Use a Planner to Achieve your Dreams in 2021

For many of us, 2020 was a bit of a bust. Time to shake it off and great ready to accomplish big things going forward? Have big dreams and goals for 2021? Unfortunately, New Year’s resolutions just don’t work. According to a Forbes article, only 25% of people are still committed to their resolutions after 30 days and only 8% accomplish them. Don’t be a statistic. Set goals! Make a plan! Achieve your BIG dreams!

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Use a planner to get organized and outline your strategy for success

2021 will be my fourth year using the Living Well Planner. This planner is powerful and I am a fan of the floral cover. I love our crazy life, but we have a lot going on….school, sports, meals, bills, work, home maintenance & projects, cabin projects, vacation, reading leisure books, managing a website. Exhausting!

A good planner helps you track progress against your goals. Who doesn’t love to check off a few boxes?!?! It also helps you identify hurdles & obstacles getting in your way. Eliminate whatever it is that is sabotaging your success. Having a well organized planner keeps me sane and ensures we make all of our appointments, accomplish our goals, eat healthy, have a balanced budget, catch up with family & friends and have some fun along the way.

Living Well Planner with three cover design styles in stripes, floral and navy

Set up your planner

Late October-early November is the perfect time to set up a planner for the following year. Once my planner arrives, I designate a couple of hours to get it set-up. After the boys go to bed, I light a candle, pour a glass of wine, play relaxing music and get to work. It’s a little bit of a DIY project labeling the months and dates, but I like the opportunity to customize the calendars.

When you purchase the Living Well Planner, your are automatically enrolled in a Bootcamp e-mail series. The planner can seem overwhelming the first time around and it’s so beautiful it’s almost scary to start marking it up. Follow the bootcamp recommendations! I still read the bootcamp articles for fresh tips and a reminder that you have to use the planner. It cannot remain perfect.

It can be tough to achieve your goals. Persistence will be a key ingredient to your success. Check out this article to learn more about the important of persistence when setting challenging, but impactful goals.

Annual View (the front end)

Creating the Big Picture for 2021

Get your planner started by thinking about the big picture. Outline at least three, big, crazy goals you want to achieve in 2021. Document these at the front of the planner, commit to achieving them, and then check back often to ensure you are making progress.

The annual ‘big picture’ view helps you outline your personal growth, health & fitness, home improvement, financial, and connection goals. This section also provides space for important dates and information.

Identifying Your Word of the Year

Here, you are also prompted to identify your word of the year. Take some time to reflect. This exercise is about creating a mantra that will guide your daily actions to become a better version of yourself. You must commit to your word and do what it takes to bring more of it into your life.

How do you narrow it down to a single word? A great way to start is by reflecting on the past year. Ask yourself a series of questions to understand what direction you would like to take in the year or what might be lacking in your life. Write down whatever pops into your head. You can edit later. Visualize what a perfect day would feel like. Some of the words on your list will begin to stand out and inspire you.

My word for 2021? Resilience! (my word for 2020 was conquer….little did I know how that would come into play). I have a lot of big goals, but need to give myself grace for the challenges and set-backs I faced in 2020. I need to be strong and resilient. Starting each day ready to take action and move forward will help me tackle my goals.

Monthly

Each month begins with an inspirational quote. For monthly goals, the format is similar to what I outlined above for the front end of the planner around annual goals.

inspirational quote in living well planner

Monthly sections also have a worksheet to help you break down your goals into bite sized pieces that help you outline a plan to achieve your goals. I love the full month calendar for a high level view.

There are also budget. It’s way more detailed than how I normally track our budget, but it’s easily adaptable and can provide inspiration for those who need to do a better job of tracking where their dollars go.

Weekly

The weekly pages provide space to schedule fixed appointments and commitments. I love to use gel pens in my planner. I color code for appointments or tasks and the planner filled with all of the tasks and appointments just looks prettier ;-). If a trip or other event schedule might change, I use Post It tabs to hold the time. They are easy to lift off and move around if plans change. I also have my favorite color designated for vacations. Change seems to be inevitable inn 2020, so this strategy has proven useful as all plans seem to be in flux.

It’s important to block time to make progress against your goals. Do you dream of writing a book? Block time to brainstorm, create your outline and write. Want to start a blog? Block time for training, setting up your site and creating content. Want to lose weight? Block time for exercise and cooking healthy meals. You get the idea!

The meal planning section will help you plan ahead to save time and money. I outline meals for the week and order groceries on-line for free pick-up. Target, Walmart, and even our local family-owned grocery store offer this service. This strategy saves so much time running around the store trying to find the items on your list and prevents extra impulse purchases saving money too. It’s also helpful to take a quick look in the pantry and refrigerator while entering your order to prevent duplicate purchases. Speaking from experience……how did I end up with 3 boxes of spaghetti and 4 packages of shredded mozarella?

Additional Resources

When you purchase the Living Well Planner, you gain access to ‘Crushing it Central’. This training center contains videos to help you set your goals and use your planner. Other valuable resources include printable and a handy collection of links to help you organize your budget, manage debt, manage your time, and clean your house effectively and efficiently. I also like popping into the private Facebook group. It’s inspiring to hear other people’s crazy goals and how they are setting up their planners.