Mastering Your Planning Cadence: A Guide to Effective Time Management

Benjamin Franklin once said that failing to plan is planning to fail. And I've experienced firsthand how true that can

be. So, I spent years looking for the best tools and methods for making powerful plans. After decades of

research and development, I've come to believe that how to plan is not as important as when to plan. If you plan

too far in advance, plans often become irrelevant. If you plan too late, it's easy to get overwhelmed. So, what's the

perfect planning cadence? Yearly, monthly, weekly, maybe even daily? Hi, I'm Ryder, creator of the bullet journal

method, a simple life OS that will help you write a better life. And in this video, I'll help you figure out your

ideal planning schedule and how to keep your planning simple, sustainable, and impactful. Let's dive

in. I like to think of planning like map making, just for time scales. Yearly planning zooms us way out to the

long-term time scale map. It's like a satellite view map of the country I want to travel to. It gives me a broad sense

of where I want to go, what landmarks I want to visit. Yearly planning can be a great way for you to consider and sketch

out a rough draft of the year ahead. This is especially useful if you feel stuck or a drift in your life. I have a

whole process for planning my year, which you can check out in this video. Though a yearly plan can be great for

getting the gist of a year, it's not nearly detailed or accurate enough to actually navigate that journey. For

that, we're going to have to zoom in. Monthly planning zooms us into our midterm time span. This is a higher and

therefore more actionable resolution for navigating my life. Just by taking 30 minutes to figure out what I'm going to

do over the next 30 days can save me dozens of hours of random busy work. In Bujo, we have a monthly ritual. The

first half of the ritual is reflecting on the month gone by. The second half is planning what we're going to do with the

month ahead. We do this by simply listing the things that we want to act on this month. This is the first trick.

It's not about simply dumping everything you can think of. The longer the list, the more unlikely it is that you will

actually get through it. Instead, our monthly action plan is about intentionally choosing what we will act

on in this month and this month only. After we list all the things that we want to do, we pick four of the most

important things and number them 1 through 4 in list of importance. These are the four things that would make this

month a win. This also gives you one priority a week for the rest of the month. Though simple, this plan alone

can help make a real difference in terms of making progress in your life. But maybe you have an even more complicated

or variable schedule. For this, we can zoom in even further to weekly planning. For many, this is the

Goldilock zone of planning. It's a great planning cadence for those with schedules or workloads that are

constantly changing. when each week is a whole new adventure. Sitting down every seven days can be a great way to regroup

and reset and make sure that you're focusing on the right things. It's also a great cadence for those whose

schedules are pretty straightforward. If not much changes for you from week to week, this is a great way for you to

make sure that you're not living on autopilot. In BuJO, our weekly ritual is again divided into two parts. The weekly

reflection and the weekly action plan. For the weekly plan, it's just like the month. We simply list actions we want to

take for this week. Again, we're not listing everything that has to be done, only that which we want to get done in

the next seven days. Pro tip, once your weekly action plan is in place, time block those actions on your calendar.

After all, for many of us, our calendar determines our dayto-day. Speaking of which, let's zoom in even

further. For me, this is arguably the most useful kind of planning as it is the highest resolution plan. It is

immediately relevant and has the most impact on how I feel each day. That's something that is often ignored when we

think about planning how we feel. Planning, especially daily planning, can be used not only to plan our day, but

also our energy. When you sit down in the morning to map out your day, you get a chance to see how you're feeling and

respond accordingly. If you realize it's going to be a big day, but you have little energy, maybe the first thing you

do is delegate something or postpone something. Or maybe you're feeling really anxious about something. How can

you take action to address it or take care of yourself today? In BuJo, daily planning usually takes 10 to 15 minutes

spread out throughout the entire day. In the morning, we take a few moments to look over our entries, then write down

the most important actions of the day as bullets. Throughout the day, we continue to log events, our thoughts, our

feelings, and things we have to do. This way, they don't distract us. We're creating a written record of our days,

which helps us learn from our experience and make more informed plans moving forward. The goal is to be more

intentional about what does and does not get our time and energy. And that's what planning really boils down to for me.

So, which kind of planner am I then? Well, you may have guessed it. I'm all of the

above. You may have noticed that in the examples of the bullet journal rituals, a lot of our templates are similar, and

that's on purpose. Our planning rituals are designed to stack to support each other. Why? Because in Bujo, we plan on

a daily, weekly, and monthly cadence. This allows us to zoom in and out of our lives. It allows us to focus on the

details while not losing sight of the bigger picture. If you want to learn more about how to bullet journal, I'll

leave a link to that below as well. We can often put off planning because some part of us thinks that we have to figure

it all out before we begin. That's not true. The key here is being in action. This is how we learn what works and what

doesn't. What is realistic for us, our teams, and what is not. Ultimately, planning can be so much more than a way

to get things done. It can be a really fun and creative way to better understand ourselves through a process

of trial and error. What are our strengths, our limitations? Where do we thrive? Where do we need help? All are

critical questions in helping us write a better life. The only thing we have to do is have a plan in place to keep

asking those questions. For me, that's what bullet journal rituals are for. And if you'd like to learn more, I'll drop a

link to that below. How often do you plan? What do you use to plan your life? Thanks for taking the time and I'll see

you in the next