favorite things | passion planner and time management

In 2016 I’m trying to get back into blogging more regularly (insert laughs here)! I have about 50 posts, both photography and non-photography related all lined up in my head to create. One foot in front of the other. I started a “favorite things” series last year and want to continue, since I personally love this type of post and reading reviews from others who are actually using and testing things out. It’s great learning about products and services I might otherwise not have known about.

After having my baby girl (who is now 15 months old, I can’t believe it) I didn’t go back to my “day job”, which was as a researcher and lab manager of a large academic research lab. Yep, I’m a scientist for those of you who don’t know that! I love science and loved doing research, but became pretty overwhelmed once I had 3 kids (and a photography business). Not being able to bring the lab home, I needed to fully embrace my inner entrepreneur so that I could work completely from home. And then I decided to start another home-based virtual business about 8 months ago (more on that later, what’s one more thing??) so I REALLY needed to find a better way to plan and manage my time because I was feeling scattered and unable to focus.

Working from home, it’s SO easy to get distracted by just about everything. And I only have small blocks of time available to work – when the baby is napping, after the kids have gone to bed, or when I have a sitter. I have to pre-plan all of my time or I find myself struggling to accomplish everything or anything that I want to (hello, neglected blog…)

It’s a digital world and I love the convenience of the many apps and calendars available, and of course am super dependent on my various Google calendars for the big picture – we have all of our family events and appointments on there. To track my time while I’m working, I use toggl. Toggl was suggested to me by one of my besties who is a home-based graphic designer and it’s an amazing tool for creatives. You can tell where you are spending (and potentially wasting) your time. It has really helped me tighten up my photography work flow.

As great as the digital tools are I’m a very visual person. I love paper. If I write something down, it just sticks. In the lab, I always had one of those huge monthly desk calendars and all of my experiments and meetings were planned out, right in front of me often weeks in advance. It was like my brain on paper and if it wasn’t on the calendar, it wasn’t happening! I realized I needed to go back to paper here at home, and searched around for the perfect planner. After reading many rave reviews, I decided to purchase a Passion Planner and give it a try. I LOVE this thing. It’s mapped out in half-hour increments which is great for me because my life happens in half hour blocks of time with photo and editing sessions, calls, appointments, meetings, etc.

The Passion Planner is not cutesy, it’s no frills and all black and white. Normally, I’m a sucker for colorful eye-catching design but in this case I was looking for something super functional. I don’t need lots of space taken up in my planner by inspirational quotes or pretty pictures. The cover of the planner is not too thick or rigid, but it’s sturdy and kind of flexible which is great when you’re toting it around. It comes in two sizes. Currently I’m using the larger size. What’s good is that I have plenty of space to write things legibly and I can go crazy with different colors of highlighters and pens. What I don’t like is that it takes up a lot of space on my desk and isn’t super portable. I used the smaller size last year and I think I’ll go back to that.

Inside, there is space to do a giant brain dump of all of your hopes, dreams and goals for the year (both personal and professional), and then, an area to break them down into specific chunks with steps and plans of action to get you there. I love how there are areas to jot down both personal and work-related to-do lists for each week, in order of importance. To me, it always feels so satisfying to check something off of a list! There’s also the “space of infinite possibility” for random thoughts, doodles, and notes.

FYI: I’m not getting compensated to review or endorse any of these products, I’m simply writing about them because I use them every day and have found them very useful!

Happy planning friends! What’s your favorite way to keep everything organized?