Simplified Organization Audio Blog: quick actions, organized attitudes

Season 11: Attitude Organization Tips Smiling comes naturally to some and less easily to others, but it is a simple gesture that can steer us clear of self-pity and a downward spiral and an act that is contagious to our children. They will catch and mimic what we model, so we should be conscious of our expressions. Consciously choose the emotions you display, and the outward act of the will can work its way inward to change your actual emotion. A smile is a simple way to love someone else, to offer approval, acceptance, and affection. It is a gift to your children that gives back to you, also. Read the original post: * Smile. Find more ways to organize your attitude:

Season 11 : Good Books to Read But their actual point is quite biblical, and part of it is that God isn’t calling you to “do it all” in the world’s sense or even in our own personal mile-long to-do-list sense. The book constitutes a redefinition of “doing it all.” Every day presents us with countless options for how to spend our time. However, only some are truly great deals. Only a few things are really important. […] It’s frequently these good things that distract us from the best things. What obligations are we burdening ourselves with (or are others trying to load us down with) that God is not asking us to do? Read the original posts: * Simply Contemplate: Crazy Busy by Kevin DeYoung * Shopping for Time: How to Do It All and NOT Be Overwhelmed by Carolyn Mahaney Listen: Simple Sanity Saver: Scholé Scholé is the Greek word from which the English school is derived. However, it’s a far cry from what passes as school these days. it’s translated as leisure, as the point and end-goal of any work we might do. We work in order to scholé, Aristotle says. When we work in order to possess stuff, or worse yet, when we work in order to work more and better, our souls shrivel. We are not living as we were created to live. We were created to tend for relationship sake. When the fall ruined our orientation to work, God established 6 days of labor that culminated in a day of rest and gladness, a day of scholé, a day of worship. When Jesus rose from the dead and remade the world, the day of rest became Sunday, The Lord’s Day, the first day. We do not work to rest. We receive rest, leisure, wholeness in our worship, then from that blessing we go forth and tend the world. Rest should characterize our work, it is the energy behind our work, and always we return to it to be renewed. It’s not an earned rest, a vacation rest, it is a mindful, worshipful, received rest that God gives to us as a gift. Let us walk in that grace rather than try to earn our own rest. Spread the word! Leaving a review on Apple Podcasts will help other homeschooling moms discover this podcast!

Season 11: Attitude Organization Tips Reserve time every week and every interval for evaluation, but in the midst of the day, just move forward with what you know. The perfect plan is not going to be as helpful as the plan you have in front of you, put into practice. The day-to-day is for execution mode. Don’t wait until the plan is perfect. Just start with what you have, where you are. Read the original post: * Iterate Your Plans Find more ways to organize your attitude:

Season 11 : Good Books to Read If you are starting out homeschooling with a bright-eyed little 5-year-old – a toddler tagging along and another on the way – you eat up the stories of those ahead of you on the journey. When I was in that spot 8 years ago, I had my mom who had homeschooled 7. I also had other local older moms who let me browse their bookshelves and ask them questions. And then on my computer screen, I had Cindy Rollins, whose ninth child at the time was in elementary school, only a couple years ahead of my oldest. She was about to graduate her oldest, and she was funny and smart and real. We’ve learned and grown a lot over the years, and Cindy helped us stay on the right trajectory. Read the original post: * 5 Ways My Life was Changed by Cindy Rollins Listen: Simple Sanity Saver: Scholé Scholé is the Greek word from which the English school is derived. However, it’s translated as leisure, as not-at-work. This contradicts our customary metaphor of school as a student’s job, as well as our typical reason for pursuing school: economic advantage. The older vision of school was of completing a person, of holistically growing and maturing to make him competent and complete, fully equipped not for the marketplace, but for all of life. How does that vision of education look different from the modern in the day-to-day? It makes a difference in both what we teach and how. A scholé-oriented education favors the arts – not necessarily the technical angle, but the enjoyment angle – and language. It favors attention to the real world around us and immersing ourselves in a creative pursuit; science itself is taught in a wonder-filled, attentive, self-forgetful manner. Scholé is not just for our students, but for ourselves as well. When we build scholé into our lives, we are giving space to personal growth and development, not for economic advantage, but for spiritual and personal wholeness and well-being. Spread the word! Leaving a review on Apple Podcasts will help other homeschooling moms discover this podcast!

