Make Space to Thrive

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In typical goal setting culture, the mantra often goes something like this... "Girl, it's time to change your LIFE. Close your eyes, imagine what you want your life to be like in five years—the sky's the limit!—and write down your biggest dreams. Now reverse-engineer those dreams into a million baby steps, and do not stop hustling until you make those goals a REALITY. If you really want something, you're going to have to get up crazy early, change your habits, and become a different person. You're going to have to set the people in your life straight, too. They're either going to have to get on board, or get out of the way. Aren't your goals worth it? And if you start feeling discouraged—because those days will come (it is lonely at the top)—you're just going to have to make sure you have a solid "why" to pull you through. So give yourself a kick in the pants, and get to work."

It's.... a lot.

The problem with this? Well, for starters, you can’t fully foresee the future. You cannot comprehend the very real tradeoffs for the goals you create on paper. Oftentimes, you'll get into the thick of it and start to wonder how you can know if your goal is truly worth it. You feel a rising tension between living intuitively and following through on the goals you set.

Here at Evergreen, we believe that this tension is a real problem for women who seek to live intentionally. And we don't think that laziness, lack of motivation, or even poor time-management is really at the root of the problem. We believe the problem is that people are setting goals that don’t line up with their real life.

A bad goal setting system—one that doesn’t take into account the context of your actual lived life—will lead to guilt and frustration because those goals can't be sustained by your daily life.

But creating goals and dreaming about a different future is good. Goal-setting helps us level-up from the realm of wishful thinking and reactionary living, and begin to make the changes (big and small) that empower us and our families to truly thrive. But the key is this: your daily life has to be able to sustain your goals, so your goals can in turn breath life into your daily life.

We believe there is a better way to set goals; goals that are sustainable, produce change, and are life-giving. We call this process setting R.O.O.T.E.D. goals.

ROOTED Goals are:

• Rooted in your core calling Grasping the unique calling of God for your individual life is a process. But leaning into your core calling is an essential part of creating goals that fully resonates over the long-haul, compel you to follow-through in the execution of them, and produce a lot of satisfying fruit along the way. The soil of your core calling forms a rich environment for setting sustainable, healthy goals that actually energize you.
• Organically growing out of your context - You need goals that take your real life context seriously and embrace it. You need goals that connect with where you are right now, and that respect that you’re here for a reason. Recognizing the season you’re in and identifying the contours of your priorities can empower you to identify the next right step—the one that can realistically begin to build the lasting change you want to see.
• **Outlined for clarity **** Clarity is QUEEN when it comes to giving your brain an objective that it can actually process, prioritize, and tackle in the day-to-day. When you break down a goal into tangible action-steps, you are equipped to move past your vague theories about what it will take to make your goal happen. You’re able to see the gaps in your knowledge about the process, which compels you to research until you have concrete and actionable understanding.
• Tailored to your lifestyle - If you want to craft compelling goals that are grounded in your unique calling, then you’ll have to give yourself permission to develop creative solutions that make sense for your particular circumstances. On the flip-side, you’ll also need to make some strategic adjustments to your lifestyle so that it actually supports and fuels your goals. (Having a strong sense of clarity will massively help with this.)
• Etched into your memory - For a goal to be sustained in the long-run, it has to stay top of mind. Writing your goal out daily and keeping it in sight will begin to train your subconscious to recognize the opportunities you have to make progress on it.
• Developed by Providence The R.O.O.T.E.D. Goal-Setting System reminds us that the Kingdom of God does not rise and fall by our efforts—but that we do have the responsibility to...

🗓️ Download Free Planner! evergreenplanner.com/free

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Our "Four Rules of Planning" —

1. Write down what you did. For several days or weeks, use your planner to record what you did. By starting with the rhythms and habits you already operate in, you can recognize patterns, and evaluate what’s working and what’s not. You can then design incremental change that serves your family, makes sense for the season you’re in, and builds into a sustainable lifestyle.
2. Build your repertoire of planning skills. Think about it like becoming a skilled cook in a kitchen. You must build your planning and productivity skills over time, as you come upon new challenges. Learn as you go, practice patiently, and you’ll soon feel equipped to adapt your new skills to fit any given situation. Just as a skilled cook would not feel the pressure to use every technique they know every time they prepare a dish, you shouldn’t feel the pressure to exercise every single time-management or efficiency muscle you have every single moment of every day. You simply build your repertoire of skills for when you need them.
3. Train your subconscious. The more you write down your goals and priorities, the more you are teaching your brain to focus on what is important to you. This builds a “working memory” around your priorities, enabling you to waste less energy on deciding what you need to do next in the day-to-day, so you can give more brain space to bigger goals and projects.
4. Maintain a flexible mindset. Even with the best planning, life still throws punches and things play out in ways you could’ve never anticipated. Instead of mislabeling yourself as “failures” because of circumstances out of your control, you have the choice to strengthen your positive influence in any given situation. You can take a proactive approach to these challenges—whether big or small—by adopting a mindset that inspires you to pivot and handle the inevitable changes to your plans in creative and life-giving ways.

