Benefits of keeping a daily planner

Sometimes using a daily planner can seem quite simplistic or omg overwhelming and something you may feel that you don’t need or simply just not interested in. I’ve been a planner girl for quite sometime now and really find that even the most simplest planners can really benefit you in ways you may not have realised.

Who uses a planner?

The most simplest of answers to this question is everyone and anyone! Anyone can find a reason to use a daily planner, whether you work at home or have a day to day job elsewhere, have a busy social life full of appointments or even daily family life, or those who just want to use it for your own personal uses at home to plan your days out in advance and try to become more organised.

You don’t have to be some top executive or a high-end PR to have a planner, trust me planners don’t judge whom you are (they’re non judgmental honest!)

So here are a few benefits I personally find having and using a daily planner really make a difference to my life.

Memory.

As we grow older, or I may just be talking of myself here. I find that my memory isn’t great and often end up missing things I’ve been wanting to do, event’s I’m wanting to attend but can’t remember when or sometimes even where they are, missing routine or non routine doctors appointments etc the list really goes on.

With a daily planner it’s main function really is to jot down all of your events, appointments, must-dos and so on it it’s dated pages and really keeping you organised and ready to roll.

Not only can you use a daily planner for thee above but also alot of different reasons; keeping track of medical appointments, scheduling time for friends and family, travel plans, kids school days or parents evenings and so much more.

It’s in the details.

Using a daily planner can be more than just appointment things, I find alot of the time I create lists, to-do’s, task’s, projects and more.

Checklist’s are a perfect way to keep track of things you need to do by checking them off as you’ve finished, it also enables you to easily see what you have achieved or what you have left to achieve thus being able to forward plan when your going to do them.

You can pre-plan any list ideas or project ideas, things to do etc for any occasion or necessitate that you want to achieve.

Manage your time more efficiently.

Alot of us are guilty at the same old phrase “not enough hours in the day”. By pre-planning your day and week think about how much easier and better you could manage your time when you already know what you want to achieve that day or week!

Don’t fall trap to the “I’m too busy to plan”, everyone lives a chaotic, busy and sometimes stressful life, this can be a big factor of life in general, but making small changes by pre-planning your weekly things to do could really help free up space and time to do everything and even have some “me time” and heck if your a sticker addict you’ll find a new and some what expensive hobby trust me.

Setting half an hour or an hour aside each week to pre-set out what you want to achieve the next week coming is an easy task to do, I personally started off this way just half an hour on a Sunday I would make my plans for the following week, now so many years down the line and I’m a what’s called a “pretty planner” (I’ll explain further on), I’ve got so used to planning ahead and managing my time I can spend up to three hours of my own “me time” on a Sunday to plan the following week! (See how much time I managed to free up!).

By doing all these things so far, you’ll eventually over time learn to manage your time more efficiently and effectively.

STRESS reduction (yay!!).

Planning your life out can seem pretty scary, you don’t have to stick to things 110% that’s OK!

As you can imagine, all of this extra time planning and scheduling also reduces a lot of stress in your life. There are some sources of stress you can’t avoid, but because it affects your mental and physical well being, it is important that you try to reduce it as much as possible.

This starts with understanding what your biggest priorities are, and when you might need to say no to certain things and take a step back. This is all part of the benefits of managing your time better.

It Helps to Improve Productivity and Focus.

With taking into account all of what I’ve said already, these benefits from planning can also help to improve your productivity and focus. Having a pretty hectic to-do list help you to prioritize what needs to be done for any task, so that you can move on to the next thing.

I find that having a daily schedule of what I’m supposed to be doing (weather I actually do it or not is another thing) is a wonderful tool for helping me to keep up with my responsibilities of everyday life and to stay focused on my priorities.

When you have less stress and madness in your life, that can also be very useful for improving your productivity.

You can have more free time! or Me time!

Once you increase your productivity and learn what your life’s priorities are even if it’s just for one day, you aren’t loosing time, but gaining it!

You can focus on tasks to get them done, thus having a better idea of where you have free time for more personal goals and I find planning really helps me to see where that time is.

You can preserve moments of your life.

Planning out with pen and paper leads to like a journal, we all had them when we were young (secret diary). If you plan, you record all of the most important things that happen to you each day in your planner, you can save these and look back on them later. You can choose to have a separate planner if you want to specifically memory plan and quite a few people do this, I personally have a smaller planner which I decorate minimally and use to journal for that day or simply write a few sentences about my day. They then become a type of memory book, where you can go to any page and see what happened that day. Of course the more detailed you are in your planner, the more you’ll benefit from it.

Pretty Planning.

Pretty planning, well this is a type of planning where you buy all the pretty things for your planner, stickers, washi tape, dashboards (or make your own), clips and charms. There’s a hole new world of pretty planning things out there!

So I hope you’ve found this little post today somewhat helpful! Don’t hesitate to ask any questions you may have in the comments or ask for any future posts you’d like to see!

Stay Happy!