive as possible and always striving to find ways to improve productivity.

But, that is not my point with this title.

It’s about being aware of how you’re using your time; of asking yourself periodically if you’re currently using your time in a way that you want to be.

Maybe the best example is a couple of weekends ago, my husband saw me sitting on the couch playing a game and he asked me “is this how you want to be spending your time?” My answer was “yup.” What he hadn’t been aware of was that I’d just stopped being productive and was taking a few minutes to relax before jumping into the next task. I was using my time intentionally – since I had decided to take a break and play a couple of games.

In what felt like an occurrence of synchronicity, one of the sessions I attended at the NAPO conference this year, talked about having an “intention awareness.” A couple of month’s prior, I’d started asking whether my husband and I were using our time “intentionally.” It was a way to simply pay attention to how we were spending our time, and whether there were other things we needed or wanted to be doing.

You probably know, as I do, how easy it is to lose track of time. I love Sudoku, and there are times when I sit down to play and the next thing I know, several hours have passed! Eeekk! That wasn’t what I wanted to be doing – at least not for that long. I’ve had that happen on the other end of things, where I’m working on something around the house (or even with a client) and before I know it hours have passed. It was “productive” time, but at least with the housework, was it what I needed or wanted to be spending all that time on?

It can be challenging to even remember to ask yourself the question about whether you’re spending time the way you want to – if it weren’t, you probably wouldn’t lose track of time at all. It can be helpful to have someone else around to gently ask the question, as my husband did to me. Yet, he’s gone all day and I’ve gotten in the habit of first – randomly asking myself, whenever it occurs to me. Second, I use cues around the house, like when a plane goes overhead (which happens a lot) to stop and consider if I’m using my time in the way I want to be.

This second approach is actually what the session talked about – finding some ways to cue yourself to stop and think. Ideally, it will be somewhat randomly and periodically throughout the day, since it’s something you want to think about more than once a day. Even a timer that you continue to reset can help here.

I’m fascinated with time. It never changes, yet it certainly feels like it does – our perceptions of time are erratic and inconsistent. I’m amazed how easy it is to lose track of time – whether we’re being productive or goofing off. Everyone I know, professionally or personally, seems at least a little discontented about the way they use their time.

Here’s a question for you – are you aware (and happy) with how you’re using your time? I don’t believe we can ever be perfect, yet I do believe that there’s always room for improvement – are you ready to start asking yourself “is this an intentional use of my time?”

Note Taking for Virtually Everything

If you’ve been following me for a little while, you might have noticed a recurring mention of elephants. Yes, I like elephants. Now what does that have to do with anything I would share with you? Well, when I was browsing various smart phone apps, I saw an elephant. When I decided to find out more, I discovered Evernote and started using it.

I’m a slightly skeptical consumer, so after creating an account (free) with Evernote, I only used it on my phone and via the Internet. I put off downloading the desktop version and used Evernote for only limited things. Yet, I loved how I could use my phone to make notes, copy webpages, and bookmark sites, while waiting for my appointment to start. I also had the grocery list and other task lists always accessible – since my phone is always with me.

Of course, I asked my husband if he’d heard of it – and he hadn’t, but he checked it out and uses it regularly. More than me of late. He even decided on the premium service, quite reasonable at $45 a year (or $5 a month) with some nice additional benefits. I’m considering upgrading eventually too. One of the features he uses and appreciates is how Evernote gives you an e-mail address so that you can just e-mail notes into your account.

They also offer the ability to share your notebooks or just notes with others. This is one of the first things I read about – a parent of a special needs child using Evernote to coordinate information between the doctor’s office and school, by having an account where certain people were given permission to access and modify (when appropriate) all the notes related to the care of her child. I might need to start sharing Evernote notebooks with clients on the various research I do for them!

I appreciate the layers of potential organization with Evernote, as you can create notebooks to gather like items together and that you can create tags as well for each item you add. Although I’ve not needed to try it out, Evernote says that everything is searchable, so if you’re struggling to find something you could probably find it even if you only remembered some obscure word.

I’ve been a bit frustrated, as one of my shopping lists has become problematic – in that it doesn’t want to load properly – on any of the devices. I just need to delete and make a new note. I’ve heard of problems with formatting issues between devices. Yet, I believe that Evernote will work to resolve any issues. The range of how to access Evernote is quite impressive; just about any device now has a platform to access it – and it syncs once you have an Internet connection again. There are some limitations with some devices – like my smart phone and Evernote don’t always work well without Internet or modifying notes on the iPad, again without Internet can be problematic.

I’m excited to explore Evernote even more, and especially since I’ve finally downloaded the desktop version for my computer. From what I’ve seen the benefits far outweigh the few struggles they have and the improvements come regularly. There are so many possibilities and ways to have Evernote work to benefit you – as an individual, to fit your needs. This is the ultimate goal for anything you use.

Simplifying Electronic Back Ups

Two years ago my husband’s computer crashed. Needless to say, he lost many files. Yet, this is not to say that he wasn’t backing up his files regularly. That’s the calamity of a computer crashing, you can be “good” and back-up regularly, yet if the computer crashes between those times, you’ll lose files –maybe not a lot, but it can still be an important one. This happens with any computer, since at the time, his computer was relatively new. This continues to stay with me, even fueling my concern about protecting my own data.

I use multiple tools for backing up my electronic data, at varying intervals – from the external hard drive that lives in the safe and I end up pulling it out a few times a year to the DVD+RW disks I aim to use once a month. Notice I said “aim” – I’m not always as consistent as I want to be since it’s time consuming. I talked about Dropbox last month and I do use that, but it only holds so much and I’m too frugal to pay for more!

