In 2024, I promised myself that my physical and mental well-being would be one of my top priorities. To really tackle this, I took a step back and thought about what in my life brings me stress. The common denominator between everything is how I always wake up stressed for the day ahead. With 5 boys and their busy lives, plus everything I have going on personally and professionally, it can be too much.
Today on the blog, I’ll be chatting all about how I get organized using my Structured Daily Planner! This is a game changer for my family, so I want to share in case anyone else is struggling with their current planning system.
My Complicated Relationship With Google Calendar
To put it simply, I cannot stand Google Calendar. I know I sound crazy and the majority of the world uses and loves it, but I just cannot get on board using it for task management – just meetings.
After time and time again of trying it out, I would fall back to a paper planner or trying to keep everything in my head. Needless to say, neither of those options worked for more than two days. Finally, I decided to throw in the towel and find a digital planning system organized how I wanted.
What I Look For In A Planner
I sound like the pickiest person alive when it comes to a planner, but with how busy our family is, I need to be. There are countless school schedules, sports games and play dates to keep track of, but none of this even factors in my life! I really promised myself that I would find an organization system and stick with it by 2024, so I actually made a list of everything a digital planner would need to do.
My Digital Planner Must-Haves:
- Color coded
- Able to manage multiple schedules (I’m talking one per each kid + me)
- Easy to set times/dates
- Has daily, weekly, and monthly layouts
- User-friendly – if I wanted something difficult I’d use Google Calendar
My Experience With Structured Daily Planner
Savannah, from @savannahkaydesigns introduced me to the Structured daily planner because she’s also quite picky on her planning needs. Since it’s free and I liked the original layout photos, I decided why not and just gave it a try. I absolutely love it.
How Structured Daily Planner Works
Structured uses time blocking as the basis for its weekly planning. Essentially, time blocking is a productivity technique where you look at your day in smaller segments. In that segmented time block, you only focus on one specific task and complete it as efficiently as possible. For someone who feels scatter-brained at times, this really helps me juggle everything.
After you break down your day into tasks on the app, Structured shows a visual timeline of your day/week ahead. You can integrate any digital calendar with Structured (so I can have Google Calendar tasks without actually using it) and set notifications to go off on whatever device you’re using.
I’m able to organize everything in a way that makes sense to me, plus it checks off every box on my must-haves list. Each of my boys have their own color, same with my individual projects, and Monarch Home. I’ve been using it for several months now and have recommended it to everyone I know. In 2024, I have a lot of special projects I’m excited to see come to life, so having everything organized allows me to wake up way less stressed.
What do you use to organize your life? Please let me know in the comments below! I used to be a paper person, but I don’t know if I can go back. To keep up with everything on the blog, check out my latest posts below:
Does this allow you to sync across multiple devices and accounts? Could your husband also be logged in and see the same schedule?
Hey Mallory! Did I miss the name of the app here?
Hey April! It’s called the Structured Daily Planner.