My 2020 Planner Recalibrated: New Ways It Serves its Purpose Now

  

The 2020 Giving Journal

Eight months ago,  I wrote about the 2020 planner I got from my sister as a gift and even complained about having to design it myself not knowing I wouldn't be using it the way I have been using it before. This year has totally reset almost every if not all aspects of our lives. Some even say one of the useless things they bought this year is a planner😄. Not entirely true and not entirely wrong as well. As cliché as it may sound, it always depends on how we perceive things.

Let me list down the ways my planner and consequently, my life were recalibrated this year.

As a Tracker. The recent turn of events have upended everyone's plans and routines. What used to be for task lists and deadlines for work became for notes of household chores (that I still make a point to do on what would have been my day off), physical activities, grocery budget, random ideas and thoughts, etc - things albeit mundane keep me sane and on track nonetheless.

Then & Now.

The way I write in it also changed. Instead of listing down my to-do for the day, I jot down what I have accomplished for the day. This way, I am still able to keep track of my days and won't feel too bad if I didn't get to cross out one thing on the list.

A Brain box. As I have written earlier, random ideas and thoughts. People often refer what is happening right now as something unprecedented, therefore it is only fitting that we document how we are and what we are going through at this time. By documenting, I don't mean a historical journal. Just some musings and feelings that you can look back to and be reminded of of this “unprecedented” time in the future. Writer Marjorie Ingall wrote in her article How to find the right journaling to improve your life that a historical society found her middle school journal and was asking her if she can donate it to them! So whether you are a student on distance learning and is missing friends and school events, a fresh grad looking daunted or hopeful still, a frontliner in this pandemic, an economic casualty now trying to make ends meet, or simply just someone trying to make sense of everything that is happening right now, your story especially in these trying times might be valuable in the future.

A Therapy. In my last post in January about my 2020 planner (You can read it here😊 ,or just scroll down. It's one of my most read post) I quoted a short remark my sister made while she was designing my bullet journal, that she finds its process therapeutic to which in my mind I thought otherwise. Now I take it back haks🤗. What I thought was laborious and uncharacteristic of me to be doing regularly that time became the one thing  I, surprisingly, am looking forward to do! It is indeed therapeutic. Having to work on something useful to me and to do it regularly give me some form of normality. I still dread drawing lines, cutting and sticking colorful washi tapes, adding more features that don't look as good as I pictured it in my mind😂, but that same dreary feeling that, at the same time motivates me to improve reminds me of work – of sales targets, report submission deadlines and other things that used to occupy my mind like a productive adult.

We are already in the last quarter of this year and for some, life is starting to pan out clearly, for others, it is still a bit blurry. Whatever year 2020 will lead us, no one knows. What we can look back though, is a personal history we can start weaving now – a warm memory, old jokes, a lesson learned, past accomplishments – the year that was.

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