I’ve created something I like to call my “Daily Priorities Notebook”. At first, I did it in a 3-subject, 120 sheet, college ruled, spiral bound notebook. The original idea started back in February 2016. The first day I did it was on February 29. I did it everyday until March 10, then missed three days, did it one more time on March 14, and then I stopped for a while.
I picked it up again on my birthday last year (August 2, 2016) and only did it until August 9. On August 10 I got a weird nausea thing that lasted for several months and so I stopped again for quite some time.
Last month (April), I’d started thinking about it again and how it might help me, but I’d misplaced the notebook some place. One day as I was looking for something I found it. I decided to start doing it again on April 8, 2017, one month ago exactly today. While I did miss the next day, April 9, I continued to use it and then realized I’d rather have one in a printed up form so I didn’t have to keep writing down the same things everyday that repeated daily. So I created a one page sheet I could print off several copies of both front and back (60 sheets in total for 120 days worth of daily priority sheets). Then I took them to FedEx Office. The lady who worked there put on a clear plastic cover sheet and a black plastic one at the back. Then she spiral bound the whole thing for $5.
Trying to find something as simple as what I created on the internet cost between $60 to $80, if not more. I knew I could do it for a whole lot less. I was happy with the end result. April 15 was the last day I used the 3 subject notebook and moved to the one I created.
Now that I’ve been using the new one, I realized I needed to add a bunch of stuff to create something really helpful in my daily life. I decided to make each day from just one side of the page to two sides. My areas before for my daily sheets were called “Today’s Priorities”, “Daily Household Tasks”, and “Would Like to Accomplish”. I found that some things didn’t belong under certain title and I also needed more than just the three. I also wanted to have some other dividers to add some things to help me out. So I used bright-colored cardstock as dividers and printed the title on the section. Then I purchased 28lb bright white paper to have a more sturdy type of paper to write on and wasn’t so easily seen through when I wrote on it.
My new daily section I called “Today’s Priorities.” The subheadings for each day now included: “Today’s Priorities,” “Daily Household Tasks,” “Like to Get Done (but don’t have to),” “Notes,” “Reminders,” and “Wish to Get Done.” I also added check-boxes for when I finished something.
The new sections I added to my redesigned notebook are: “Yearly Calendar” with 4 years included; “Quiet Time Prayers” for the ones I say before and after my quiet time; “Journaling Strategies” has all the questions I use during my quiet time; “Notes” for any general notes; “Things Needed & Melaleuca Stuff Needed” for anything I need; “Wish List” is for any Bible related stuff to help me in my quiet time; “Bible Books I’d Like to Study” to write down books of the Bible as I come across them I’d like to study later; “Call Log: Erik” to keep track when my brother actually calls to ask about his biological daughter we are raising. That’s it.
I ended up making three of them, each covering two months of time. I love it. It helps to keep me on task better than any other system I’ve used in the past. I mark off throughout the day whatever I finish that’s listed for the day. At the end of the day I sit down to look at it and mark anything else I’ve completed as well as marking with an “X” that I didn’t get something done if it was listed for the day.
I’m able to look back at my days and see how well I did on a given day, which is pretty kewl. I just wish I’d come up with it before now.
Here are pics of what it looks like:
I can honestly say without any hesitation I love this notebook. For me the best part about it is I created it and it only cost me $6.90 to have each one bound (for a total of $20.69 for all three), the pack of special 28lb paper (300 sheet ream), the Astrobrights cardstock (I already owned), and the ink to print it all off.
Considering I’ve been trying to come up with a system that would help me to be more organized and accountable each day, I love that this has been working so well for me. In fact, when I restarted up this system back on April 8, the first item listed under “Today’s Priorities” was “1. Quiet Time/Prayer Time.” Here is a pic of that day:
As you can see I didn’t do it. Here is two days later (as I missed April 9):
Again, didn’t do it. And here is the next day:
While it doesn’t look like much got accomplished on April 11, the most important thing of the entire day did: my personal Quiet Time. Ever since I started doing my quiet time again I haven’t missed a single day. The reason why I’m sharing this is that this priorities notebook has been a huge help for me like nothing else has been. It’s an easy system to use and as I’ve already said, I absolutely love using it.
What do you use to help keep yourself organized? Maybe you have something I can add to mine for the next one I put together. 🙂
Love your ideas! When I had tons of things I started something similar, but one thing I learned was I liked more details so I could mark off more – each item of furniture to dust, each room to vacuum. I separated multi tasking things. I could do loads of laundry at the same time that I worked on a project or cleaning. I never got around to printing it off, but yours is awesome!
Wow, that’s kewl. Multi-tasking is huge and so very important. And thank you. For some reason I’d started about why I hadn’t written for awhile and then I ended up writing about my new priorities book. LOL It was fun talking about it.