30 Ways to Use Digital Planning In Your Life
Part 1: 1-15 Ways to Use Digital Planning in You Life
Once you’ve started to digital plan you may be thinking “How else can I use my digital planner?” Here are 30 ways you can use digital planning in your life:
1 - Plan Out Your Year, Month, Week, and Day
Use your digital planner to figure out exactly what you want to accomplish for each day, week, month, and year. This is especially helpful in conjunction with planning out your goals as it makes everything more achievable when you continue to break your goals into bite-size pieces.
2 - Plan Out Your Goals
The first step to completing a goal is to take time to define it and make an action plan. There is so much potential to reach your goal just by in identifying your goals in writing. Statements like: “These are my goals: ….
this is how I am going to achieve them: ... This is the date I will accomplish this goal by… and these are the steps I am taking to get there: …” will do wonders for your goal setting.
3 - Archive Your Year, Month, Week, Day.
While most digital planners are for the future, they can also act as archives for your past. That’s part of the reason I find digital planning so attractive. You can always look back on your time spent and see what you were up to in the month; see what you did, what your plans were, and what was most important to you at that specific moment of your life. It’s a little snapshot into your life at a specific moment in time.
4 - Monthly Reflect
It’s hard to have growth without reflection. I always find it to be so much easier to figure out what I want, or even what I am missing in my life when I do some reflecting about where I am at and how I am feeling. A digital planner is a great place to do this.
5 - Monthly Reset
Just as it’s important to reflect on the past month (and also current moment) it’s equally as important to be able to reset yourself and start on a new slate. (While this can happen at any time, and for me does happen in some small way every day, week, month, and year), it’s been a good grounding habit for me to start each month with an intentional reset.
6 - Yearly Goals Check-In
So we made all these plans at the start of the year…. Did we accomplish any of it? Are we on our way to accomplishing the goals? This is where you can see what went smoothly for you. Maybe halfway through the year, you realized that a goal you identified at the beginning of the year wasn’t something you actually felt was important for you to accomplish and it’s been left to the wayside. Or conversely, perhaps you’re midway through the year and find that the goal you haven’t worked on, is actually an integral part of what you want to accomplish this year and you need to get started… I’ve added this to the Oodles of Joy Designs Calendar for these very reasons. There is a dedicated page at the start of the month during the reflection, and it is incorporated into the weekly spread AND daily spread. All so that you never forget about your goals and are always able to make some small actions towards your goal(s) every day.
7 - Monthly Goal Setting
I like to make sure my yearly goals are reflected in my monthly goals. But, I’m sure to make the goals smaller in scope. They don’t have to be as broad or all-encompassing as yearly goals. I usually make monthly goals that get me closer to achieving my yearly goals AND I do monthly goals that are related to the season I am in. So in Autumn, I like to add some seasonal activities like going to the pumpkin patch, drinking fresh apple cider, harvesting from my garden, etc.
8 - Vision Boards
I am not someone who always does vision boards. But, I have recently started and it has helped me visualize what I want. I find vision boards helpful when I do them at the beginning of the month as a visual goal-setting activity OR I’ll do it when I am fleshing out a new idea or space ie. a garden in my backyard, decorating a new office space, brainstorming travel adventures, etc.
9 - Yearly Goal Setting
I’m including this again cause it really is that important and dare I say it, life-changing. Your digital planner can be used to brainstorm goals in a visual manner, identify your goal, set start and complete your goal, and make notes along the way to achieving your goal.
10 - Goal Tracking
Track your progress! Celebrate your movement forward. Identify why you’re getting stuck (maybe the step you’re at needs to be broken down even more!).
11 - Digital Bookshelf
Keep track of what you’ve read this year. It’s always fun to look back and see what you picked up + your thoughts and feelings about the book.
12 - Digital Audio Shelf
Similarly, I find I get lots of insight into my self (past and present) when I see what I was listening to at any point in my life. Music has the power to hold such visceral memories.
13 - Movie/ TV shelf
What movies and TV shows were standout hits for you this year? What blew you out of the water (and what should you not waste your time watching again). Personally, I like to focus on the good stuff, so I’ll leave out the movies/shows that I would rate 2.5 stars and below.
14 - Cycle Tracking
If you are a person who experiences menstruation, it can be helpful to track your cycle in a graph format. I think it’s easier to see any patterns if it’s in a visual setup.
15 - Fitness Tracking
This is more of a guide and tracker than anything else. You may have different phases for what type of fitness you participate in. I certainly do. This tracker is separated into 3 different parts: week view - where you can write your plan for the day, date view - where you can color code what you actually did that day, and notes/workout type - where you can add any other info / add your own custom fitness activity.
This concludes Part 1 of the 30 Way to Use Your Digital Planner. Part 2 will be up next Thursday, January 5th, 2023.
See you then!