Remember, these rules are not a once-and-done process, they are a cycle that you can move through again and again. The truth about intentional living is that it has to be adaptable, because your life will change constantly. The schedule rhythms you were following in January are likely not the ones that will work well in September. These four rules will help you to constantly adapt, change and perfect your planning processes, while doing it in a way that is unique to your lifestyle, season and needs.

Note: These 4 Rules evolved into our PLANS acronym. You can hear about the development of the PLANS acronym on Episode 09 - Quickstart Your Planning. You can also download the free Quickstart Your Planning Guide we created here!

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Web: evergreenplanner.com

Instagram: @EvergreenPlanner

Learn the Evergreen Planning Method: evergreenplanner.com/renew

🗓️ Download Free Planner! evergreenplanner.com/free

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You want to start getting organized around the things that matter most to you. But where do you even begin?

In our first episode, we offer an effective shortcut for diving into the world of time-management and productivity—without getting overwhelmed.

Our "Four Rules of Planning" —

1. Write down what you did. For several days or weeks, use your planner to record what you did. By starting with the rhythms and habits you already operate in, you can recognize patterns, and evaluate what’s working and what’s not. You can then design incremental change that serves your family, makes sense for the season you’re in, and builds into a sustainable lifestyle.
2. Build your repertoire of planning skills. Think about it like becoming a skilled cook in a kitchen. You must build your planning and productivity skills over time, as you come upon new challenges. Learn as you go, practice patiently, and you’ll soon feel equipped to adapt your new skills to fit any given situation. Just as a skilled cook would not feel the pressure to use every technique they know every time they prepare a dish, you shouldn’t feel the pressure to exercise every single time-management or efficiency muscle you have every single moment of every day. You simply build your repertoire of skills for when you need them.
3. Train your subconscious. The more you write down your goals and priorities, the more you are teaching your brain to focus on what is important to you. This builds a “working memory” around your priorities, enabling you to waste less energy on deciding what you need to do next in the day-to-day, so you can give more brain space to bigger goals and projects.
4. Maintain a flexible mindset. Even with the best planning, life still throws punches and things play out in ways you could’ve never anticipated. Instead of mislabeling yourself as “failures” because of circumstances out of your control, you have the choice to strengthen your positive influence in any given situation. You can take a proactive approach to these challenges—whether big or small—by adopting a mindset that inspires you to pivot and handle the inevitable changes to your plans in creative and life-giving ways.

Cozy up with this first episode, & you'll hear:

• A little about team Evergreen and our heart behind starting this podcast
• Our shortcut for understanding and getting organized around your unique dynamics
• A practical tip that helps you shift your mindset from never feeling like you're doing enough
• How planning is a lot like cooking—and how learning on the go is a super-effective approach

We'll be back with The Four Rules of Planning - Part 2 next week!

Note: These 4 Rules evolved into our PLANS acronym. You can hear about the development of the PLANS acronym on Episode 09 - Quickstart Your Planning. You can also download the free Quickstart Your Planning Guide we created here!

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Web: evergreenplanner.com

Instagram: @EvergreenPlanner

Learn the Evergreen Planning Method: evergreenplanner.com/renew

🗓️ Download Free Planner! evergreenplanner.com/free

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In this episode, we give you a tour of the Evergreen Planner System.

There are so many planners out there—so did we decide to create another one? What makes our planner different?

We created this system because we couldn’t find a planner that felt intuitive—that brought all the different areas of our lives together. We didn’t want a planner for mom life, and another for our business, and a notebook for our hobbies, and something else for homeschooling. We wanted one tool.

So we created a planner that is minimalistic, intuitive, and extremely versatile. Instead of asking you to change the way you organize your thoughts, this planner was made to change and flex with your evolving needs.

Necessity is the Mother of Invention

When Shelby tucked her homemade worksheets under her arm on her way to her sister’s house on spring morning, she never would’ve believed that their lives were about to change forever. What she imagined would be a quick, casual chat about these personal-development exercises she’d created for herself actually turned into a flurry of innovation.

