5 Reasons to Write Your Ambitions in a GOAL Planner

If you’ve been struggling to organize your life and find yourself often procrastinating on working toward your goals, consider getting a planner. You are more likely to accomplish your goals when you physically write them down. The act of handwriting your to-do list produces a clear and driven focus every single day. When you write a daily task down, you commit to achieving it. Avoid any more distractions and feelings of failure and instead use the new year to make tangible progress and achieve success. The best way to do that is to grab yourself a 2021 goal planner and write everything down.

Here are the top 5 reasons why you should always write down your aspirations and ambitions into a goal planner:

1. Imagine your ideal life

In order to write something down you need to clearly envision what it is that you are trying to say. Goal setting is the first thing you should do when trying to plan your life. You might think in vague concepts and feelings, but in order to put it down in words you need to have a concrete idea. This is imperative for you to realize what your goals actually are and what were just passing thoughts. Use this time to imagine what you want your ideal life to look like and what specific goals will get you there. According to Dr. Gail Matthews, a psychology professor at the Dominican University in California, recently studied the art and science of goal setting. She found that you become 42% more likely to achieve your goals and dreams, simply by writing them down on a regular basis. It gives you intentions and purpose. There are no more ambiguities or uncertainties—only tangible and firm ideas. You’ll become more aware of what needs to be done and recognize when an opportunity might arise to assist you.

2. Commit it to memory

Neuroscience also explains why physically writing something down is more beneficial to memorization than any other method. Although the world is moving forward technologically, using just a pen and paper can drastically improve your ability to remember certain things. Researchers use college students attending university lectures as examples to explain that when handwriting something, you have to coordinate your verbal and fine movement systems to come up with your own summary of what you hear. You’re unable to write down every word you hear, so you pick key concepts to take notes of which causes you to participate with the material and actively learn. Typing, on the other hand, is only linear thinking. It only requires you to passively listen, so you usually just type exactly what you hear and fail to interact with and remember the information.

3. Create milestones

Now that you have imagined your dream life and created a list of goals you need to accomplish, writing it down can allow you to break it apart into smaller and more realistic goals. If your goal is to work out everyday and lose 20 pounds, that’s requires a long process that certainly won’t occur overnight. So, create milestones that set up some attainable steps for you to take to set yourself on the path to success. Perhaps your first milestone is working out twice a week. Then the next is three days, and so on. If you have a visual reminder set in your planner of a weekly target, it will encourage you to maintain momentum and continue working towards your main goal. Smaller goals are easier to attain, and therefore you have more reasons to celebrate.

4. Cross them off your list

Writing down your goals in a planner and promptly accomplishing them allows you to celebrate your progress by reviewing how far you’ve come. There is nothing more satisfying than getting to check an item off of your to-do list. Tapping a symbol on your phone isn’t quite the same as striking a dark line through it or drawing a big checkmark in the box. Taking time to celebrate the small victories will ensure that you have the energy to persevere. Your mood is one of the most important factors to consider—if you don’t find joy in the things that you do, then you won’t want to continue doing them for much longer. The feelings of accomplishment and pride that you have when you reach a milestone and get to cross it off your list is imperative to your journey. It is essential that you are able to tangibly measure your progress.

5. A roadmap to productivity

When you have a clear line of focus towards your goals, you are more readily able to maintain your productivity. Writing in a goal planner allows you to schedule out blocks of your day for specific tasks, helping you increase your efficiency. Setting a plan before you begin provides you with a guide to follow and makes the goals easier to analyze. Writing down the smaller tasks will encourage you to gain proper time management skills because you’ll know exactly what you need to do and when to do it. Whenever you are overwhelmed and don’t know what to begin with, you are more likely to procrastinate because you are trying to avoid that stress. Designing a roadmap of your goals takes away that pressure and increases your productivity levels.

Handwriting a goal motivates you to continue working hard and make it possible. Stop struggling with your goals and get yourself a fantastic 2021 goal planner! Take charge of your life and finally launch yourself towards accomplishing those tasks and begin thriving. Imagine the life that you want to live, create the necessary milestones to achieve them, write them all out in your planner and use that as visual inspiration to be productive and work towards becoming the best version of yourself that you can be.

How To Build Habits Using A Planner

Do you feel stuck? Do you have goals and ambitions, but no motivation to achieve them?

You’re not alone. Sometimes, we get so caught up in the humdrum of everyday life – get up, go to work, come home, go to sleep, then do it all over again the next day - we lose our spark of inspiration. Our creativity and our drive to chase our dreams is stifled by monotony.

What we need is a way to renew our motivation each day. We can do that by building healthy habits that keep us focused on the finish line and make real progress. All of this is possible to achieve by using a habits planner.

Which Planner Should I Use?

There are billions of planners out there, so your first challenge is picking just the right one. We recommend the JUST Planner. In addition to calendars, it comes with sections specifically designed to help build good habits.

How Do I Build Habits Using A Planner?

Regardless of what planner you decide to use, here are some steps to follow to make your ambitions a reality.

Step 1: Decide What Habits You Want Build

What is it you want to achieve? It can be big or small. It can be one habit or one hundred. Maybe you want to wake up earlier in the morning or write in your journal every day. Once you know exactly what habits you want to form, it is easier to make a plan for them.

Step 2: Write Down The Habit You Want To Build

After you choose the habit you want to cultivate, write it down. This is an action that will make it more real for you and also give you a place to review it every day. If you're using the JUST Planner, there is a section in it called Habit Trackers. You can write your habit down there, or if you're using a different planner you can write it on the days of the calendar that you want to do it. For example, you can write "wake up at 6 AM" on the days you want to wake up at that time to develop the habit of waking up earlier.

Step 3: Decide When To Start Your Habit

This step is important. You need to make a definitive decision on when to start your new habit. You can write this date in your planner on the calendar, or, if you're using the habit tracker, circle the number of the day of the month you want to begin. When you're deciding when to begin your habit, keep in mind factors such as work, school, family and what's going on in your life right now. Decide what is realistic for your circumstances. Using a habits planner is supposed to help you improve your life, not stress you out from unrealistic expectations.

Step 4: Start Your Habit

Now that you have decided on what habit you want to build, written it down and chosen a date to begin, it's time to actually do it. Remember that the first few days are always the hardest. It takes 21 days to form a habit, so keep working at it. If you miss a day, it's okay, don't stress out. Just begin again the next day. This is also a great time to evaluate your habit and see if the expectations you set for yourself are realistic in practice. If they aren't, you can always change the habit, the frequency you do it or what time of the day you do it. Be flexible, but also don't give up!

Step 5: Track Your Habit

The reason we recommend you use a planner to track your habit is because it will visually chart your progress just by you circling or checking a date on the calendar. If you're using the JUST Planner, you can put a check mark on each number corresponding to the day of the month you successfully performed your new habit. In a regular planner, you can scratch the days off the calendar. If you track your habit, you can see how well you're doing or where you might need to improve. You can also evaluate any days you might have missed to determine what happened that day that caused you to miss it.

Step 6: Revaluate Your Habit

Try to keep up your habit for a full month. At the end of the month, revaluate your habit and see if there is anything you need to change. This is also a good time to examine yourself and see if the habit helped you in any way. If you need to make any changes, like the frequency or the time of day you do it, resolve to make them for the next month.

Don't Give Up

The important thing to remember throughout this journey is: don't give up! If you don't do your habit on time, it's okay. Make a promise to yourself to try again tomorrow. If, after trying it for a while, you find you want to change your habit completely, that's alright, too. Just cross it out and write out the new one. With a planner and the right attitude, you CAN build new habits. It starts today, with you.