** Today is Juneteenth! I’m working today (office is open), but still taking a moment to think about this important piece of history. I hope many of you are off enjoying a long weekend! **
Summer Goals Follow Up
Last episode you can tell I had some strong feelings about summer. I was feeling too much time pressure, and the hours available didn’t seem to add up for what I had thought I wanted to do.
I did a lot of sitting with monthly spreads, looking at my available time to work on the podcast. I had to basically eliminate:
- call weeks
- days where the family would be away
- days I had identified as 1:1 days with the kids.
I also found it valuable to look ahead a bit. I spent a lot of quality time with the Erin Condren Petite monthly planner. I identified all of my anticipated PL days over the next 18 months as well as big milestones like the start and end of school and things like that.
And doing this – really thinking about time at a zoomed out level – helped me gain perspective about what I want to do in the near term. SO! I revised my goals. I am sure I will have new/fresh energy come fall, but this paring down feels right, right now.
JetPens Impulse Buy Mini Review
Mark’s Log Diary: Lovely smooth paper. But very small — a mere 5.4″ x 5.5″!
JetPens Video rec: Best recent video: Chat GPT Chooses My Journaling Supplies!?
Photobook Follow Up:
In ep #149, I talked about how I use Google Photos + Shutterfly’s free album creating service, and don’t worry much about photo curation beyond that because I feel like this is where AI shines – I can store my photos and search for anything I want! BUT some of you had some additional great ideas so I wanted to add on.
Idea #1: Curating day by day (ie: go back and clean up photos from TODAY’S DATE only, going back years!). Doable and a fun trip through memory lane.
Idea #2: Chatbooks!
Idea #3: Miss Freddy‘s Photo Management courses
Love those ideas! Keep them coming.
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7 Comments
I’m an academic so I completely relate to the “I have 10 weeks without teaching, I think I’ll plan 6 months worth of projects for that time!” impulse. I also found it helpful to lay out the landscape in front of me — I drew a timeline from mid-June through the end of August so that I could see what weeks I had available for larger projects and where the vacations and other planned things fell. It really helped me pare things down and slot in time for the most important projects.
I didn’t get a chance to comment last week when you were in Evanston but thank you so much for posting the picture of the lakefront! I spent a lot of time in grad school walking / running / biking along those paths and seeing your picture brought back a lot of memories. (also, our wedding rehearsal dinner was at Giordano’s!) I’m glad you had a great trip!
I used the same approach for going through photos although I tackled it a month at a time. So in June, I went through all the previous June photos a day at a time and marked the day off on my Gantt Chart. That was my project 2 years ago. Last year I used that approach to go through old videos. Both projects were really fun as it was fun looking back at old photos and videos. Now each month I go through the previous month’s photos and videos and then I make an album of favorites for the month that I use to make a calendar and photo book on Shutterfly. I would also recommend that the expecting mom check out the ap, one second every day. You pick 1 photo for every day and it creates a video of those photos. If you have an iPhone that takes live videos, it’s a compilation of 1 second videos. It’s a very fun way to watch your child grow before your eyes! I did it for the first year of both of my boys’ lives.
Ooh so glad to hear your review of the Marks planner. I too saw that on JetPens and thought about ordering it (that coral color CALLS TO ME). But – I do not like small planners. I had one of the smaller hobos a few years ago and didn’t care for the cramped feeling. A5 is my jam!
On a related planner note – did you see that the W222 for 2024 will has an UNstacked option for the weekly spreads?
I’m torn on this bc I love my Hobo cousin, but there are some features in the W222 that I love and miss in my Hobo.
https://wonderland222.com/collections/2024-collection/products/2024-b6-weekly-planner-52gsm-tomoe-river-paper-stacked-weekends
I DID! I feel like I have fallen out of love with TRP, though . . . so it’s tough!
Me too. A5 AT LEAST!
I LOVE the Mark’s paper but agree the planners are a little small. I ordered the Mark’s EDIT daily planner from the Omoi Zakka Stationery shop, but I am not a daily planner person. I ordered Mark’s EDIT weekly planner internationally and use that one now. It is a little small, but I love the layout. Thank you for your blog and podcast! I love your work.