That’s where Mozy comes in. Mozy is designed as a file back-up service where you can choose the specific files you want backed up as well as the frequency at which you want it to back those files up. I appreciate that there’s a free version for 2GB, though I do find their prices to be quite reasonable for more space. They work with Mac or PC and their website says they’ve got high-grade encryption.

I’ve been using Mozy long enough that I’m using the second version. I’m grateful that there’s been some improvements as I’d had some trouble with parts of Mozy before this. Despite how inevitable change is, I still sometimes resist that very change. There’s features I miss from the old version though too.

Choosing the files to have Mozy back up is easy. For me, the files I choose are the ones that change most frequently. Remember how if the computer crashes between back-ups, you’ve lost that information, well, I selected files that I would hate to lose and those I am modifying. One of those things is my e-mail.

Speaking of e-mail, last week I talked about dealing with e-mail and one of the first things that Mozy lists is how many e-mails it can back up: 250,000 text e-mails with the 2GB version and 6,250,000 with the regular MozyHome version.

It’s simple to choose when you want Mozy to back everything up. It’s also a fast process. In the first version, the speed could be a huge issue, but I’ve been thrilled with the speed now. I like that I set the interval, once a day, and can choose a time of day that it does the back up. It’s so automatic that I don’t need to think about it or set aside time to do something with.

I miss the ability to open a little window and see how much time is left before the back up is complete, though this is hardly ever long enough to warrant that feature. They still struggle with warnings. It was bad in the last version – to the extent that I had several days when it didn’t back up, and I didn’t know until I was looking into something else. I’ve only had one day with the latest version where I had a warning. It was obvious; I saw it on the day that it happened. Unfortunately, I’m not sure what the warning was for, though I think it was for the computer not backing up.

Although I’ve never had to use the feature, Mozy says that it’s easy to get the information from one computer to another. As I looked around to see what other people were saying, certainly some dissatisfied customers had problems with Mozy’s service and getting their lost files.

Mozy is also not the typical cloud computing that I talk about, although the information is not stored on your computer, it’s not accessible from all the devices that can access the Internet. Nevertheless it’s useful to have back ups in more than one place, and to have files automatically backed up so that you can reduce the amount you might lose in case calamity strikes and your computer crashes. I do appreciate having another set of back ups for my electronic information, especially one that I don’t need to think about much.

An Organizing Mission for You: Make a List of Things That Inspire You

Your organizing mission this week, should you choose to accept it – make a list. I hope your stomach didn’t just drop to your knees. This is a special list, one that will give you pleasure and one that you will refer back to regularly. The list I want you to make is of the things that inspire, motivate, and rejuvenate you. It needs to be compiled of things that touch your very being, excluding things that are mindless or allow you to zone out.

This list is important for several reasons. One is that, once it’s done, in moments of need (more on this later), you will not need to take time to think of things that motivate you. Second, the items on the list can be used before beginning a task or as a reward for completing an arduous task. Third, this list also tells you the things that you need to make time for even if you do not need a pick-me-up at other points.

A while back I was preparing a presentation and was thinking about the things women stereotypically report wanting time for, the luxurious bubble bath, time to label and organize photographs, or time to bake, yet everyone has their individual ultimate in relaxation. For me, the greatest contentment I can imagine happened for me one New Year’s Day, when I spent the majority of the day lounging on the couch reading. I spent the next several weeks feeling light and free, motivated to get things accomplished. Therefore, this is on the top of my list, though there is not always time for a day of lounging and reading.

There are three moments when having our personal list of motivating and inspiring things is helpful, times when a concrete set of choices that will benefit us. First, we all end up facing situations where our motivation is lacking some oomph. Second, there are times when our skills at procrastination reveal themselves more fully. Third, life sometimes seems even more overwhelming and we look up and see no end to the demands on our time, energy, or money.

Without a list, without that fast and easy way to remind ourselves of what helps us, it is easy to dismiss the things that benefit us. When we find that we are procrastinating or feeling overwhelmed, it is often a clue that we need to take time to care for ourselves. It is often the hardest time to stop and re-direct our energy inward. Having the list means that we can pull it out and refer to it, and we recognize the importance of self-care, and even that we are willing to try it.

Doing something off that list then can help revitalize us; sometimes we need to energize ourselves to work on the next task. Having a list that is comprised of the things that inspire and motivate us is useful in rejuvenating our energy to accomplish what we need to. Sitting on the couch and zoning out to the latest television program does not result in our feeling more energetic.

On the other hand, knowing the things that benefit your state of mind can also be a great “reward” after completing a project. Out of curiosity, I took an online procrastination quiz and many questions dealt with the idea of treating yourself to something nice after getting a dreaded task accomplished. The list that you create would be the ideal place to turn for any reward you want.

There is a fine line between using this list to motivate yourself and abusing it by avoiding the tasks you need to accomplish. Yet the benefits of recognizing the things that benefit your state of mind are immeasurable. This list might offer ways of combining unpleasant or dreaded tasks with things that also motivate you.

Is there music that touches you deeply or one that makes you bounce around with energy? There is no reason that you cannot put that music on while you work on something else. A while back there was a television show on during the day that I was inspired by, so I combined my watching it with my daily stationary bike ride.

The things that rejuvenate you are the very items that need to be on your list. They are things that hold meaning for you and therefore deserve to be done regularly. It is too easy to get caught up in all the things that demand our attention and energy, neglecting the things that can help keep us going. By making time to do some of the things on this list we decrease the burnout that life can bring our way. Doing things for ourselves from this list can also benefit our friends and family for we have more patience and energy by making caring for ourselves a priority.

So I challenge you to make a list of things that inspire, motivate, and rejuvenate you. You can choose to share it or not, but make sure that you can refer to it easily. Make sure that you do not forget about it, use it, remind yourself that you are important and deserve some pampering.