Well Planned Life

We are in the middle of celebrating my 5-year blogging anniversary ! The give-away for week 2 is Washi tape from Michaels . To Enter : Be sure to leave a comment below, as that’s the only way to enter the give-away.  Entries are open to everyone, worldwide.  Only one entry per person; any additional entries will be deleted.  (I do approve comments, and sometimes it takes me a while to get to them.  Don’t be alarmed if your comment doesn’t show up immediately.) Deadline:   All comments must be received before Friday, December 5 at 11:59 p.m. (United States, Eastern time). Winning:   Winner will be chosen at random using Random.org on Saturday, December 6 .   I will announce the winner at the bottom of the comments below this post; be sure to subscribe to the comments so you are notified. To Claim:   The winner must claim his/her prize by Monday, December 8 at 9 p.m. (United States, Eastern time) by emailing me at wellplan...

December 20 of this year marks 5 years since my very first post .   Five years of blogging.   I never thought I’d make it this far.   In that time I’ve “met” some wonderful people, some I’ve met in person, some I’ve yet to meet, some I see on a regular basis.   One I’ve even become very good friends with, who knows more about my life than many of the people I actually see on a daily basis—you know who you are—I am forever grateful for your friendship.   I’ve gotten support in many areas of my life from this community.   What started out as a hobby has become a major part of my life, and one that has opened doors I didn’t even know existed.   So while it started out as planners, it has grown into much more than that. In the past 5 years, there have been many changes, too.   I had to change the name of the blog once and feared I’d have to do it a second time.   I have reconfigured the layout of the blog.   I have created n...

If you read my last post, you know how I use my email to help me stay organized.   Compared to some—many, perhaps—I don’t get a lot of email, and most of what I do get comes from me, articles I want to read to things I want to research or videos I want to watch.   Even my work email (used in a similar fashion to my personal email) isn’t that overloaded.   Still, it helps that each time I open either account, I clean out what I don’t need. However, there are people who are inundated with emails, people who have to schedule specifics times—and limits—for checking email just because of the amount of emails they get. Google has created a new email interface called Inbox .   Still in beta, you can only get Inbox via an invitation, either by requesting one from Google or receiving one from someone who has already gotten their invite, just as they did with Gmail when it first came out.   It took me a few weeks to receive my invite, but now that I have, and h...

Most of us use email for communication purposes only.   I use it this way, too, of course.   But I also use it as an extension of my to do list.   Now, most productivity experts will tell you not to do this because it takes away from the communication part of email and because it results in two (presumably) places where task items live.   Generally I don’t want more than one place for tasks.   However, in this case, the to dos in my email are non-important things, digital-only items, and items that must be dealt with via computer/tablet/phone use. Since they’re not important, it doesn’t matter how long the tasks hang out in my inbox.   And since I open my email several times a day, I see and am reminded of these tasks often. How I organize my inbox helps me to decide what needs to be done and what doesn’t and what specific actions need to be taken for certain emails. I use Gmail .   Anyone who is familiar with the service knows that it provide...

Today, I continue with what has turned out to be my digital organization series.   (Other posts in the series include this and this .) Ever since I got my iPad and iPhone, I have had trouble deciding how to organize my apps.   This shouldn’t be very difficult, but apparently it is (for me at least).   Initially I wanted my most-used apps to be front-and-center where they can be accessed at a moment’s notice.   Then I decided to group like apps with like apps, making each category a different page—that is, keep all of the ones I use daily on the first page of my iPad, then the next one (by swiping to the next screen) be another category of apps and so-on and so-on.   But that became difficult, too because some pages had only a few apps on them and some categories had too many apps to fit to one page.   Plus, when all was said and done, I have several pages of apps, leaving me to swipe through a few just to access one app, not to mention I would for...