I’m still a month out from my second year of law school, but pre-registration this past week had me in my feelings about starting up another year. In honor of that, I’m giving the full details on the planners, calendars, and notebooks I use to stay organized. This post is pretty detailed, but if you’re looking for more general and transferable tips on balancing grad school with building a person brand, check out this post.
Fringe Studio Weekly Planner
Initially I was excited to purchase this planner when I stumbled across it at TJ Maxx because it matched my soon to be room decor. Now it’s become the planner that helps me keep track of broad stroke events and tasks on a day to day basis. Because this planner is rather large and bulky (mine covered 17 months) it never left my room, even before quarantine era. Though you can buy a similar planner from the Fringe site, Marshall’s and TJMaxx usually have this planner for way cheaper. I bought my planner from TJ Maxx last summer and I just bought the 2021 version (identical layout but with a different cover design) for $12.99.
Each month starts off with an at a glance page with space to list goals, birthdays, anniversaries, to-dos and any additional notes for the month. For the most part, I don’t utilize this page beyond the birthdays section. Then the monthly calendar pages are exactly what you would expect. I use this to document any major events or deadlines without going into too much detail. You can find what that looked like for the month of July below.
You may have noticed that I color code my calendar so I figured I’d tell you more about my scheme using my Stabilo mini pens:
- Orange: social (e.g. coffee with friends, parties, Facetimes & Zooms, happy hours, therapy, personal travel etc.)
- Light Red: family (e.g. brothers’ basketball games, family trips etc.)
- Dark Red: finances (e.g. bills, financial aid document due dates etc.)
- Pink: blog/influencer Related work (e.g. blog/Instagram posts, brand collaboration deadlines, photoshoots, events related to blogging etc.)
- Dark pink: Law Review *this is new!* (e.g. deadlines, assignments, and meetings related to work on Law Review)
- Purple: personal life/chores (e.g. laundry, working out, washing my hair, nails, brows, waxes etc.)
- Dark blue: birthdays
- Light Blue: professional (e.g. networking events, interviews, application deadlines, important work dates etc.)
- Mint green: BLSA related work *also new because I am the secretary for this year* (e.g. board meetings, sending emails, posting on social media accounts, other secretarial tasks etc.)
- Dark green: law school (e.g. finals, important dates and events, assignments—assignments only gets detailed in my weekly planner section while important dates such as orientation and finals get written in to my monthly calendar as well.)
- Black: other/miscellaneous (e.g. phone calls with law school applicants seeking advice)
Writing all of this out definitely seems like a lot. Color coding is also definitely a lot, but it also helps me visualize and quickly internalize what’s going on in my life in a particular area.
The planner also has weekly sections that allow me to go into more detail on what I need to get done for that day. It’s some sort of a hybrid between a to-do list and a schedule for the day. I use my own judgement to decide what’s worth putting in the planner. Whatever is written down is usually important enough that I can’t afford for it to slip my mind. I follow the same color code just mentioned. Here are a couple of examples of what that looks like:
Google Calendar
This is a classic, so I won’t go into too much detail because you probably already know the drill. I use Google calendar primarily when school is in session because I’d typically have multiple events to keep track of (as opposed to just things to get done.) There’s usually overlap between my planner and my google calendar, but since I don’t take my planner out of my apartment, GCal was helpful for the reminders I’d get before a meeting or class.
My usage of Google calendar fizzled out during the summer as I didn’t have classes and transitioned to the calendar connected to my work email, but I’m sure it’ll pick back up for fall. Here’s what it looked like from a week at the start of spring semester.
Trello – Content Planning
Thanks to @piecesofonye and this template she created, I brainstorm and plan my content on Trello. I use a similar structure as the one Onye created and sent us FOR FREE. (By the way Onye and these other entrepreneurs stay dropping gems to make life easier.) Here’s a snippet of what the Trello board for content planning looks like for me.
Paper Source Rainbow Colorscape Custom Journal
Paper Source gifted me this journal as a part of their subscription box that launched near the end of 2019. This journal has become my essentially the place where I can “vomit” all of my thoughts, to-dos and ideas without necessarily needing to have everything look prim and proper. Basically what I’m saying is I need to write stuff down into order to internalize them and this notebook works for me because it’s colorful, personalized, and good quality.
I’ve used it to write down a number of things from the outlines of blog posts to daily to-dos, meeting notes, and even shopping lists. Here’s what that might look like:
That’s it for my detailed account for how I stay organized. Let me know in the comments your favorite planners, calendars, and notebooks for organization!
“And the Lord answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it.” Habakkuk 2:2
