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Meaningful and self-compassionate productivity for Christian women.
Episodes
Wednesday Jun 08, 2022
Wednesday Jun 08, 2022
🗓️ Download Free Planner! evergreenplanner.com/free
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Have you wondered how we approach planning? Or what advice we give when we talk with friends about planning? Curious to know more about us? In this first Ask Us Anything episode, we dive into questions we received from our community that range from personal to planner questions to general productivity questions. Join us for a laid back and fun conversation!
Questions we answer in this episode…
1: Where do I start with the Evergreen Planner system if I’m overwhelmed? It’s such an extensive system and it’s hard to take time from all my urgent tasks to figure it out. (1:10)
2: How are you all related? (5:45)
3: When I sit down and plan, I get really excited about the possibilities, but then nothing ever goes according to plan. What should I do? (6:20)
4: How do you plan when you have chronic illness? (10:52)
5: How do you take your coffee? (13:40)
6: How do each of you use your Annual booklets? (15:48)
7: What was your process for creating the Evergreen Planner System? (22:53)
8: How do you set goals and get work done with little kids? (27:35)
9: You have an afternoon without kids, how do you spend it? (36:38)
Do you have a question you’d love for us to answer next time? Email us at hello@evergreenplanner.com!
Links we mentioned in this episode:
- Quickstart Your Planning - Episode 9
- Download the free Quickstart Your Planning Guide
- 6 Tips To Get Out of The Crazy - Episode 11
- ROOTED Goals - Episode 3
- Purchase the ROOTED Goals Workbook
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Web: evergreenplanner.com
Instagram: @EvergreenPlanner
Learn the Evergreen Planning Method: evergreenplanner.com/renew
Wednesday May 25, 2022
Wednesday May 25, 2022
🗓️ Download Free Planner! evergreenplanner.com/free
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Time-blocking is a powerful productivity tool for maximizing the amount of time you have available, and for liberating your time to focus on what matters most. Yet we’ve found that many women are intimidated by time-blocking, and don’t know how to make it work for them, or feel like it’s just too structured and stiff.
In this episode we chat about why time-blocking is one of our favorite time-management tools, one we come back to again and again. Then we dive into our simple step-by-step process of how to make time-blocking work for your unique rhythms and lifestyle! So whether you’re old hat at planning, or just getting started, you’ll find this episode full of practical tips for utilizing time-blocking in your days.
Links we mentioned in this episode:
- Quickstart Your Planning - Episode 9
- Download the free Quickstart Your Planning Guide (this guide includes the free printable day planner we mention in this episode!)
- Our episode on Margin: Make Space to Thrive - Podcast Episode 5
- ROOTED Goals - Episode 3
- Purchase the ROOTED Goals Workbook
- Read the full episode blog post here.
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Web: evergreenplanner.com
Instagram: @EvergreenPlanner
Learn the Evergreen Planning Method: evergreenplanner.com/renew
Wednesday May 11, 2022
Wednesday May 11, 2022
🗓️ Download Free Planner! evergreenplanner.com/free
đź“– Get the ROOTED Goals Workbook: evergreenplanner.com/rooted
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Your productivity will fluctuate based on the season you find yourself in. It can be easy to get caught up into thinking we should be able to plan and execute tasks regardless of what is happening around us, but this simply isn’t the case!
In this episode, we talk about how knowing your productivity season is a key time-management skill that can help you set goals and priorities accordingly.
We have found there are three main seasons of productivity:
- Surviving - 1:20
- Reviving - 5:20
- Thriving - 7:27
We talk in-depth about each of these seasons, and discuss different strategies for how to approach productivity depending on the season you are in. Join us for a conversation that is practical, encouraging and full of ideas you can implement right now!
Whatever season you're in, the most crucial step is knowing what your next-right-step goal is. The ROOTED Goals Workbook was designed to help you identify, strategize and execute your next-right-step goal. It teaches you to plan and prioritize tasks in the context of your life, whether you're surviving, reviving or thriving. Download your workbook today!
Read the full episode blog post here.
Links we mentioned in this episode:
- Quickstart Your Planning - Episode 9
- Download the free Quickstart Your Planning Guide
- ROOTED Goals - Episode 3
- Purchase the ROOTED Goals Workbook
- 6 Tips To Get Out of The Crazy - Episode 11
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Web: evergreenplanner.com
Instagram: @EvergreenPlanner
Learn the Evergreen Planning Method: evergreenplanner.com/renew
Wednesday Apr 27, 2022
Wednesday Apr 27, 2022
🗓️ Download Free Planner! evergreenplanner.com/free
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Living mentally scattered can leave you feeling frustrated and overwhelmed. You spin your wheels, tackling whatever is in front of you at any given moment, and then feel discouraged that you don’t make progress on the things that matter most to you.
In this episode, we talk about why you need a hub for your brain, a tool that can help you sort, prioritize and tackle all the ideas, plans and goals you have banging around in your head. We talk about why we created the Evergreen planner, and how each of our core products (the Annual, the Classic and the Cover) was crafted to infuse more peace into your day.
Read the full episode blog post here.
Watch how Shelby plans with each piece of the Evergreen System.
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Web: evergreenplanner.com
Instagram: @EvergreenPlanner
Learn the Evergreen Planning Method: evergreenplanner.com/renew
Wednesday Apr 13, 2022
Wednesday Apr 13, 2022
🗓️ Download Free Planner! evergreenplanner.com/free
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Effective yet flexible rhythms are one of the key building blocks in a sustainable and intentional lifestyle. But trying to copy a guru’s routine, whether for work or home life, quickly becomes overwhelming. There are dozens of “best practices” out there, so where do you start? How do you decide what you need in your personal rhythms?
