Planning for 2024: 3 Tips for Organization

Planning for 2024: Tips for Organization

Last year, I made a digital planner to help writers and other peeps get organized. They could use it to plan, to write down their achievements, and to write journal entries. I didn't get the chance to create one this year, but if I'm being honest, while I used the 2023 planner myself, I still leaned more towards getting all of that stuff done by hand, on paper. 

With that in mind, here are my tried and true methods for staying organized and keeping track of my achievements. A couple of these will seem - well - obvious. And that's OK. Some of the most popular methods are popular because they are tried and true.

2024 Poster of Achievements

I've spoken about this before, but I love making posters for each year.  I think by now I've got three, and I just started #4. What's a poster of achievements?

You take a big poster paper. You section it out into the twelve months of the year. Decorate it however you like, but you're going to be filling out each section with (hopefully) quite a lot of stuff, so leave yourself enough room. I like to keep mine empty, devoid of decoration.

Since I'm in the middle of a move, I don't have my poster paper with me, so I made do by sticking together 4 A4 papers. I folded the paper into three equal sections vertically, then folded each section in half vertically, and then folded the whole thing in half horizontally. That gave me guidelines to run my pen down since I didn't have my ruler to help me measure. 

As you can see, I already started jotting down my achievements for the month of January 2024:

I'd share my 2023 poster with you here, so that you could see how full and colorful it becomes when it's all filled out, and how exciting it is to look back on your year and think, Wow, look how much I got done!, but it has some personal elements I'm not comfortable sharing. Instead, have this graphic I made to go along with the last post I made about this:

This isn't about planning your year. Only write down what you've started working on or have actually completed. You don't want to have to go back and cross out a bunch of stuff you wanted to work on but never got the chance to. This isn't a poster of regrets. It's a poster of achievements.

While you could do this digitally, I strongly recommend making an actual poster. The reason for that is that it's extremely motivating to be able to look at that poster and see what you've been able to accomplish. Plus, you get to use markers and get crafty; what's not to like? And, if you want my opinion, it's not fair to limit it just to your writing accomplishments. I like to add dinners/lunches out with friends and family, professional/academic achievements and updates, big events that happened in my life, holidays I celebrate, and more. 

And don't feel bad if some of your months look empty. While I can't share my 2023 poster with you here, I can tell you that January, February, and June were all pretty much empty months. Life gets in the way; don't worry about it.

Weekly Planner

If you want to plan stuff out, get a weekly planner. Here's the thing; we're not in control of how our day goes, and we have no idea what life is going to throw at us one minute, one hour, one day, one week, or one month from now, let alone several months from now. So, it's kind of silly to plan months in advance. 

That's why I recommend getting a weekly planner, or making one yourself. Personally, I like an actual, physical notebook, but if you're good with a digital planner, you can use that, too. Making a weekly planner isn't hard. It could be as easy as titling your notebook page "Week of _____" and sectioning out the page into the days of the week. 

Here's a little cheat for you: You can plan out your week day by day, but if you're having a particularly crappy day, and you're not getting much of what you planned to do done, it's OK to add in the stuff that you do get done, whether that's laundry, or making pancakes, or washing your hair, or shining your shoes, or taking a walk, or whatever low-effort activities you can manage. Using your weekly planner as a Have-Done rather than a To-Do is OK. Sometimes that alone will give you the boost you need to keep going and motivate you to get the other things you originally wanted to get done done.

Another pro tip: You don't always have to plan your week. Sometimes, the last thing you want to do is plan out your week or even keep track of what you've done day to day. No problemo. There are whole months that could pass like that; it's cool. That's why I don't think it's a great idea to get a weekly planner that has the dates already in there for you. Keep the dates blank. When you're making your weekly planner templates, make sure to have "Week of _____" on the top there, so that you can just pop in whatever dates you eventually decide to use the planner. 

Audio Notes

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, make audio notes. Record brainstorming sessions, journal entries, progress logs, and all that good stuff. It's a low-effort method of keeping yourself organized when you don't want to sit down and write - or when you can't. 

There were many times where, after work, while I waited for my ride to pick me up, I'd walk around outside and make quick little audio notes to help me get organized for a certain writing project. Every minute counts when you're working an 8-5, so it actually helps a lot to be able to make the most of it, and everyone knows we can talk a whole lot faster than we can write. It might not be as accurate, but it gets the job done. 

It's also a great way of saving a story idea when it pops into your brain. 

I recommend keeping those audio notes organized. Title them with the date that they were recorded, and what you talked about in your recording. It'll make it a lot easier when you want to go back a week later, or a month later, and remind yourself what it was you had planned for a certain project. 

Seriously, don't do what I did:

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!

 

Save yourself. Title your audios. I've learned the hard way. I organize them well now, but there are probably hours' worth of old audio notes that I need to go back to, listen to, and re-title.

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Alright, so there are three tips to help you get organized in 2024!

I might pop in with another blog post about this topic - there are a range of other ways to organize yourself - but I hope that these three are of some help to some of my fellow authors and writers in this new year. 

Happy writing!