Ever find yourself looking for ways to better your planning system? Yeah, me too. All the time. Lately, I have been searching for the best way to perfect my monthly planning system. Like many people, my planning system is constantly changing. I am always changing the way I organize tasks and appointments. This is not due to lack of functionality, but more due to the constant changes in my life.

However, the one thing that does remain constant in my monthly planning system is a task list. I always create and keep an up-to-date list of planning tasks I need to do in order to not miss a deadline, event, or migrated task. Luckily, after reading the amazing book Getting Things Done by David Allen, my engineering brain has happily complied and created a monthly review checklist.

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Update!

This was one of my first-ever planning posts. Since then, I have completely updated my system and have created a great go-to planning series resource for you! Check out these great (updated) posts:

1. The Ultimate Guide to Daily Planning
2. How to Plan Your Week for Success – A Step-by-Step Guide

This month, I have used this checklist to prepare for a busy month ahead. I may not have a lot of deadlines or events, but have plenty of projects and tasks that are needed to be done and organized. Let me tell you, this list saved me time and a moderate headache. Looking back, it looks incredibly complex but it only took me a couple hours to hash out the entire month.

You can grab a Monthly Planning Checklist to follow along. Of course, your life is not mine, so I highly suggest you use this as a starting point to create your own!

My Go-To Supplies

Before I go into my monthly planning system, I’ll let you in on what supplies I used.

• Me and My Big Ideas Disc Bound Mini Planner (Cause I’m am a giant nerd and prefer a paper planner)
• Pilot Precise V5 Retractable Pen (The current pen I am obsessing over)
• Mildliner Highlighters
• Studio L2E Stamps
• Versa Magic Ink

Alright, let’s get into the nitty-gritty and how I used my monthly planning checklist…

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Review Last Month

The first thing I did was reviewed last month. February was an incredibly big and amazing month for me. I made huge progress for my yearly goals, reached quite a few milestones for my blog and completed a lot of school-related tasks. In order to completely review last month, here are the steps I took:

1. Note Important Events: I like to make sure I have written down important dates or tasks I complete in case I need to refer to them in the future.
2. Check off all Competed Tasks: I will go through all of my remaining daily, weekly, and monthly check-lists. For all of the completed tasks, I’ll check them off. For all of the unfinished tasks, I’ll write them down on a separate list to schedule for later.
3. Review Current Routines: I have so many things I am doing that my routine lists are what keep me sane. I have created a couple Excel files to easily modify my task lists. I like to review them each month to make sure they are working for me.
4. Evaluate Budget: I will total my household expenses and bills paid for the month and plug them into our spreadsheet to make sure we are meeting our budget goals. This is essential to maintain a college budget.
5. Evaluate Goals: Check in with my February goals. I completed all of them so I get to celebrate!
6. Complete Month Overview: Because I am running a business as well as have a hundred other things on my plate, I take a minute each month to review what I have accomplished.

Capture

The capturing process is pretty straight-forward. I will just use this time to write down and gather any remaining or upcoming tasks or projects.

1. Braindump: I use mindmaps to brainstorm any upcoming tasks for the month. Kendra Bork has created a pretty great video on this process and it has increased my productivity incredibly.
2. Collect and Process Tasks: Like many people, I write down tasks throughout the day in different places. This is when I take the time to go through and organize each note scattered around the apartment and on my phone.
3. Migrate Unfinished Tasks: In addition to processing the random tasks scattered around the apartment, I also go through all of my previous task lists in my project binders, work files, and planner from last month.
4. Migrate Goals: Finally, a quick reminder check to see if any migrated tasks or uncompleted goals need to be moved into this next month and set up as a new goal to track.

Prepare

I don’t know if “prepare” is the right word for this section but we will go with it. This is the part of my system where I print off lists and look ahead for the upcoming month in terms of major events and budgeting goals.

1. Refine and Edit Routines: At this point, I have already evaluated my routines. This is the part where I will actually go to the computer and edit them.
2. Print Routines: Pretty straightforward…
3. Add Events: I will go through both mine and my husband’s Google Calendar to add them to my paper planner, as well as add any events from my previous task lists that may be important or need attention.
4. Prep New Budget: I will set a budget for each category and write them down in my planner to track during the next five weeks.

Goal Setting

Okay, this is where the fun actually begins! Now that I have evaluated last month and collected all of the scattered notes and tasks, I will sit down and set my intentions for the upcoming month before getting into the details of my task list.

1. Monthly Mood Board: I will switch up my desktop background, phone background, and sometimes the pictures on my desk to match the new season or a particular goal I am moving towards. This usually represents the next holiday coming up or next hiking destination I have been dreaming about.
2. Create New Monthly Goals: Again, using my notes from before, I will create goals for this coming month. I will usually start with my yearly resolutions, then add on from that from my incomplete goals. For example, a goal of mine is to read 52 books this year, or 1 book per week. I listen to career-related audiobooks while I workout, clean, drive, and run errands so this isn’t too far fetched. So, for the month of March, I need to read 5 books. But if I hadn’t read 4 books in February (the number of weeks), I would have had to add that number to this month. Easy-peasy.
3. Print Out Goals: Again, pretty self-explanatory. I use Silhouette Studio to do this because it is super quick to switch out the photos… and the software is free. But it bogs down your computer, beware!
4. Check in with Yearly Goals: This is just where I check off any completed goals on my yearly list.
5. Business Goals: I keep additional business goals separate from my career and personal goals just to keep track of important projects and stats. This revolves around my blog and etsy shop. If you’re interested in starting a blog, check out my post how I started mine!
6. Fill Out Timecard: If I haven’t already, I will add in all of my separated hours into a spreadsheet to track any separate work-related hours.

