Intentional Planner: Cultivate what matters in life
Wanna live a more meaningful life?
An intentional planner might be one of your keys to living it. It’ll help you cultivate what really matters to you.
You can make it happen by setting clear goals and following through.
The thing is, it’s easy to make a plan. But following through can be challenging.
Keep reading because I’ll show you how you can use an intentional planner to design a life that you love.
As a result, you’ll make it easier and (even fun) to make each day purposeful and productive.
It will encourage you to focus on only what matters and make each moment count.
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What is an intentional planner?
What is an Intentional Planner?
An intentional living planner is a tool that helps you focus on what’s important, by helping you organise and manage what you do with your time, energy, and resources in a more thoughtful way.
It’s what you use whenever you do your mindful planning.
That’s how I define an intentional planner, but I honestly don’t know if there’s an official way of defining it, so for now let’s stick with it, yeah?
From intentional goal setting to tracking your progress, an intentional planner will help you make the most of your time and energy.
Why do you need an intentional planner?
Well, I can give you five most compelling reasons why you need to use an intentional planner.
Using an intentional planner will help you:
- Establish clarity on what’s important to you, so you can make better decisions on how to use your time, energy and resources wisely.
- Improve your time management skills so you can be more intentional with what you do with your time, and you can be more present whether you’re working or resting. Note: This is just me, but I don’t think time can be managed in the context of making it longer or shorter. Managing what we can do with the time we have, is a more realistic concept in my opinion. No more forgetting important dates and missing deadlines.
- Boost your productivity, so you can be intentionally productive. Being intentionally productive helps you maintain the flow of intention, keep your focus on your top priorities, and control your daily to-dos.
- Improve different aspects of your monthly well-being (when using an intentional monthly planner) so you can reduce stress. You’ll feel more in control with your life, rather than being on autopilot and stressing out in the end.
- Live a more meaningful and intentional life, by choosing a weekly planning tool, like this Free Notion Weekly Planner, to plan, execute and reflect mindfully.
The Foundation of an Intentional Planner
The foundation of an intentional planner lies in its ability to integrate your values, goals, and daily activities.
It starts with defining your core values and personal beliefs. These are what really matter in life. From there you can set your intentional goals that are aligned with your core values and beliefs.
I’ve always loved planning for as long as I can remember. As I learn new things, and as I evolve by testing and experimenting, I’ve now settled to following a simple structure when doing a mindful planning.
- Yearly Intention
- Quarterly Planning
- Monthly Planning
- Weekly Planning
- Daily Planning
Yearly Intention
The first step is setting intentions every year. I used to do yearly planning but it wasn’t helpful at all for me. Twelve months is too far away to plan, and too long to track anything. I’m not even sure what will happen tomorrow or the next week or month.
So, setting intention every year is what I like to do now and I’ve been doing it for more than 2 years. And next year, I’m going to do the same.
Quarterly Plan
I set up a Quarterly Plan.
I know it sounds “businessy” but I like it because it’s easy to remember the time frame. And that’s normally the beginning of my intentional planning.
Quarterly planning helps you stay motivated, and maintain momentum throughout the year. This serves as your big road map for your main goals.
In my case, however, the mindful execution happens when I do 12-week year projects within a quarter.
I published a 12-week year planning guide. Read it after this post if you have more time. The good thing about this is you can start at any time and any week of the year.
Monthly Plan
The monthly overview section of an intentional planner provides a snapshot of your goals, priorities, and key activities for the month.
This section typically includes space for setting monthly goals, noting important dates, and outlining major tasks.
I like to take monthly plans as the container of my projects (which are coming from the Quarterly Goals).
Weekly Plan
A Weekly Plan is where you can get more specifics with everything about your plan.
Your weekly plan contains broken down monthly projects by turning them into actionable tasks. It includes space for a weekly to-do list, notes for important things in your life or small business, important events and appointments,
I like to set 1 main weekly goal (from a certain project) and an important task list that has the top 3 to-do items that I want to finish by the end of the week. I also keep a running to-do list so when I finish the top 3 tasks of the week, I can always pick a couple more from the running task list.
Daily Plan
This is where the action begins.
It has a daily schedule, daily life notes, and daily habits. I’m not too granular with my days but some people even include an hourly calendar. This is really helpful when you have something to focus on or when you just want to do a time audit. A time audit is what you do when you want to gather data on where your time goes.
The purpose of planning with intention
If you already have a planner in place and you feel like you need it to be more, then it’s time to check if it’s intentional enough for you.
And if you don’t have any planner in place yet, congrats. Today is the beginning of your meaningful life (as long as you commit to living an intentional life of course).
The purpose of planning with intention is to plan based on what matters to you. And you can do that by using an intentional planner.
I will not tell you what should matter to you, I have no right to do that, but I can share what matters to me as an example. Maybe you can use it as inspiration or maybe it will help you too in figuring out what matters to you.
At the current season of my life, what matters to me is my family (husband and 2 young kids), connection and relationship with family and friends, my day job, and side gig (this blog).
You may pause for a few minutes, at this point and think about what matters to you. Or you can do it later. It’s ok too,
Once you decided what matters to you, then you can use a goal planner or an intentional planner to set your meaningful goals, reflect on your progress and build habits that support your priority.
This will make sure that what you do is aligned with what you want.
Features of an Effective Planner
When choosing an intentional planner. it’s important to consider the key features of what makes a planner intentional.
- Goal setting sections
- Reflection prompts
- Habit trackers
- Supports mindfulness practice
- Can be customised
The Key Sections
Intentional planners whether they are paper planners or digital planners have sections for intentional goal setting such as yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily.
These sections inject intentionality into your planning by helping you break down long-term plans into smaller chunks.
One of the common planners that can be turned into an intentional planner is a Month Planner. Sections that can be included in this example are Monthly Inspiration, Monthly Overview Pages, Intentional Calendar, Monthly Dated Planning Pages. You can even include Monthly Mood.
Some prefer monthly calendars without dates, so the planner can be reused over and over.
Regular reflection is important for aligning actions and goals with your core values. So, regardless of your choice of planner, make sure you have plenty of space for reflection.
It can be included in your monthly intentions or weekly pages for reflection or review. Regular Review whether it’s daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly leads to self-discovery. Do it long enough and you’ll witness your personal evolutions.
An intentional planner with habit trackers helps you monitor and cultivate habits that support your long-term aspirations. Including habits in your weekly calendar will help you be consistent too.
Mindfulness prompts such as setting intentions, practising the habit of being present, and cultivating gratitude, are what make an intentional planner an effective tool for living life on purpose. You achieve your goals and get to keep your mind and body healthy in the process.
Everyone has a unique take on planning and we all have different preferences when it comes to planning. An effective intentional planner should offer customisation options, allowing you to personalise your planner to fit your style and requirements.
Your next steps from here
If you have a planner already, assess if the planner is still working for you. If yes, that’s awesome. Keep using it and use it to create the amazing life you desire.
If not, consider creating the habit of intentional planning and using an intentional planner like this Free Notion Planner.
Not feeling Notion? Try this 2-Page Printable Weekly Planner instead.
And when you have more time, read the following blog posts that will help you with planning
12-Week Planning Guide to Achieve your Goals faster
5 Tips on how to use a Daily Planner for beginners
How to Create a Planning Routine for Productivity
Intentional Planning: Use the power of a Planner
