At the beginning of 2022, my planning system served my needs. Then, about halfway through the year, I was thrown into a much busier schedule and I had to figure out a system on the fly. I made it through the year, but I knew that I needed to revamp my lineup for a better work/life balance in 2023.
I prefer paper planning, but a mix of paper and digital planning works much better for much of what I do. I have a lot of buckets to manage, so it is imperative that I find a system that organizes, but doesn’t overwhelm me. Last year I used a mixture of bullet journaling, a golden coil planner, Evernote, Google Workspace, Powersheets, YNAB, and Trello! Yes, that’s a lot.
However, I manage several buckets in my life and there really isn’t a lot of overlap. When brainstorming a 2023 planning system for optimal productivity, I quickly realized that balancing work, business, content creation, budgeting, goals, and overall life is really not possible within one planner. I have no desire to mix work with my personal life, but I do need one space to merge tasks.
Also, I need a mix of portability and flexibility for content creation and work travel. Unlike other years, I also went through the process of creating a new five-year plan at the end of 2022. This put potential goals for 2023 into perspective and led me to purchase the MakseLife flagship planner. But let me back up to the first purchase I made…
The Digital Planner Lineup
In 2022, I used a bullet journal to keep track of a running to-do list.. and regular brain dumps. This stems from the “Getting Things Done” method of planning, in which I am able to get any and all tasks out of my brain and onto a list to be sorted into action. Since I travel much more, I decided to take this list digital for 2023.
I now use Goodnotes on my iPad mini to house a running to-do list in which I am able to list every task and then decide on particular tasks to complete every day. Instead of looking at the large list of tasks every day, I move tasks from this list into my daily task lists, not adding any new tasks to that list until I complete what I set out to accomplish that day. Having a large running to-do list in a separate place that translates into a short daily list helps me avoid overwhelm while not dropping the ball.
As mentioned above, I travel a lot, specifically for work. I could use a paper planner for this purpose, but my schedule changes a lot and so I wanted to keep a dynamic planning system to serve me best in 2023.
At work, I use a mixture of Google Workspace and Trello to manage my load. Trello houses projects, tasks, quick notes, and my wins. The Google Workspace ecosystem allows me to keep track of my schedule in Google Calendar and is the Inbox space from which work tasks and projects stem. Yes, I’m an Inbox 0 person!
The flexibility of a fully digital system allows me to make changes on the go and for others on my team to see how much time I have for meetings and new projects.
In the same vein, my budgeting system must remain dynamic. I travel quite a bit and need to know how much I have to spend in the various buckets and sinking funds my budget is categorized into. What budgeting system continues to serve my needs?
YouNeedABudget.com… YNAB for short.
I love the flexibility of YNAB. The interface has significantly improved over the years, and it really allows me to continually keep track of my budget and financial goals easily in one place. I maintain two separate budgets within the system, personal and business, which is very convenient for life and accounting purposes.
Last but not least, my content machine. Social media is constantly changing, and a paper system alone has never served me in managing my content. I’ve toyed with several options, and last year I toyed with Notion templates. Then, when Vanessa Lau shared her Content Machine setup, I purchased it with quickness. It is perfection!
I am able to manage content on multiple platforms in one place. It’s golden and worth every single penny.
The Analog Planner Lineup
The decision to separate my daily list from my digital large brain dump led to a realization that I still needed a monthly/weekly paper planner for 2023. There is something about the process of choosing a few tasks and writing them down in a space that isn’t easily changed, that makes me really careful about selecting what I can actually accomplish in the span of one day.
Also, I barely used my Powersheets in 2022, so I surmised that I needed to keep my goal tracking in the same space as my daily planning. After much research, I decided to purchase the MakseLife flagship planner, and thus far I am very happy with it. The system keeps goals at the forefront of monthly and weekly planning, thus making it much easier to accomplish the goals within everyday life.
It really is a catch-all planner in which I choose my top task, errands, habit tracking, and take note of appointments on a daily basis. This planner is what helps me put everything together in one place.
Although this lineup works well for me, I did realize that one thing was missing that would help this system really become fully functional for me. That is a space to connect the goals for my year to the daily habits, weekly routines, monthly systems, and life projects into actionable steps. This was just the thing I needed to pull the entire system together, and it was so impactful for me that I created a printable to share with you (get it here)!
Is this A Lot?
Look, you do not have to use this many different options to organize your life. This is what works for my various life buckets. I recognize that most people aren’t trying to do the most in everyday life. But I am… so hopefully, this post is helpful to you.