Season 11: Attitude Organization Tips When we recite a handful of mottos over and over again, and conform our choices to them, we more and more naturally live them out even when we don’t use them. They become the way we simply do things. The best way to form new habits is to take on the identity as the kind of person who … leaves places better than they were, smiles and starts, or doesn’t let a mistake or slip-up stop continual practice. These little chants I can tell myself are mini pep talks on the tip of my tongue that can help bring back my attitude when it starts drifting into dismay or laziness. Read the original post: * Recite Mottos Find more ways to organize your attitude:

Season 11 : Good Books to Read Listen: Mystie: Alright, well, welcome to the first episode of season 11. This season I’m going to be recording some past book review posts from Simply Convivial, so I thought it’d be fun for Virginia Lee and I to do some quick book recommendations for the first episode. Hey, Virginia Lee. Virginia Lee: Hey, Mystie. Good morning. Mystie: So, we both brought two books to recommend and not necessarily very favorites, but just ones that we thought were good to recommend that might be helpful and that have been helpful for us. Virginia Lee: Well, I think that’s helpful because especially with homeschool moms, you know, we’re all readers. So, if it’s the same recommendations that you can get anywhere else it’s nice to have the recommendations that you haven’t heard of or that you’ve only heard a little bit about. And, then you can buy a new book. So, which ones did you pick, Mystie? Mystie: So, the first one I picked was, The Art of Teaching by Gilbert Highet. Virginia Lee: You know, I have heard of that because Cindy Rollins had recommended that also. Mystie: Yes. I’m pretty sure that’s why I bought it at first, and you know, it’s one of those ones that then sat on my shelf for forever. It was written in 1950. It is about teaching in a time where the scientific materialistic vision was really gaining traction, and really the whole thing is about the human aspect; learning is the child/student bringing himself to bear and teaching is the teacher bringing himself. And, one of the sections I have marked, “That’s why it’s exhausting. It is legitimately exhausting to teach, and this is why, so just expect it.” Virginia Lee: And that’s good because I think sometimes we can go around in our minds thinking, ‘OK, how can I make this not [this] way? It shouldn’t be like [this], I’m doing something wrong.’ Mystie: Right. Virginia Lee: And, it’s good to just know, “No, that makes sense.” Mystie: You’re not doing something wrong because you’re tired at the end. You’re doing something right. Virginia Lee: So then it’s like, ‘I’m still tired but man it’s a weight off my shoulders.’ Oh, wonderful. I’m going to have to write this down. That’s very interesting, and I like that it really talks to us as the teacher, because a lot of education books that we read are really focusing on stuff with the children also. Mystie: Right. Virginia Lee: And, you’re not necessarily getting what the posture of the teacher is, quite as much. Mystie: So, this quote is on the back of my book, and I thought it was so good. So, he says, “Teaching is not like inducing a chemical reaction: it is much more like painting a picture or making a piece of music, or on a lower level like planting a garden or writing a friendly letter. You must throw your heart into it, you must realize that it cannot be done all by formulas or you will spoil your work, and your pupils, and yourself. Virginia Lee: That’s beautiful. Mystie: So, how about you? What’s one of your books? Virginia Lee: One of mine is Consider This by Karen Glass. And, it was just a turning point in my mind of really putting together the synthetic learning and the analytical learning,

