Hello and welcome to best laid plans.

This is your host Sarah Hart Unger, and this is the podcast where we talk all things planning and planning adjacent.

Today's episode is going to be one of those mixed bag episodes.

It's not a listener Q&A, although we have some contributions from listeners, but I've got a few tidbits and then a few notes of planner news for the upcoming, I guess, 2025 release season.

And then a discussion, which is maybe a little bit more of my own pep talk to myself about planning when you are going through tougher times.

All right.

We will get started with our planner piece segment. And this comes from a listener named Meredith, who was kind enough to send it to me.

And I thought it was great to so many amazing tools and kind of not just

tools but processes that she shares here and I think it's pure gold so thank you Meredith for

sending it in. I'm going to summarize her beginning just to protect any confidential notes but

she is a mom to multiple kids is due with another kid next year, and she works as a

manager position in a professional industry. She writes, my main planner is a Laurel Denise

full-size horizontal layout. I use the monthly page for all non-workday appointments,

travel, and kids activities, and the weekly sheets for meal planning,

plus a four item to-do list per day for work and for home and family.

These are separated by the planner's spine.

In that Laurel Denise, there's a grid square notes page for each month where I list a daily

gratitude.

The Laurel Denise also includes habit trackers incorporated into the spread, so I use these to track

exercise, water intake, decluttering progress, and miscellaneous other habits I am cultivating

throughout the year. She writes, I also use a cultivate what matters monthly planner for annual

goal setting and monthly reflection and breaking down goals into manageable chunks.

...