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As a way to keep myself accountable for all of my goals for the new year as well as deadlines for assignments and to-do’s, I decided to form a sort of monthly planning system that I hope will work for this new year. During this planning session, I will be keeping in mind all of my goals and any important days I need to set out for this specific month. As the month passes, I will be reviewing this planning method to take out the things that I didn’t use and adding the things that I believe I need for the coming month. If you want to see more of this sort of planning, make sure to comment it down below. I will be doing most of this planning in my 2020 bullet journal.
In my 2020 bullet journal setup, I set up a goal spread in which I wrote down my goals for 2020 and divided them in the quarters of the year for once again, keep myself accountable for them.
Review and Set Goals
As a review page, I will be having my previous’s month review; but since last month was December and December tends to be an unconventional month for planning because I usually go all out with a bunch of holidays spreads, I don’t review it because it has its own sort of planning space. I even create a new journal for December each year for the sake of decorating the journal with holiday elements. If you are interested in seeing how I do my monthly reviews make sure to comment it down below so that I can add it to my content schedule.
After reviewing my goals for this quarter and the previous month, I will be writing my main five goals for this month as well as an extra step I will like to work on during the month for some bigger goals. My main goals for this month are:
- Study Korean
- Journal and Be grateful Every Day
- Be Consistent with BY
- Try Meditating
- Read 4-5 books
Small Steps for Big Goals
Those aren’t all of the things I’d like to do for this month but they are my main focus for it and if I do most or hopefully all of them I would feel accomplished. Keeping in mind that life happens and as much as I like to plan things sometimes things don’t go accordingly.
In my main to-do list, I will be writing down little steps to accomplish the bigger goals I have for this year like writing the first book of a fantasy series I’m working on. I will probably work on the main outline of the series the whole month and maybe next month too. For that, I will divide the outline into different sections so that it is more tangible to do on the whole of it.
Expenses
I will also be making a little budgeting page for monthly expenses. I’m trying to do a no-spend challenge so that I can save up money for Black Friday and Cyber Monday because I love sales and I find it as the best opportunity to get all the gifts for my loved ones, the more I save, the more I can get when it comes to shopping. I only allow myself to spend my saved up money on books and gifts for my loved ones. Or in this case, the supplies to make the crafts. To save up on books, I buy them off of Thriftbooks which is an online store that sells used books and most of them are below $5 which is super convenient for someone like me who loves to read books and buy them at an affordable price point.
This month, the only thing I’m planning to spend on is the book the book club I’m part of chose. As for the books I will be reading as personal reading choices are Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling and the Percy Jackson and the Olympians books series by Rick Riordan that has 5 books in it. I have already read these books but wanted to read them again this year and with that, I have approximately 7 books though my goal is 4-5. If I don’t get to read all seven or five I will just move them on to next month’s reading list.
Creative Projects
Now that I have this blog, email list, and social media to manage, I like to have a plan to follow to keep uploading consistently and don’t miss any to-do’s for BY. As you may have seen in my 2020 Planner Line Up, I have a discbound planner I made myself to have everything regarding BY in one place. I have made some planner spreads to try them out and see if they are useful and fit for what I need them.
The one that I made for this month only has the month at a glance, goals for BY, to-do list and the blog posts that will be going up this month. Behind it, I have a content tracker to see that I upload on the days that I’m planning to and keep myself consistent. As this is a learning curve, I will probably change the pages and make new ones as I see that I need them.
Well, guys, I think that’s pretty much it for January Life Planning. I don’t know if I will keep this planning system up but whether I do or do not I will update you going forward. I know this post is kind of late during the month but I will make sure that for February, it is at the start. Make sure you check out my previous posts and subscribe to my email list to get notified every time I post a new piece of content but just for reference, I put out a blog post every Tuesday and Saturday. Do you have any sort of monthly prep or planning routine? If you do, I invite you to share it in the comments down below.
Be Yourself, Be Happy, Be Human.
Xoxo, Patrick.