Season 11: Attitude Organization Tips Listen: Mystie: Welcome to the first episode of season 11 where I’ll be recording and sharing a few more attitude organization tips from my series “52 Ways to Organize Your Attitude.” So, Virginia Lee who helps me with customer support and email is here to chat with us. Hey, Virginia Lee. Virginia Lee: Hi everyone. Mystie: So, I thought that we would share some of our own tips for organizing our attitude because it often needs it with stuff day to day. Virginia Lee: Yes, yes. Mystie: So, one of the ones I’m going to share is there’s a post for it in the series, but sometimes just sharing those specific instances – these are all things we need to hear over and over again. So, do you have any go-to attitude organization strategies? Virginia Lee: Well, many of mine are similar to what you’re writing about. But, I guess the biggest go-to attitude organization strategy for me is … and it’s not going to be anything new … is just to stop and pray. If things are out of whack, if the bubble has burst, I have to stop everything and pray right then. It doesn’t matter if we get behind, it doesn’t matter if something doesn’t get done, because I am an extrovert and I have multiple extroverted children I have found that it is incredibly helpful to just stop all of them in their tracks, too, and pray together. To just let them know, you know what, my attitude is not the way it needs to be and I need help from the Lord and I would love the help from them as well, so we can just pray for each other. And, it’s great to hear your children praying for you, too. So, that is really my number one biggest thing and there are some days where we stop 10 times. And, there are others where we’re just all not listening to ourselves more than we’re listening to the spirit and we fly through and those are the days that at the end, you’re like, “Yay, Lord – that’ll get me through four more weeks.” But, that is really my biggest one is to just to stop. I’ve learned that if the spirit prompts you that you should be praying about something don’t say I’ll do this later, I’ll do this when [this] calms down. Just do it right then. Mystie: That is so good. Virginia Lee: So, that’s my biggest one. Mystie: That’s a great one. You can’t argue that, because who can change a sinner’s heart but the Holy Spirit alone. That’s where we have to go when we need heart change. Virginia Lee: And, because we’re the ones during the day leading our families and we’re all around each other I just want my kids to see that I need that heart change as much as they do. I need that attitude re-organization as much as they do, and so, I have always tried to communicate with them as well, not just keep it inside that I’m doing that, but just let them know, “This is happening with Mom right now, too.” What about you? Mystie: Mine’s really similar, maybe it’s the introverted version. In the Humble Habits Program that I worked through with a bunch of other ladies, one of the habits that we worked on, the very first one was prayer, and having a Scripture verse that you were going to pray, posted somewhere. So, to just have a go-to prayer to pray, it was good because we were stopping to pray at that time, when we saw that card. It was a prompt to pray, but then also in practicing praying it, it became more normal and natural to just have that go-to. Like, I can stop right here and I have a prayer in my heart, in my head, right now. So, do you have another one? Virginia Lee: So, I have a Notes app in my phone and maybe this isn’t the best place but I should probably switch to your Index Card so that I don’t have to get on my phone, but I keep four or five Bible verses in that Note app, depending on if there’s a struggle, or a season, or something that I know is a continuous thing that I’m working on that will ...

Season 10: Classical Thoughts on Why We Teach Certainly we are to watch and train the habits of our children and our household, but that is not all the work to be done. The confirmation of the habit into a character is work done by the person himself when he is independent. The test of character comes when each person is an adult – will he confirm the habits he was brought up to? Will he practice what he has been taught? Some studies, he writes, “can be of no benefit to us after we have mastered them unless we have elected to make our living from this source”; however, they still “help us while we are in the process of learning.” Such impractical, abstract studies he calls “gymnastic of the mind” which will “increase their aptitude for mastering greater and more serious studies.” Habit training begins in childhood, but is confirmed in adulthood. Read the original posts: * Education Works Through Habit – Aristotle * Latin is Brain Exercise – Isocrates Listen: Find all posts (so far) in the Great Tradition series: Simple Sanity Saver: Teaching Shakespeare Of course the best way to engage with Shakespeare is to be the one performing it. There are several ways to do this without being a drama person (I am most definitely not). Knowledge comes from doing Personally, I am the sort very tempted to leave off the hands-on activities like this. I like the meat and acting out a scene or two seems like fluffy fun that can easily be dispensed with. However, in this case, that is not true. True knowing and understanding comes when we make the material our own, when we recreate or represent it in some sort of personal expression. In history or grammar that might involve writing or speaking, but the most natural way to add personal expression with Shakespeare is to be the actor the play is directing. Be creative in the theatrical options Although it would be valuable, you don’t have to have costuming and rehearsals in order to give your children the chance to act out Shakespeare. Here are some other low-key, low-commitment ways to add doing to your studies: * Duplo or LEGO scenes & characters (try recording it for your own movie production) * Illustrated comic book versions of selected scenes * Monologues dramatically delivered like at a try-out * Puppets – handcrafted, popsicle stick, finger puppets, paper dolls – can be recorded to make a movie. If you are interested in staging a scene, an abridged play, or simply delivering monologues with your kids or with a group, check out how these homeschool moms have done so in their homeschools: * Shakespeare with a small group by Amber Vanderpol * Shakespeare scripts adapted for children

