Be a Boss: Plan and Document Your Life

Retired or still working? Set goals, keep track of your life and major accomplishments.

While work places may require progress/planning or status reports either by email or on-line tracking tools, this blog entry focuses on personal tracking and journals.

Although I am retired, I still maintain a weekly bullet list journal. I still use on-line calendars and To-Do lists for important dates to help better plan, organize, track and manage my life.  As a parent of now adult children myself, I am sure many parents are doing the same thing: schedule around their kids activities and plans until they have moved out.

It does not matter if you are working full-time, part-time, or are retired. It is ideal to set goals for handling everyday chores / projects for primary and BNB/vacation home(s), travel planning, scheduling auto maintenance, social time with family and friends, volunteer work, appointments, important financial planning tasks, and so forth.  With some planning you can accomplish more, experience less chaos and have more life stability. Yet don’t over plan or set an overly tight schedule - allow for flexibility and focus on high priority items  and big tasks first. Don’t forget to set aside some "me time" self care time as well - we all need physical and mental breaks.

By using calendars, To-Do lists, and journals, they can help to remind you what needs to be done, and track what has been completed. That way won’t waste your time checking or asking yourself if an important task has been completed.

Every little detail doesn’t need to be recorded.  High level summaries usually suffice.  When needed, include more details for important tasks or events.

Some may want to keep deep personal, health, legal, travel, real estate or financial thoughts and tasks in a separate file or list. 

There is no recommended format or way for planning or keeping personal journals. Some like to fill up a page or two with notes, others use bullet points with brief sentences (which is what I do), or heavily rely on To-Do lists.

For frequent smaller “To-Do” tasks, utilize apps such as: Apple’s Reminder, Google Tasks or Microsoft’s To-Do app - pick your preference.

Some may prefer to use digital tools, while others may want to physically write in a notebook / or a notepad. Experiment and find out what tool(s) and format works best for you.

Suggested journaling and tracking digital tools: 

• Apple: Pages, Notes, To-Do, Calendar,

• Google: Docs, Calendar, Tasks,

• Microsoft: Word, Outlook, To-Do,

• Paid Journaling and/or Reminder apps

The advantage of going digital is that you can make back up copies, print/share notes, access them from your mobile device/anywhere (via cloud services), and search for keywords and dates.

Be the boss of your life - keep track of your plans and accomplishments. 

Five years from now you may want to look back and say: “Hey, I did that!, or share notable accomplishments and details with others.