As you all have seen through various posts on my social media, I absolutely cannot survive without my planner! I write everything down and I am a huge believer of making lists to get things done.

I am a visual person and I need to see what needs to be done and check items off a list. This may seem overwhelming or redundant for some people, but over the years, I have tried different ways of staying organized and being efficient and this way works best for me.

I wrote this blog post particularly for Realtors to get a little bit of an insight on exactly how I use my planner for ultimate organization and efficiency.

I recently created my own line of planner inserts as I found that there was not anything on the market that would accommodate my real estate career as well as creative blogging outlet. As Realtors, we are solely responsible for how our business is run and both the administrative and the production side of the job must be undertaken by no one else other than us.

Most people I know use their phones as a means of staying on top of things and being organized. Which is great – again, it’s just not for me. I have scheduled my planner in a way that I have a full glance of my work load month by month.

I only have three months in my planner at a given time. I find that keeping a twelve month calendar in your planner can sometimes be overwhelming. By having a three month focus, you have less on your plate and are not constantly looking ahead.

In my organizer, under my “January” tab, I have my monthly calendar laid out on two pages. This is followed by a “January at a Glance” page which identifies a breakdown of lists including birthdays, emails to send out and follow ups for the month.

I keep my weekly inserts right after my monthly calendar so I can break down what needs to be done each week. This is used to lists appointments, meetings, daily things to do, etc.
My January portion also contains a sheet for my real estate career which focuses on client closings, monthly marketing incentives, client’s birthdays, and a general to do list pertaining only to my real estate career.
I also have a sheet for my “Social Media Strategy” for the month. This sheet includes what my monthly marketing theme is, tracking of my business growth, things to do on my multiple social media platforms, a list of all of my monthly scheduled blog posts and a few other checklists for ongoing social productivity.
I use a lot of “Task List” and “To Be Noted” sheets throughout my monthly set up. I write down a lot of notes and sometimes I find myself using the notes pages as a tasks list. This works with me the same way the tasks pages work.
For larger projects, I use the “Project Manager” inserts to break down a particular project I am working on as opposed to adding it to my generic lists of things to do. This way my focus is on that one larger project and I am able to manage it more efficiently.

I like to keep my current month of inserts separately from the following future months. This way I have found that I am extremely focused on the current month and not continuously trying to plan out my future months and therefore, wasting precious time.

One thing I do at the beginning of every year is I pan out and block off my vacation time and days off for me. This may include family birthdays, anniversaries and my annual vacation with my husband. These dates are set as unavailable, but only as a guide. If I have to reschedule days off, I still manage to work them into my schedule so that time away from work and time to recharge is taken.

These planner inserts I created for Realtors and Bloggers can be found on my blog under SHOP. They were designed to enforce management on our real estate and blogging careers and at the same time, keeping track of our social life.

Some of the things I have learned over the years that have helped me to manage my businesses and keep on track of life and everything in between are:

Use one planner for everything and avoid having schedules in multiple places as things to do may get mis-communicated and lost in translation.
Sundays should be for planning out your week so you have the opportunity to balance your life accordingly.
Be sure to use the monthly calendar so it is better to see your month n advance and block off time for yourself as a mini refresher.
Your planner should be apart of your daily life and be with you most of the time. I’m not saying to not part with it at all…but when you are working, it’s good to see it as a guide in order to stay on track of what items you need to get done.
The power of the check mark! Be sure to check items off your list as you work along. I can’t tell you how fulfilling it is to know you have accomplished things to do – haha!
Don’t over schedule! Work with a small list and stay focused. I tend to make one massive on going list and then break it down over the weekdays so that I give myself enough room to breathe.

You can shop the inserts from this blog post on my shop here.

How do you stay organized? I am always looking for new ways or different ideas to keep everything together in one pace! It can be such a challenge sometimes!

With Love | Nikki xo