They're at the beginning of every planner and diary: a plan of the year. But what can you even do with that? The spaces are so tiny that you can't write any kind of details and they just seem to only be good to find out when bank holidays are.
Well, here's how I use my year spread to plan tasks and events.
I haven't drawn out a whole year plan, I just used a yearly plan sticky note from Paperchase. On top of this, I've used a red pen to mark out weekends and bank holidays. Using stickers, colours, and codes, I plan out annual, biannual, quarterly and monthly tasks.
First, I plan out annual tasks. This includes reminders to book dentist and opticians appointments, renewing insurances and spring cleaning or "closet purge" as I've called it in mine. I've used tiny coloured stickers to mark out each task on the day it should be completed by.
For biannual and quarterly tasks, I've used letter codes in purple and green respectively to tell me when to complete these tasks. E.g. cleaning the fridge and oven biannually, and quarterly changing toothbrush and booking my injections.
For monthly tasks, I use a simple coloured dot. These are mainly cleaning tasks: changing bed sheets, cleaning the windows, kitchen and bathroom, sweeping my apartment, testing the fire detectors... Things that I would normally forget to do every month if I didn't put it in my yearly plan.
I don't have a method to planning out when I'm going to do these tasks. I don't put two tasks in the same box. For larger tasks, I try to put it at the beginning of a week or on a weekend when I know I'll have time to do it. I also cross each day off as it's completely, but only if the tasks have been done. I'm human, and they're rarely done on the day I say I'll do them, but by planning it out like this it means I always do them in the month they should be done.
I hope this has helped you, and that you'll included a yearly plan in your own planning system. Do you plan annual/biannual/quarterly tasks and events in a different way? Let me know!
- Hungry Bill
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