#4 Let's do this - peek inside my 2025 diary

or how I plan my month and week.

Hello from a cloudy but still hot (31C) Johannesburg where the thunder is rumbling and threatening (very welcome) rain

organisingqueen

A post shared by @organisingqueen

When you try to make things work

Last year I received a gorgeous (truly gorgeous) diary as a gift and it was perfect for many months until it wasn’t.

You see, I am and have been a weekly planner for a great many years and this was a daily planner.

I made it work because I don’t like to waste and I truly enjoyed it until life got too crazy and I was not seeing my life in weeks when I really needed to do so.

I then bought a weekly diary for only R70 (South Africans, at Mr Price!) and it was amazing.

That purchase took me back to my roots of monthly and weekly planning, and helped me to restore order in my head once again, especially with all the appointments relating to the cancer.

(an aside, where did I find the time to have surgery, recover and go for daily radiation?!)

Then came the age-old question - should I continue in my new-old weekly diary that still had 7 months left? or should I start the year fresh?

I still don’t like waste but ultimately I felt that what I needed was a fresh start in a brand new diary without seeing all the medical appointments (those are coming but are hopefully only check-ups).

I lived with this diary for a month or so (and kept my receipt in case I changed my mind) but eventually I broke loose and now it’s all worn in.

Let’s walk through it together but first a few logistical notes:

• I don’t carry my diary around with me like I did in the pre-Covid years. For one, I get absolutely nothing but work done while I’m at work, and if I need to remember something, I either grab a post-it note or make a reminder on my phone.

• My diary lays open at the week-to-view glance the entire week except for the time I’m actually updating it.

Monthly view

• I pre-plan my Spanish, personal training and Zumba workouts.

• I also track books read and the friends I see/ talk to, especially when I wonder why I feel alone (hint - it’s usually because I’ve had no 1:1 friend time)

What else would you track?

Goals page

• This is my favourite page in any of my diaries

• I write down important dates and birthdays.

• A new thing - I’m using the notes to write things I want to remember that are not about me (LA Fires, US inauguration, resignations at work, etc.)

• I also write down all my goals here. You might be wondering what’s the difference between goals and to-dos? Goals are bigger things and might have a to-do or two this month. For example, I paid for a trip last month but that was only the 4th item of a list of 6 things to completely achieve the goal of going on an anniversary trip.

Weekly planning page

• I’m showing you some of the items on this last week’s list.

• More things were added after I consulted my online calendar for my recurring items.

• I use the To Do section for any items that have to be completed that day.

• I pull things from my monthly goals list (hence the pink post-it note) to add to each week’s planning pages.

And there we have it - my monthly and weekly planning system.

Do you still have a paper diary?

Do you prefer weekly or daily planning?

Most important, would you have finished the diary from last year or started a new one when the old no longer worked for you?