Episode 2: The Four Rules of Planning, Part 2

10/13/21 • 16 min

Make Space to Thrive

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Our "Four Rules of Planning" —

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.
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.
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.
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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Our "Four Rules of Planning" —

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.
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.
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.
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.

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Web: evergreenplanner.com

Instagram: @EvergreenPlanner

Learn the Evergreen Planning Method: evergreenplanner.com/renew

Previous Episode

Episode 1: The Four Rules of Planning, Part 1

🗓️ 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" —

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.
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.
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.
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!

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Web: evergreenplanner.com

Instagram: @EvergreenPlanner

Learn the Evergreen Planning Method: evergreenplanner.com/renew

Next Episode

Episode 3: How R.O.O.T.E.D. Goals Can Help You Thrive

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📖 Get the ROOTED Goals Workbook: evergreenplanner.com/rooted

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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...