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Yay! I’m sharing this free minimalist planner today as part of my freebie series. Always totally free — you never have to enter your email to download.
Are you a list maker? I most certainly am.
I have a list for everything. And sometimes my lists even have sublists.
For example, my business to-do list is broken into blog posts, creative work, social media errands, big ideas, etc. Then there are the myriad grocery lists, cleaning to-dos, must-finish errands and lists for each child of things I need to do for them.
But apparently having to-do lists miles long doesn’t work out so well. Who knew? Ha.
Why You Need a Minimalist Planner
First, we always tend to underestimate how long it will take to do any given task, aka the planning fallacy.
This cognitive bias was first proposed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in 1979.
When it comes to writing a blog post, for instance, people rarely consider the what ifs and therefore underestimate how long it will take to finish.
I know I am consistently amazed at how long it takes me to write one of these little posts, even though I’ve done it literally thousands of times. Somehow I conveniently forget to include the time it takes to create social media-friendly graphics, format and code the post, and add SEO to the mix and I’m lucky I ever hit “publish” on anything.
And even if we do have our time management skills under control, there’s another roadblock to contend with: decision paralysis.
If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by the salad-dressing aisle at the grocery store, you can imagine how your brain will react to a long list like the one I have going on in Trello at the moment.
Indecision city.
How To Use This Minimalist Planner
I came up with this free minimalist planner to help me (and also YOU) get past planning fallacy and decision paralysis.
I’m still testing this so don’t hold me to anything, but I can tell you how I’m approaching the planner right now.
- I’m choosing 1-3 action items per day tops for my business. One big thing that will take up most of my time/energy, and 1-2 smaller things that I know will help me make money and move my business forward. That way I know I’ll get something accomplished but I won’t be disappointed if I can’t manage the time for more things.
- 1 item per day for personal errands (like going to the DMV to get my new driver’s license, where I end up taking the worst picture of my adult life).
- 1 item per day for creativity/mental health. If I schedule 30 minutes to draw or listen to music or read a book, it’s more likely to happen.
- 1 item per day for cleaning/household errands (to avoid a laundry pileup).
This way I’ll have 4-6 tangible things to accomplish each day. It’s a substantial amount, but not an overwhelming amount.
Oh — and you might be wondering why it’s M-F only. It’s on purpose. Work-life balance, my friends. Let’s have fun on the weekends and leave our business for business days only!
Scroll down to download the PDF to help you get your ish together.
MORE: Here’s another minimalist bullet planner that will help you focus your daily tasks. It’s similar, but a littttttle different than the planner in this post.
Download: Free Minimalist Planner
Art is a high-res 8.5×11 PDF. It’s for personal use only. No redistribution, selling, shady business or other mean stuff, mmkay.
Tools used to create this art: Adobe InDesign
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