Season 10: Classical Thoughts on Why We Teach Certainly we are to watch and train the habits of our children and our household, but that is not all the work to be done. The confirmation of the habit into a character is work done by the person himself when he is independent. The test of character comes when each person is an adult – will he confirm the habits he was brought up to? Will he practice what he has been taught? Some studies, he writes, “can be of no benefit to us after we have mastered them unless we have elected to make our living from this source”; however, they still “help us while we are in the process of learning.” Such impractical, abstract studies he calls “gymnastic of the mind” which will “increase their aptitude for mastering greater and more serious studies.” Habit training begins in childhood, but is confirmed in adulthood. Read the original posts: * Education Works Through Habit – Aristotle * Latin is Brain Exercise – Isocrates Listen: Find all posts (so far) in the Great Tradition series: Simple Sanity Saver: Teaching Shakespeare Of course the best way to engage with Shakespeare is to be the one performing it. There are several ways to do this without being a drama person (I am most definitely not). Knowledge comes from doing Personally, I am the sort very tempted to leave off the hands-on activities like this. I like the meat and acting out a scene or two seems like fluffy fun that can easily be dispensed with. However, in this case, that is not true. True knowing and understanding comes when we make the material our own, when we recreate or represent it in some sort of personal expression. In history or grammar that might involve writing or speaking, but the most natural way to add personal expression with Shakespeare is to be the actor the play is directing. Be creative in the theatrical options Although it would be valuable, you don’t have to have costuming and rehearsals in order to give your children the chance to act out Shakespeare. Here are some other low-key, low-commitment ways to add doing to your studies: * Duplo or LEGO scenes & characters (try recording it for your own movie production) * Illustrated comic book versions of selected scenes * Monologues dramatically delivered like at a try-out * Puppets – handcrafted, popsicle stick, finger puppets, paper dolls – can be recorded to make a movie. If you are interested in staging a scene, an abridged play, or simply delivering monologues with your kids or with a group, check out how these homeschool moms have done so in their homeschools: * Shakespeare with a small group by Amber Vanderpol * Shakespeare scripts adapted for children

Season 10: Planner Pep Talks The episodes in season 10 are excerpted from a live workshop I gave in February 2018 about how to make sure your planner and planning is not a waste of time. Hint: it’s more about us than about the planner. Get access to the whole workshop, the chat replay, and more here: And then, the bottom section is for your vocations. And again, I’m not going to get into vocations but basically, those are your areas of responsibility. And the vocations, as we work through them, in Simplified Organization, the e-Course, and in Work the Plan, the vocations are names that help us to think about what our responsibilities are. What are we here to do? Who are we here to be? And, it’s not up to us to establish our own vocations or identities. Vocation means calling, so if we’re married then one of our vocations is a wife. If we have children then one of our vocations is a mother. And, we don’t pick that, necessarily. We can’t pick to not be. So, it’s noticing what our vocations that we’re given are, and then organizing our life around that instead of trying to envision who we want to be or supposed to be in 10 or 5 years, our life goals, or whatever, it’s more looking around and observing where has God placed me, what am I called to do here and now (not necessarily super far into the future, but what about just right here and now), and identifying what am I doing in those areas, and what should I be doing in those areas. And, that helps us keep our eyes focused on the present, and who we’re called to serve right now, and what responsibilities we’ve been given right now, and that helps us filter the opportunities that come our way or the ideas that flit through our heads, so it helps us figure out what we should be spending our time on and what we should not be spending our time on. Do current chosen vocations fall in that definition? It depends—there is a free guide, if you go to SimplyConvivial.com you can search for vocations, and I think the post is called “Know Your Vocations” and there’s a free guide that you can download on helping you figure out what your vocations are. If you’ve chosen to homeschool then that’s a responsibility—you can’t keep your kids home from school and then not school them. So, whatever you are responsible to do today, this week, this year, that somehow fits into your vocations. So, it’s a little mental exercise, figuring out what the right names are the categories, then all of that, but I think it’s a very profitable exercise and thing to think through, because it helps us be intentional with our time and intentional with our decisions, and really know what we’re about, and that helps us to say no when we need to say no, and it helps to say yes when we need to say yes, also. So, the bottom section is where I have things broken down by vocation, so that I can make sure I am keeping a balance on things – that I’m not over doing it on one end but I’m paying attention to all the different people, basically is what it comes down to, that each person in my life is each getting the part of me that they should be getting.

