Jan 1

Jan 1 Focused on Our Goals in 2020

As I sit here, writing this post on the eve of a new decade, a new year, a new month, I am exhilarated and inspired by all of the limitless potential and opportunity. Truthfully, the start of a new year is always one of my favorite times of year.

It’s the pinnacle of all clean slates. It’s like a Sunday on steroids.

Earlier this year, I felt the urge to go back to my planner roots and return to the Erin Condren Life Planner. Back in 2015, when I first purchased a LifePlanner to help make sense of a life newly complicated by the birth of my son just six months earlier, I felt like I had re-assumed a certain amount of control over my ability to make things happen and focus.

Since that time, my planner journey has taken me in many directions, as I’ve hopped from planner to planner, searching for that ever elusive “planner peace” as the initiated describe it. Sometimes the changes were for reasons as superficial as my style changing or wanting richer paper. Other times, for reasons more meaningful⁠—such as my life evolving and changing in significant ways. But just as my life has changed since 2015, so has the Erin Condren brand, which is how I fell back in love with my new ideal planner: a neutral, hourly LifePlanner. It feels fated that I would end up back in my EC so close to the five-year anniversary of my planner journey.

Erin Condren has evolved their product lineup in significant ways in these last five years—not the least of which is by launching the Focused Collection. The Focused Collection, which appeals to more sophisticated and minimalistic sensibilities, seemed a smart opportunity to get my husband into the habit of paper planning as well. As his classes at his university grew more complex and the challenges with raising a school-aged child increased, I saw an opportunity to help him reclaim some control and focus.

My husband is no strangers to planners. He’s watched as I’ve kept up with our life changes, projects and challenges at work, an increasingly packed social life, endless responsibilities at home, and more, just by taking the time to sit with some paper and pen to begin each week and day with a clean slate. He’s seen the benefits of exercising my mental muscles through the simple practice of writing down information by hand. And for his scientifically inclined mind, evidence is everything.

"When we write by hand, we have to coordinate verbal and fine movement systems," — Dr. Helen Macpherson (Source)

In 2020, as he enters the last two semesters of his Electrical Engineering, B.S. program, he’ll be transitioning into the newly purchased Charcoal A5 Focused Planner I got him for Christmas (which I might add includes some very fancy blind debossed initials for him). By starting this new decade with a new planner, he can also start with a clean slate and new focus.

To be honest, I think both of us are a little excited and afraid of what comes next (to borrow a phrase from Lin-Manuel Miranda). For the majority of our relationship (nearly 8 years to be exact), his “thing” has been school. Once he graduates, what sort of job will he land? How long will it take for him to land one? Will we be living in the same place? The new year and decade is guaranteed to bring all sorts of opportunities for change and growth, but having something as grounding as a pen and paper is a bit of a comfort.