Just Add Color!

Rochelle, our "master planner," wrote this post, giving us a little peek into her amazing organizational skills!

I love to plan and organize every little detail of my day by using color coding systems. Being very visual, color coding gives me a quick way to see what my week is going to consist of.  How its done:  At the start of each month I create a key to match my daily categories with my colored pens. My top categories include my work schedule, workout classes, important appointments, social activities, and client meetings. I always make sure to use colors that are not overwhelming and pair well together when creating the color key.
 
I'm currently enjoying using a combination of rustic warm and cool colors for my categories. For example, blue is for work, warm orange for social activities, cool purple for appointments, cool pink for working out, and warm green for my client meetings.

In addition to the color coding system. I find it helpful to add the use of sticky notes. I keep a stack of small sticky notes (about 1.5x1.5 inches in size) and between 3 to 5 different color choices. I use the sticky notes for events or appointments that are likely to change and are not set in stone. This makes it easy to relocate the date and time of the event/appointment while keeping your planner clean and up to date.

Another great use for the sticky notes is using them as tabs. Sticky notes work great to add additional subsections to your planner. I will often place additional tabs in the notes section of the planner.  The tabs can also be added into a notebook. On top of my daily planner, I prefer using a simple notebook to keep track of my work projects.  My notebook includes tabs for: projects in progress, upcoming possible projects, items in production, custom pricing, “how-to” notes, and popular customer contact information. The sticky note tabs make each section easy to access within my notebook.

Keeping my planners and notebooks organized helps me feel less stressed AND gives me an excuse to have a collection of fun pens!