HOW PLANNING WORKS FOR ME
Most people who've followed me for a time know that I am exceptionally organised and I'm big on planning. It made me chuckle the other day when a friend thought that because of that love of planning, I must be a big planner when it comes to drafting, and I was like, oh, no, I plan absolutely everything but not that, never there. My plan there is more vibes and brain squirrels!
But that aside, I am, and have been a planner of my author life for a while. A big win for me was finding planners that actually worked for me. I didn't want much, but I did want them undated, and also ones with a monthly spread and also a weekly one. For the past five or so years, that was how I planned. Sadly, after the sepsis and the loss of the majority of use of my right hand and arm (my dominant side) I can't use my paper planner. Eerily, it has the plan for what would have been November pencilled in. But I did find an app that works for me, so I can still, somewhat, do the thing.
Planning has been a massive thing for me, mostly since I got a bit more serious with the author life after I graduated with my degree. To begin with it was the sticky notes app on computer, from there it went to the paper planner, and now here we are. I will also add that as a teen, I did similar kinds of things when revising for my exams, so I think it's safe to say that's just how my brain works best!
I still, even coming back to work after eight months of recovery, find that planning is better for me. It allows me to know what I'm gonna be doing on any day of the week, and it also allows me to just keep that anxiety calm. I always feel like if I don't get started doing things by a certain time that I am not going to have time for the thing I need to do. Sometimes it would get to the point where I just didn't do the thing, but now I've been tracking my time for a while, I also have some clue about how long things will take so that happens less now.
It's more than just wanting to be organised, it's also a way for me to keep track of what happened when. I have several chronic illnesses that get worse if I push through on days when I should rest. Or when I pile too much work on a specific day. For the majority of the time before sepsis I would do one thing a day, occasionally two. After, I'm back to one only because my body is not a happy camper if I sit up too long. I don't know when or if I will go back to the occasional two, but it'll be something to keep a close eye on through planner and an app I use to track pain levels and such.
The bottom line is that planning does, very much so, work for me. It also helps me on so many levels. I know that for some people it's not an option, and that's okay not everyone's brains work the same and we gotta do what works for us. Planning has been a saviour for me, and I'm glad that I still have that even if only in an app rather than in different colour pens!
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