Season 10: Planner Pep Talks The episodes in season 10 are excerpted from a live workshop I gave in February 2018 about how to make sure your planner and planning is not a waste of time. Hint: it’s more about us than about the planner. Get access to the whole workshop, the chat replay, and more here: And then, the bottom section is for your vocations. And again, I’m not going to get into vocations but basically, those are your areas of responsibility. And the vocations, as we work through them, in Simplified Organization, the e-Course, and in Work the Plan, the vocations are names that help us to think about what our responsibilities are. What are we here to do? Who are we here to be? And, it’s not up to us to establish our own vocations or identities. Vocation means calling, so if we’re married then one of our vocations is a wife. If we have children then one of our vocations is a mother. And, we don’t pick that, necessarily. We can’t pick to not be. So, it’s noticing what our vocations that we’re given are, and then organizing our life around that instead of trying to envision who we want to be or supposed to be in 10 or 5 years, our life goals, or whatever, it’s more looking around and observing where has God placed me, what am I called to do here and now (not necessarily super far into the future, but what about just right here and now), and identifying what am I doing in those areas, and what should I be doing in those areas. And, that helps us keep our eyes focused on the present, and who we’re called to serve right now, and what responsibilities we’ve been given right now, and that helps us filter the opportunities that come our way or the ideas that flit through our heads, so it helps us figure out what we should be spending our time on and what we should not be spending our time on. Do current chosen vocations fall in that definition? It depends—there is a free guide, if you go to SimplyConvivial.com you can search for vocations, and I think the post is called “Know Your Vocations” and there’s a free guide that you can download on helping you figure out what your vocations are. If you’ve chosen to homeschool then that’s a responsibility—you can’t keep your kids home from school and then not school them. So, whatever you are responsible to do today, this week, this year, that somehow fits into your vocations. So, it’s a little mental exercise, figuring out what the right names are the categories, then all of that, but I think it’s a very profitable exercise and thing to think through, because it helps us be intentional with our time and intentional with our decisions, and really know what we’re about, and that helps us to say no when we need to say no, and it helps to say yes when we need to say yes, also. So, the bottom section is where I have things broken down by vocation, so that I can make sure I am keeping a balance on things – that I’m not over doing it on one end but I’m paying attention to all the different people, basically is what it comes down to, that each person in my life is each getting the part of me that they should be getting.

Season 10: Classical Thoughts on Why We Teach It is by means of language that we both procure and use wisdom – for does not thought require language? So practice in speaking and in using language (today we would add writing as a method of discourse) is of upmost importance not just to learn to communicate effectively with others, but even to be able to understand within our own minds. It is speaking, being able to communicate your knowledge to others, that makes the knowledge useful, that makes it possible to do any good with the gain of it. Language is the basis of wisdom. Read the original posts: * Learning requires the language arts – Isocrates * Even STEM kids need English – Cicero Listen: Find all posts (so far) in the Great Tradition series: Simple Sanity Saver: Teaching Shakespeare Though Shakespeare wrote to be performed, there is still great value in reading his plays with their beautiful use of English. However, there’s more than one way to read a text. Audio + Visual = read along My favorite way to read Shakespeare with the kids is to give each one his own paperback (multiple copies can be found at the library or any used bookstore usually, or Dover publishes cheap editions without frills) and play an audiobook version while we all follow along. Hearing someone who knows how the lines flow read them helps immensely with comprehension. If I have an unmotivated or non-reader, I’ll give them a coloring page to keep their hands and eyes busy while they listen to the audiobook. Dover publishes a book of Shakespeare coloring pages, or even a book of plain designs to color in is a good activity for listening times.Having Shakespeare come in through both the eyes and the ears is a great way to foster success and engagement with young students. Spread the word! Leaving a review on iTunes will help other homeschooling moms discover this podcast!

Season 10: Classical Thoughts on Why We Teach It is by means of language that we both procure and use wisdom – for does not thought require language? So practice in speaking and in using language (today we would add writing as a method of discourse) is of upmost importance not just to learn to communicate effectively with others, but even to be able to understand within our own minds. It is speaking, being able to communicate your knowledge to others, that makes the knowledge useful, that makes it possible to do any good with the gain of it. Language is the basis of wisdom. Read the original posts: * Learning requires the language arts – Isocrates * Even STEM kids need English – Cicero Listen: Find all posts (so far) in the Great Tradition series: Simple Sanity Saver: Teaching Shakespeare Though Shakespeare wrote to be performed, there is still great value in reading his plays with their beautiful use of English. However, there’s more than one way to read a text. Audio + Visual = read along My favorite way to read Shakespeare with the kids is to give each one his own paperback (multiple copies can be found at the library or any used bookstore usually, or Dover publishes cheap editions without frills) and play an audiobook version while we all follow along. Hearing someone who knows how the lines flow read them helps immensely with comprehension. If I have an unmotivated or non-reader, I’ll give them a coloring page to keep their hands and eyes busy while they listen to the audiobook. Dover publishes a book of Shakespeare coloring pages, or even a book of plain designs to color in is a good activity for listening times.Having Shakespeare come in through both the eyes and the ears is a great way to foster success and engagement with young students. Spread the word! Leaving a review on iTunes will help other homeschooling moms discover this podcast!

