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I was recently chosen to be on the Limelife Media & Creative Team for a second term. I'm very excited about this because I really missed working for them! A part of being on the M&C Team means they provide me with a brand new planner. I have to be 100% honest with you, I'm so grateful for this... I can't tell you how much I MISSED my full size spiral bound Limelife planner. I thought I could be happy with just my A5 Limelife inserts in my Filofax, but I wasn't. It's now the middle of April and keeping it totally real today, I have been an unorganized mess this year! I'm not proud of it. However, I believe it happens to the best of us. I didn't know what my problem was UNTIL I received my new full size spiral bound planner. Then everything came together. I had a major "A-HA!" moment. I had missed her... That's what was wrong with my productivity!
Now, I'm not giving up on my Filofax just yet. I actually really like it for certain things. The past 2-3 weeks I've been using these two planners together and I can honestly say for the first time this year... I've got my SH*T together!
I am using my spiral bound Limelife planner for home, personal, and family things. My Filofax is for business planning [Etsy, Blog, YouTube, etc]. Using these two planners together has lifted such a huge weight off my shoulders.
The Filofax gets no decorating. It's strictly pen & paper. All business. I tuck my Staedtler template in my front pocket to make perfect "to-do" boxes.
The beginning of the Filofax is roughly the same as it was in my 2016 Planner Setup post. I have my front page with my information.
After my front page, I have a little dashboard I made. I just laminated some scrapbook paper, hole punched it, and stuck sticky notes and page flags on it. I went with a cutesy donut theme.
Here's my weekly pages girls! Pen and paper. No frills, no washi, no stickers, no stamping. This planner is strictly professional. There's a few different reasons I have chose to not decorate my weekly pages in this planner. The main reason is: I don't have time to decorate TWO planners every week. Sure I could add in a little washi, but I really like the simplicity of just planning and getting my stuff done. I've even fallen in love with a new pen for this planner. I have jumped on the Pilot G-2 .07 bandwagon. This pen write like a dream on my pages.
The monthly view in my Filofax business planner is for blog post & youtube video planning. I use page flags to tentatively place when I'm going to post a video or blog. Once it's set in stone, I write it directly into the planner. I also use the month view for Etsy coupon & sale planning. This helps me easily see and keep track of how often I have a sale and whether it was a hit or not.
The only other major change I made to the Filofax setup was adding these 6 tabs that came with the Filofax. Yes they're ugly, but they serve a purpose. I'm utilizing these as my "Project Planning" section. Each project gets it's own tab and they're organized by importance. I shouldn't need more than 6 because if I'm working on more than 6 projects at once, there's a bigger issue... aha! For example: Right now in Tab 1 I have my Etsy Shop Revamp project planning information. I've recently made several changes to my shop and it took a bit of planning and work to make these changes. I tracked all my ideas and what I wanted to do in this section. In Tab 2 I currently have my Miracle Morning plans. I've been reading the Miracle Morning and I'm almost finished [more on that later on in the month]. I have been planning my Miracle Morning in my Project Planning section.
Previously in my Filofax setup for the 2016 Planner Setup post I did, I had several sections in the back where I put Limelife Add-On's. Like meal planning, fitness, social media planning, etc. Some of these have been moved to the big planner and some have been nixed for the moment.
Ahhhh the new girl. Welcome back spiral bound Limelife Planner! Oh how I've missed you...
I chose Rachel in Layout A. There was a part of me that wanted to be brave. Be adventurous and try a different layout. I'm so glad I didn't. I know that Layout A works for me so I'm happy I stuck with it.
Limelife has interchangeable covers for their planners and I already had several from my 2015 planner. So the cover choice when choosing this planner wasn't a major factor for me. What I knew I wanted from my experience last year, was the planner with the least amount of detail on the inside. If you're unfamiliar with Limelife planners, the cover design you choose flows throughout the entire planner. You'll see this design at the top of your monthly pages and your notes. As an extensive planner decorator, I ran into some issues trying to cover up those designs on my monthly pages when they didn't match my theme. So I knew I wanted whatever had the least amount of design on the inside.
Rachel is the cover design I chose and as you can see in this picture, her design on the monthly pages is simply a black line. That's exactly what I want.
The monthly pages in my spiral bound planner are used for finances, trips, and random monthly occurrences [like flea medicine for the cats]. Now that I'm not trying to cram my business monthly tasks in with my household monthly tasks, it feels less cluttered. I'm loving this.
On the weekly pages I was able to streamline my setup quite a bit. In 2015 I used the top box for household/personal/family, second box for blog/youtube, and third box for Etsy. That often left very little room for planning my household & family things.
Now I'm utilizing the top box for random to-do's. This is where things go that I can't pre-plan. Things that pop up throughout the week that need attention. The second box I use for housework. That's an area of my life that seriously got ignored in 2015. I felt like things always needed cleaned and organized. Etsy kept me so busy that I told myself I rarely had time to clean. Which is partly true, but it was also due to a lack of planning and MAKING time. Now that I have plenty of room in my planner as a result of moving my business out of it, I can actually plan household chores. I'm getting myself BACK on the FlyLady routine and getting my SH*T together. The third box I use for fitness & health. I'm tracking my water intake, planning my workouts, and tracking when we "eat out" instead of making food at home.
I'm using my sidebar as a daily tracker. I have "workouts complete", "miles completed", whether I remembered my vitamins or not, reading because I've made a goal to read every day, and my morning and nightly routines.
This setup with the 2 planners has been amazing for me. My creativity is flowing again, I'm feeling organized, I'm getting things done. I NEVER thought I'd be a multiple planner girl. I "thought" that I wanted everything in one place. Well surprise! Isn't productivity funny some times? Not only is this going to benefit me tremendously, it's going to benefit you! Now that I feel organized again, I'm able to get content out regularly!
Do you use 1 or 2 planners? How do you incorporate them together?
