With just a few days until 2023, this is the perfect time to plan for the New Year. I’d recommend reviewing the previous year first before looking ahead. You can take any lessons learned and improve on them in 2023 or completely change your focus! Let’s get stuck in with my version of how to plan for the new year.
STEP 1: HOW WILL YOU PLAN?
One of the first steps is to decide what tools you’ll use to plan. Are you planning on going digital with a calendar or project management tool, such as Asana or Notion? Have you bought a 2023 paper diary or calendar? Are you bullet journalling this year? You can stick with what you’ve done before or try something new.
For me, I’m actually trying bullet journalling for the first time properly but with multiple planners. I think in total, I’m using around 10 planners for various tasks. It’s definitely a lot but four of those are content planners for my four websites! I’ll be sharing my journal stack soon as well as how I’m going to make planning a routine daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly.
STEP 2: BRAINSTORM
Before I put pen to paper in my favourite diary/journal/planner/calendar, I first do a messy drat. I use printer paper or a sketchbook, write each of the 12 months as a heading and jot down any concrete plans underneath. Use last year’s calendar as a guide for those dates that don’t change (i.e. birthdays). Make a note of any plans you’ve already got booked (travel, social plans, parties, appointments, etc).
This is a big step for me because I roughly plan out theatre trips for the entire year. This dictates my content calendar for this blog because press night reviews need to be completed the following day!
STEP 3: START FILLING IN YOUR JOURNAL
Now you’ve got a rough idea of what’s going on as a whole, it’s time to fill in your planner or calendar. If you’re unsure if a plan will go ahead or not, write it in pencil. I’m big on colour-coding so for example, I write all travel plans in orange, fun things are written in deep pink and I have a colour for each blog (light blue, purple, bright pink, and brown).
With a bullet journal, it’s recommended you include a future log so you have an at-a-glance look at your year with all of those important dates on. You can fit up to six months on a page and leave space to write down your plans.
STEP 4: MAKE A PLANNING ROUTINE
As I said earlier, my routine covers daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly tasks. However, you can make a routine as simple or as complicated as you like to. I’d recommend at least checking your planner or calendar once a week but preferably daily. Make a list of what tasks you want to include in your routine, such as checking your planner, setting your to-do list for the week, and writing any new goals.
Your routine is meant to be personal so you could do some research online (I love watching planning videos on YouTube) and incorporate what you like. I’d say to stick to a routine for at least a couple of months. At that point, reflect and review what isn’t working and then make changes. Last year, I tried to use Notion to plan. I failed because I realised I like to write stuff down and Notion was just too complicated for me!
FINAL THOUGHTS
Planning can be fun and I find it to be! If you’re not a fan, make your routine fun. Stick on a movie, a Netflix show, a podcast, or your fave fun playlist, and sit down in a relaxing place. I like to plan at my desk usually but in bed, I can spread out my supplies. Use colours and stickers to make things stand out, choose pretty pens and plan your own way!
If you enjoyed how to plan for the new year, I’m going to be adding more organisation posts to my blog in 2023 so stay tuned for those. You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram where I’ll be sharing more planning and organisational stuff too.
Let me know if you’re planning for the New Year now or in 2023! Leave a comment below or send me a DM on social media. I just love planning so it’s something I love to chat about too!
