Planning tips for busy bees

Creating a structured plan isn’t for everyone. Yet, in the rat race of life, we all need it at times. Our lovely customers are happy to share their planning tips. 

User: Nele
Personality: chaotic & creative busy bee
Planning tools: Agenda and Monthly Planner 

Let's dive in Nele's planning routine 

In this blog, we follow Nele’s planning. Since she discovered knitting, you seldom find her without a ball of yarn and a pair of knitting needles in her bag. She turned her passion into a job and started Apella Knits and BROL. In the latter, Nele is constantly seeking new ways to deal with waste streams and aiming to put our local wool industry back on the map. 

And oh - she has a part time job as well. Let’s dive into her planning routine!

Step 1: Monthly goals

The Redopapers Agenda features a monthly overview in the back. Nele uses it to set up her monthly goals. “I use different colors to distinguish my full-time job from my side businesses and free time.” 

Feeling overwhelmed? Setting up monthly goals can help with staying focused on what’s important that specific month. Nele: “I try to limit these goals to 3 - maximum 5 - per month to keep things doable. A typical month with specific goals for me can be, for example, finishing a new collection piece, write down a knitting pattern and finish a book.” 

Step 2: Weekly Planning

Next up: translating these monthly goals into a clear weekly and daily structure, using the day-to-day features and space from the Agenda.

Nele: “I use the scribble section for my weekly goals, whilst the daily goals go into the individual weekdays. General or smaller tasks that don’t have a strict deadline, go on the to-do list. And of course, I reuse the same colors to distinguish my jobs and free time. The color scheme helps me maintain as much balance as possible.”

“The color scheme helps me maintain as much balance as possible" 

Step 3: Monthly Planner for extra overview

When life gets busy, we all lose overview sometimes. The Monthly Planner is a tear-off wall planner with an extra large format. Nele keeps it in sight in her knitting atelier to maintain overview at all times. 

“Since it helps me to work from daily goals as well, I add them again to the monthly planner. It displays my monthly goals on a larger format, as well as certain deadlines or workshops. This way, I have a better idea of what I’m working towards and what’s a priority.” 

The perks of planning on paper

Nele tried a lot of things to become more organized. “I’ve realized that I need a physical planner. The weeks when things are harder almost always coincide with the weeks I haven’t made a planning. I really love the fact that I can plan on paper in an ecological way, thanks to the products of Redopapers. Especially because they align so well with what I’m trying to do with BROL.