2020 Planner

In my previous blogpost, I had mentioned that this particular post would be about my 2020 planner. As you already know I am a big fan of stationery. I did look around for some planners online and also at the stores but could not find one which fit my requirement or my budget. So, I decided to print one for myself. One might think, I had a lot of special needs but when I share my planner with you, you will realise that mine is very basic. Many planners had things like Books to read, TV shows to watch, Movies to watch, mood tracker, inspirational quotes etc. I really did not want to track these at all and wanted the planner to be simple enough for me to use it everyday. I also did not want to carry around a lot of pages around with when I know already, that I would not use them immediately. Usually, I use a one day a page dated diaries but this year, I thought of trying something different.

When looking for free printables, I found this site (click here). I just fell in love with their printables. They have them in 2 sizes A4 and A5 and in so many varieties that you would definitely find the one you love. Also, I got to mix and match from a variety of options from what they had to offer. While this was the website where I found most of my material, I also printed out a few from other websites. I will also leave a link to them in case you are interested. Now, moving on to the planner I created for myself:

Front and Back Cover:
I like florals so I chose these and printed them out on 300 gsm watercolour paper. For front cover, I chose the multi floral and for the back, I chose fall flower. Both were from the amazing website linked above.

The next thing I did was choose separators, which I selected again from this site. I chose the sea creature swirl. These were also printed on 300 gsm watercolour paper.

I then printed out the Birthdays and Anniversaries sheet, again from the same website. I chose the blank one. I printed these on Paperone 100gsm regular paper.

I then printed out my monthly spread from the same website using a random different theme every month. I am not posting pictures of those here. Again, these were printed on 100 gsm regular paper.

The next thing I printed out was the year at a glance from this website (click here). Printed on 100 gsm regular paper.

This was followed by the printable goals planner/worksheet. I printed this out from this website (click here). Printed on 100 gsm regular paper.

The next thing I printed out was a habit tracker from this website (click here). Printed on 100 gsm regular paper.

As mentioned previously, I did not want to use one day a page for planning my work. I decided to use a weekly spread again from the initial website (click here). Printed on 100 gsm regular paper. So, far, this has lasted me the whole month. I noticed that I was not really using up the entire column, so I divided it into several parts horizontally and add a new date each time and write my to-do for the day. Has been working well so far.

I printed my entire planner of A4 sheet, even though I prefer A5 size. I started by looking for soft binders to keep my planner pages in but could not find any. However, A4 sized soft binders were easily available. So, decided to print my planner in A4 size paper. I did not want to punch the beautiful pages, so I chose a transparent slide grip binder. The printing work and the binder put together must have cost about Rs.100 (USD 1.40). My planner looks like this now (sorry for the poor quality picture- It looks much more vibrant and colourful than on the picture).

In the binder, I have placed a year at a glance page, birthdays and anniversaries, goals pages, habit tracker, a monthly spread for the first quarter and the weekly spread for 4 weeks alone. Actually, each weekly spread is lasting me for a month, so I assume I have enough for 4 months :). All the extras for the coming quarters and weeks is placed in this folder and I pick out the papers from this as and when I need.

The website I have been mentioning  has a lot of other ideas that you could include in your planner as well as different binding ideas. Do spend sometime is visiting it- it is a fantastic website.

I have just mentioned added snapshots to show you what I exactly used. Since it is a free download at all these websites, request you to not print anything from here (they would anyway not comply to any size), and visit the websites mentioned in the links and download/print from these websites. All of them have put in a lot of hard work for our sake and giving these wonderful tools to us for free- I appreciate their efforts and I am really grateful to them.