Season 10: Planner Pep Talks The episodes in season 10 are excerpted from a live workshop I gave in February 2018 about how to make sure your planner and planning is not a waste of time. Hint: it’s more about us than about the planner. Get access to the whole workshop, the chat replay, and more here: So, one of the biggest reasons why planners don’t work and are a waste of time when the problem is us, is simply not looking at the planner. So, we need to make looking at the planner a habit, and something that we do at least once a day, but really more than once a day—at least three times a day, or else the planner is just not going to work for you. It’s not going to be the useful, helpful tool if you aren’t looking at it. So, you’ve got to look at it in the morning, during your morning review, then you’ve got to look at it at least one other time in the middle of the day, in the midst of the crazy goings on, and then an evening review. So, those are the habits that make a planner work that we go over within Work the Plan and I also have several blog posts at SimplyConvivial.com about the morning review and an evening review, a weekly review, review, review, review – that basically means you have to look at it to for it to work for you. And a lot of times, almost anything would work if we used it. And the using it gives us that experience that helps us see which parts of it do and don’t fit our lives. So, we won’t know what kind of planner works for us unless we actually get some experience using one. So, it’s totally OK to just start with something, even if your something is a blank sheet of paper that you just has notes all over. Or, it’s a page that has a sticky note per day and you jot notes. It does not have to be fancy. It does not have to be organized in an Instagram-photo shoot kind of way. It doesn’t have to be just so, or just the perfect planner, the kind you want to use for forever. It has to be something so you get experience and figure out what’s going to work for you right now. So, it’s not so much about the planner page itself, the format, the template, what’s on it, what’s not on it – what really matters is that we have a place where we put things down that we can refer to so that we can keep things on paper and not in our own heads. If it’s not as pretty as the ones you see on Instagram it doesn’t mean that you’re doing it wrong.

Season 10: Planner Pep Talks The episodes in season 10 are excerpted from a live workshop I gave in February 2018 about how to make sure your planner and planning is not a waste of time. Hint: it’s more about us than about the planner. Get access to the whole workshop, the chat replay, and more here: So, one of the biggest reasons why planners don’t work and are a waste of time when the problem is us, is simply not looking at the planner. So, we need to make looking at the planner a habit, and something that we do at least once a day, but really more than once a day—at least three times a day, or else the planner is just not going to work for you. It’s not going to be the useful, helpful tool if you aren’t looking at it. So, you’ve got to look at it in the morning, during your morning review, then you’ve got to look at it at least one other time in the middle of the day, in the midst of the crazy goings on, and then an evening review. So, those are the habits that make a planner work that we go over within Work the Plan and I also have several blog posts at SimplyConvivial.com about the morning review and an evening review, a weekly review, review, review, review – that basically means you have to look at it to for it to work for you. And a lot of times, almost anything would work if we used it. And the using it gives us that experience that helps us see which parts of it do and don’t fit our lives. So, we won’t know what kind of planner works for us unless we actually get some experience using one. So, it’s totally OK to just start with something, even if your something is a blank sheet of paper that you just has notes all over. Or, it’s a page that has a sticky note per day and you jot notes. It does not have to be fancy. It does not have to be organized in an Instagram-photo shoot kind of way. It doesn’t have to be just so, or just the perfect planner, the kind you want to use for forever. It has to be something so you get experience and figure out what’s going to work for you right now. So, it’s not so much about the planner page itself, the format, the template, what’s on it, what’s not on it – what really matters is that we have a place where we put things down that we can refer to so that we can keep things on paper and not in our own heads. If it’s not as pretty as the ones you see on Instagram it doesn’t mean that you’re doing it wrong.