Time Management: Journaling, List-Keeping and Habit-Tracking

Hello, friends. Happy Wednesday. It was another long, gray, February day here–the kind that has me dreaming about the warmer seasons. Though I suppose it has been a rather mild winter, all things considered. I continue to practice deepening into the magic that the darkness and slowness of winter brings. Still, that doesn’t stop me from dreaming of spring.

I’ve been wanting to write about time management here for awhile. Each time I poll my audience about what you’d like me to write about, the topic of “finding balance” comes up. What I’ve decided is that balance doesn’t really exist. There is no magic formula that enables us to one day strike that elusive balance where we can suddenly juggle all of the various components of our lives with ease. That simply isn’t realistic. Life is always riddled with good days and bad days; easy times and hard times; pleasure and pain.

I don’t believe that I will ever find the perfect balance. But I have found ways to practice better time management–to make the most of my time, to get the important things done (or many of them), without ending the day in tears or on the verge of a mental breakdown. And don’t get me wrong, there are still times when my day ends in tears on the verge of a mental breakdown, but those days are fewer now. 😉

So, in this series about time management, I am going to share all of the ways that I strive to manage my time effectively so that I can live my life with more presence, abundance, and joy. The first way that I do this is by journaling and list-keeping.

One of my biggest struggles last year was getting off task, starting projects and never completing them. This year, I am exploring new methods of journaling, including bullet-journaling, habit-tracking, and list-keeping to sort and prioritize my goals.

As I mentioned in my 2020 Intentions post, I have annual, monthly, weekly and daily lists. Honestly I’m such a list person. But sometimes I’m so busy making lists that I don’t have time to do the work that’s on them. The struggle is real. That is why I am working on streamlining the process this year. I haven’t figured out my process in its entirety yet; but it is an active work-in-progress. Once I find the method that work best for me, I will share it here.

In the meantime, I want to share the products that I am using and loving at the moment. Check the shopping list below for links. Also, if you use my referral link to to shop from Papier (where my gorgeous, customized red, floral planner is from), you’ll receive $20 off your first purchase. This is not a sponsored post, I just really love their products, along with the other ones I’ll share below.

shop the post:
boho bullet journal //
2020 papier planner //
dual tip brush pens //
watercolor brush markers //
fine tip marker pens //

Okay, friends. That’s all for this post. I am sure that I will have a lot more to share soon as I move deeper into these practices. I look forward to letting you know how it all turns out. In the meantime, if you have any tips for effective time management or questions on the topic for me, please do let me know. xo