Project Plan

Now that I have all of my goals and priorities for the month set, I will go through each of my projects and create an attack plan for the month. I will usually do this using sticky flags on a larger calendar printout so I can move them around easily.

1. Check off and Migrate: This is when I individually focus on each project to evaluate what tasks actually need finishing.
2. Review Goals: I will use the goals for the month to add any tasks and designate what tasks need to be completed this month.
3. Prioritize: I will put the projects and tasks in order of priority to get a feel of what should come first.
4. Schedule Tasks: Pretty straightforward, I will physically schedule weeks or days that the first few tasks need to be completed. Again, I will do this using sticky flags to move them around. I store these all in a separate binder than my planner because there are so many. But scheduling them out actually saves time in the long run of searching through all of my tasks every day.
5. Overall Evaluation: Finally, I will quickly go through my project lists to see if any full projects have been completed or if I need to think about adding another project in the future.

Related: Master the Project Planning Process in 10 Easy Steps

Monthly Plan

Man! We finally got to my monthly planning list! And it is pretty easy at this point…

1. Schedule Tasks: Schedule any personal tasks into my planner. I will also schedule dates to work on specific projects or project tasks by looking at my completed project plan. I keep my personal tasks (like cleaning the fridge) separate from my project tasks (like writing an essay for a school project).
2. Add Events: Before, I added events to my monthly pages. I will now add these babies to my weekly pages.
3. Quarterly Planning Tasks: Am I planning for the month of January, April, July, or October? In this case no. But if I were, these are the tasks I would quickly review…

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Quarterly Plan

1. Bucket List: Okay, I honestly will only look at this yearly but if I have any ideas of what to add to it, I’ll do it now. Gotta keep a list of things to do before you croak!
2. Yearly Goals and Vision Board: I put a lot of energy into my vision board and yearly goals. They keep me motivated and remind me every day what the bigger picture is. If it needs a quick refresh, I’ll do it now.
3. Review Quarterly Goals: I sometimes find that breaking my yearly goals into quarters is more useful than months, but lately I have been loving the monthly goals.
4. Weekly Schedule: At the beginning of every new semester I will create a new weekly schedule to be able to look at when the best time to work, study, workout, etc. is between class and club times.
5. Routines: Each quarter I will not only evaluate my old routines but create new ones. This basically means I will change what time I will start what routine. For example, some semesters my first class is at 9 am, so I will move my routine around to make sure I am up at 6 am. But other times, I have class at 8ap, so I need to get up at 5 am to start my morning routine.
6. Projects: Again, if I have switched any of my goals (unlikely by this point), I just need a quick reminder to keep my projects in mind.

Plan Next Week

The last but certainly not least task during my monthly planning routine is to plan out the upcoming week. This is where the magic happens and where my productivity skyrockets. Lately, I have found that daily planning is time-consuming so I will just plan out the entire week’s worth of tasks and just push myself to get each list done.

Quick side note: I coffee stained all of my planner pages when I got them, which is why they look all grungy. At the time it seemed like a good idea…

1. Monthly Page: I have already done this for the month (up above) but if I am just doing a weekly planning sesh, I will take this time to check my monthly page really quickly to see if anything has changed.
2. Projects: I will write down and schedule any project deadline for the next two weeks to keep in mind.
3. Weekly Goals: Using my monthly goals I will break them down into weekly goals, then add how many goals I need to reach each day as a task.
4. Weekly Tasks: One of my routines lists is a task list for the week. I will take this time to schedule out these tasks to be completed. Examples: grocery shop, cat meds, etc.
5. Monthly Tasks: Same as above, but for monthly tasks such as paying rent.
6. Schedule all day tasks: Now, I will fill in any and all tasks that need to be completed this coming week from the project pages, daily routine pages, and my personal task list.
7. TV Shows and Weather: Finally, I will add any TV shows I want to catch this coming week or weather that I need to track for work or school-related reasons. Usually, don’t have much time for TV after I schedule in my horrendous task list but hey, a girl can try!

Further Reading

Check out my more updated planning system and blog posts:

• The Ultimate Student Printable Planner
• Master the Project Planning Process in 10 Easy Steps
• The Ultimate Guide to Productivity (+54 Tips to Smash Your To Do List!)

Alright. That was an extensive and much-too-detailed account at my full and current monthly planning system. If you made it to the end, wow. Good on ya. Again, it only takes me a few hours to do some major planning for the month and saves me countless hours in the future. Hopefully, I have given you a few ideas to implement into your system. My golden tips are to create a monthly planning task list (so you don’t miss anything) and to use routines. My routines lists make it so I don’t have to write out the same task every day. Anyways, happy planning!

Looking for more planning tips? Check out how to master the project planning process in this post!