A few weeks ago I sent out my one-year review of the Bullet Journal method where I shared my inability to make an analog calendar system work.

The Future Log–the section in a bullet journal dedicated to storing future events–was largely ignored by me over the last year because I didn't trust that I would remember to look there.

Instead, I continued to use Google Calendar for all of my calendar needs because I trusted the app would remind me when something important was coming up. But this was always a temporary solution for me until I found a better way to organize my time on paper.

Like many people, I'm over the smartphone. I'll take any inch of freedom from the screen I can claw back even if it's a little less convenient. After my successful experiment with a digital declutter I can say that longterm goal has largely been accomplished.

Google calendar was the last chain tying me to the screen–until this week.

Thanks to a reader's suggestion in response to me calendar woes (I appreciate the recommendations Stefani!) I decided to look more seriously at my planning system to see if I could solve the puzzle.

I made two purchases that have changed the game for me:

1. A Leuchtturrm Monthly Planner​
2. ​Best Laid Plans by Sarah Hart-Ungar

The reason I decided to check out Best Laid Plans is because the author does all of her planning exclusively analog. While her planning system is technology agnostic, I felt like I could trust her methods to work for me because of our shared love of notebooks.

Within the first chapter I saw exactly where my problem was originating from.

The Best Laid Plans system is built on three key elements:

1. A Master Calendar
2. Nested goal-setting
3. Airtight task management

I'll have to save nested goal-setting and airtight task mask management for another day because I want to focus on the Master Calendar–the essential element I've been missing.

This requires two things:

1. "An awareness of where all of the incomplete calendars are."
2. "One regularly updated master calendar."

I know this might sound like basic knowledge but on reflection I realized I had multiple calendars that were incomplete.

1. My Google Calendar of items I manually put in there to be reminded of.
2. My work scheduling app that I checked each day.
3. My weekly plan in my Bullet Journal for personal tasks and timelines.
4. My band group chat to see when rehearsals and shows were coming up.
5. My wife's schedule that I asked her about each morning but never wrote down.
6. My fickle memory loosely holding onto anything in between.

My calendar system was actually a total mess with a lot mental energy being devoted to checking in to various places.

Ungar put it best when she wrote, "having mulitple time-specific items strewn about different systems is a productivity nightmare."

Her recommendation is to draw a table to lay out all of your various calendars and describe how each of them will make it into your master calendar.

Beyond consolidating all of your incomplete calendars into a single Master Calendar, Ungar goes on to say, "The second piece to maintaining your master calendar is to be ruthless about consulting it before committing to anything and then immediately entering in commitments as they are decided upon."

This means that, "If you have committed to doing anything time specific...it belongs on your master calendar."

That's where the Monthly Planner I bought comes in. It's got full monthly calendar views with plenty of space to write in various activities for each day. It also has over 130+ blank pages to store any lists, goals, and weekly views I might want to create to accompany the monthly spreads.

The B5-size planner I bought fits perfectly in my leather messenger bag that I made last year so having it on me will be a breeze. I also process my pocket notebooks every night so if I need to go without the planner for a day I can still capture items in my pocket notebooks to transfer later.

My plan now is to use the monthly planner as my Master Calendar and goal book while my Bullet Journal will continue to serve as my daily planner and logbook.

I'm already loving the ability to visual see my months at a glance and quickly flip through the year to see what's coming up.

Now that I have this Master Calendar and a clear process for updating it, I feel confident that I can finally trust that everything I need to know about is going to be right there on the page when I need it.

Good-bye Google Calendar.

Prompt:

Do you have a Master Calendar? If not, make a list of all of your incomplete calendars and decide how you will process them all into a single calendar.