McCauley had been feeling pretty overwhelmed with her own attempts at getting organized. Her ideas and tasks were scattered between a cheap planner, two different calendars, and a few random notebooks.

What if the countless hours Shelby had been pouring into time-management research were combined with McCauley’s knack for designing aesthetic products that actually worked the way they were advertised?

The two entrepreneurial sisters went to work at the kitchen table—babies swaddled and strapped on—cutting and pasting together a dream planner. Instead of tweaking the hundreds of existing planners, they threw all convention out the window and started over.

The Evergreen Planner was developed to answer to these industry-disrupting questions:

• What if you could see your week’s agenda at the same time as you plan your day?
• What if you never felt lost in your own planner?
• What if your planner could lead you through a simple series of prompts that quickly helped you organize your thoughts—but without overwhelming or distracting you?
• What if your planner only contained the things you actually need to get organized and make progress—and nothing that you don’t?
• What if your planner could be so classy that it actually elevated your aesthetic?
• What if your planner could seem so intuitive, personal, and dynamic that it felt like a natural extension of your arm—a fully-functioning hub for your brain?

The Evergreen Planner System

Shelby and McCauley stopped at nothing to design a system that would effectively answer these questions. Even when it was suggested to them that their booklet designs would be too expensive to even manufacture, they pressed on, knowing that our groundbreaking dutch door layout would be key to planning with real life context.

Before it was even brought to market, this planner underwent a lot of rigorous field-testing. Every bit of feedback our beta testers gave us went into the refinement of this planner through six major prototypes.

The result is our wildly effective three-part system:

The Annual is the doorway to the system. This 12-month calendar booklet provides a birds-eye view of your year with the powerful addition of plenty of flex space to map goals and plan your year. Each month spread is followed by three blank bullet grid pages. Learn more here.

The Classic is the muscle of the system. It’s an undated 5-week planner booklet with weekly and daily spreads. This is the only planner booklet you’ll find on the market with a dutch door layout that allows you to see your day and your week’s agenda simultaneously. Each week spread has a vertical calendar to write dates, habit trackers, and plenty of customizable flex space to write lists, map week goals or brain-dump ideas. Each day spread has a time blocking section, correlating to-do list, micro-journaling prompts, and plenty of flex bullet space. These booklets come subscription box style every quarter—or in a year bundle—so you never run out of planner. Learn more here.

The Cover is the glue that binds the whole system together into one unit. Handcrafted locally in genuine leather and designed in a traveler’s journal style, it protects your planner booklets with class. It has six pockets in varying sizes to carry loose papers and lists, extra spine elastics for additional booklets, and two elastic loops to hold pens or washi tape. It’s enduring, and incredibly stunning. It is a p...

🗓️ Download Free Planner! evergreenplanner.com/free

🎙️ Submit a question for the podcast: evergreenplanner.com/podcast

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Overwhelmed? In this episode, Shelby and McCauley delve into the profound truth that God has given us everything we need for life and godliness—including enough time.

Throughout this episode, they explore:

• the real reasons why we often feel like there isn’t enough time in the day, despite the biblical promise that God equips us for every task He calls us to
• the challenge and high calling of time-management
• the time boundaries God built into creation itself
• how to combat perceived stress
• the importance of creating rhythms, setting priorities, and combatting decision fatigue through proactive planning

Biblical References: Genesis 1:2-3; Genesis 1:14-19; 2 Peter 1:3

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• The Evergreen Planner - The core planning tool discussed throughout the episode, designed to help you manage your time according to biblical principles in just 15 minutes each day.
• The Renew Course - Our 6-week course that dives deeper into the Evergreen Planning Method, providing detailed guidance on how to apply it to your unique life and circumstances.
• The Evergreen Collective - An exclusive online community where members can access time-management resources, join in discussions on intentional living, and receive support from like-minded women. Hosted in a private app, away from social media to foster focus and intentionality. Open to planner subscribers or students of Renew.
• Other Podcast Episodes:
  • Make Space to Thrive - An episode from Season 1 that shares the story behind the phrase "Make Space to Thrive."
  • Planning while Postpartum - An episode from Season 2 that offers tactical advice for managing time during the postpartum period.
  • The Rooted Goals Podcast Season - Binge Season 3 where Clari and Shelby unpack the Rooted Goal Setting System and share practical examples of ROOTED Goals in their own lives.

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Web: evergreenplanner.com

Instagram: @EvergreenPlanner

Learn the Evergreen Planning Method: evergreenplanner.com/renew

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