2020 Goals

In my previous post, I had mentioned that I had worked on defining my goals for this year. I started thinking about them in Dec,2019. This year, I also put a system around it so that I am more focussed on it. Some of my goals are currently high level without much details. This is because, I have decided that not everything needs to begin on Jan 1st. If Jan 1st had life, it would have crumbled by now under the weight of expectations and the number of things people would dumped on it. Anyway, I would be working on some of my other goals, adding more specific details and information as the year progresses. Some of my goals have a strict deadline as well, so I need to get them out of my way by those dates, so that I can work on other goals. This year, I have split my goals into 3 categories:

1. Related to Habit- This is about forming new habits and maintaining existing habits. I will be measuring these but in terms of how compliant I have been.
2. Time-bound Goals- These are goals with a strict deadline for me to achieve them.
3. Self-improvement- While the above 2 categories of goals are also for self-improvement/personal development, this particular category of goals is focussing on development of soft-skills. There is no way to know if I have achieved them but I need to make a conscious effort every day to follow some tips. I doubt that such a goal can come with a deadline, so I have not set any. To me these are for life but I am going to make a conscious effort this year.

With this introduction, I present my 2020 Goals before you. I am going to be as brief as possible with minimal to no explanation, so that this post does not end up being too long. I am not mentioning here which goals begin when and end when as I am working on getting some of the timing right myself and trying out different permutations and combinations to find the best schedule to work on them:

Habit Goals:

1. Write 1 line in my journal everyday: In the past years, I did not have much success with writing everyday. After extensive research, I think this one is easier to keep. Even if I have nothing to write on a given day, I can still say- Nothing interesting worth writing happened today. Just a routine day. :)

2. Read for 5 mins everyday 

3.  No Instagram, Youtube and Pinterest beyond 7pm everyday: This is one of the ways by which I will make some time to work on my goals or just relax.

4. Organize and Clean twice a week: I was doing this once a week, I think, the amount of pressure on that 1 day when I need to work on them could be reduced.

5. Spend 5-10 mins time learning something new or listen, read the news everyday

6. Connect more deeply with my family on a daily basis: I do not want to share the specifics further but there is a list of habits in place.

7. Take a meaningful photograph once a week
8. Eat healthy, sleep well and exercise daily

Time-bound goals:

1. Complete the certification that I was working last year.
2. Write 50 blog posts this year
3. Finish reading my current book and additionally read 1 autobiography/biography, 1 self-help book and 1 fiction book by an Indian author

Self-improvement goals:

1. Be much more proactive
2. Develop a sense of urgency
3. Be a good listener and be polite when I reply to people
4. Build self-discipline and work on my procrastination issues

Other than this, I have prepared a list of things to do this year.
- Look for ideas for a side-hustle
- Be well groomed and well dressed always
- Get back to cooking and baking as I had taken a break in 2019
- Declutter my books
- Plan my finances better
- Plan a vacation/staycation
- Work on a creative project

This is it for my goals this year. In my next blog, I would write about how I have set up my planner for the year. It is very simplistic and so far, has been working for me.

Happy 2020

Hi Everyone,

Wish you a very Happy 2020. It is already 12 days. I wonder until what time it is okay to greet people a Happy New Year after the new year has begun. As always a new year brings us all hope and excitement. We feel we can start our living our ideal lives, not repeat the mistakes of the previous year, making new changes and hope that it is our best year yet. I am also one of these hopeful people.

While I look forward to this year, I am also thankful for 2019. I am thankful for all that I could achieve, all the people that I met, all the travelling that I did, all the new things that I learnt and every experience that I had. I am also thankful for some revelations that I had about myself, the people around me and the world in general. There were some amazing things that happened in my country and some disappointments too but despite everything, I am hopeful that things will happen for the better this year.

I somehow feel better prepared to face 2020 than I did any of the previous years. It could be due to the fact that I had already started thinking of my goals and what I wanted to achieve in 2020, toward the end of 2019 itself and started planning around them upfront and finalized all that I wanted to do with a proper plan in place within the first week of Jan,2020 itself. This year, I have put in place a planner that I feel will help me achieve my goals. My next blog would be about my goals for 2020, which I hope to publish next week.

I hope this would be a fantastic year for my friends and family.

Wishing everyone a 2020 filled with lots of successes with everything good that you may want to do, a year full of good health and lots of happiness.

-S