In this episode, we walk through how to build a morning and evening rhythm that is uniquely crafted to your life! We talk about what our rhythms look like these days, and how we keep them flexible, but effective. We even discuss how rhythms can adjust and change in different seasons, such as when dealing with chronic illness or a postpartum season.
If you’re craving some order in your life, but don’t know where to start, this is the episode for you!
Read the full episode blog post here.
Other podcast episodes we mention:
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Web: evergreenplanner.com
Instagram: @EvergreenPlanner
Learn the Evergreen Planning Method: evergreenplanner.com/renew
Wednesday Mar 30, 2022
Wednesday Mar 30, 2022
🗓️ Download Free Planner! evergreenplanner.com/free
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If you’re in an overwhelming season, it can be really hard to know where to even begin. Friend, you are not alone. We know those seasons well. This episode is full of practical advice and encouragement to help you get out of survival mode.
We talk about how to navigate crazy seasons to begin to regain a sense of normalcy and get back to life-giving rhythms. We discuss focusing on what you can control and making progress (whether little or big) every day. We give six simple steps for beginning to take control of the crazy. These aren’t pie-in-the-sky ideas, these are the real steps we have each taken to bring more peace to the chaotic seasons we’ve been through.
6 Tips to Get Out of the Crazy:
- Focus on nourishing food and sleep - 0.38
- Carve out space each day for quiet - 2.48
- Get all the details out of your head - 8.42
- Take action on the next-right-step before planning more - 11.24
- Sometimes it’s a “get out of survival mode” bootcamp - 14:57
- Build a morning rhythm - 19:10
Note: The Taming Your To-Do List Guide mentioned in the podcast has been reworked as part of Renew! This six-week course will teach you the Evergreen Planning Method from the ground up and help you find the time you need to do everything God calls you to do.
Read the full episode blog post here.
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Web: evergreenplanner.com
Instagram: @EvergreenPlanner
Learn the Evergreen Planning Method: evergreenplanner.com/renew
Wednesday Mar 16, 2022
Wednesday Mar 16, 2022
🗓️ Download Free Planner! evergreenplanner.com/free
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Are to-do lists your go-to when you know you have A LOT to do? We can relate. But the truth is that to-do lists are not a time management strategy, and they can actually hinder your productivity. When you rely too heavily on to-do lists, you end up overwhelmed, executing tasks haphazardly and not feeling like you ever make progress on the things that are most important to you.
In this episode we talk about how to use to-do lists effectively, and how to take a massive to-do list and distill, prune, and prioritize it to the most essential tasks that will fuel your productivity and leave you feeling like a task-crusher. We discuss the power of choosing top-targets for each day and how this practice of daily prioritization can help you make consistent progress on your biggest goals.
(The offer in this episode has ended, but you can still purchase Taming Your Todo List in our shop!)
Read the full episode blog post here.
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Web: evergreenplanner.com
Instagram: @EvergreenPlanner
Learn the Evergreen Planning Method: evergreenplanner.com/renew
Wednesday Mar 02, 2022
Wednesday Mar 02, 2022
🗓️ Download Free Planner! evergreenplanner.com/free
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It can be difficult to know where to start when trying to create a personalized time management strategy or learn how to maximize your planner, and it is overwhelming to try and do that while not losing track of everything already on your to-do list. If that tension sounds familiar to you, this episode for you!
In this episode we give you our Quickstart Your Planning Guide based on the acronym PLANS. This process will enable you to simply and effectively begin forming your own personalized time-management strategy, while still executing all those day-to-day responsibilities you can’t let slide while you figure out how to maximize the use of your planner.
Download the Quickstart Your Planning Guide here.
PLANS stands for:
Pencil in what you did.
Leverage the brain dump.
Access your working memory.
Nurture a flexible mindset.
Sharpen your time-management skillset.
The process represented by this acronym is one you can return to again and again in different seasons to help you begin to form a time management strategy that is personalized, simplified, and increasingly intuitive.
Read the full episode blog post here.
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Web: evergreenplanner.com
Instagram: @EvergreenPlanner
Learn the Evergreen Planning Method: evergreenplanner.com/renew
Thursday Nov 25, 2021
Thursday Nov 25, 2021
🗓️ Download Free Planner! evergreenplanner.com/free
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In this episode, we give you a tour of the Evergreen Planner System.
There are so many planners out there—so did we decide to create another one? What makes our planner different?
We created this system because we couldn’t find a planner that felt intuitive—that brought all the different areas of our lives together. We didn’t want a planner for mom life, and another for our business, and a notebook for our hobbies, and something else for homeschooling. We wanted one tool.
So we created a planner that is minimalistic, intuitive, and extremely versatile. Instead of asking you to change the way you organize your thoughts, this planner was made to change and flex with your evolving needs.
Necessity is the Mother of Invention
When Shelby tucked her homemade worksheets under her arm on her way to her sister’s house on spring morning, she never would’ve believed that their lives were about to change forever. What she imagined would be a quick, casual chat about these personal-development exercises she’d created for herself actually turned into a flurry of innovation.
McCauley had been feeling pretty overwhelmed with her own attempts at getting organized. Her ideas and tasks were scattered between a cheap planner, two different calendars, and a few random notebooks.
What if the countless hours Shelby had been pouring into time-management research were combined with McCauley’s knack for designing aesthetic products that actually worked the way they were advertised?
The two entrepreneurial sisters went to work at the kitchen table—babies swaddled and strapped on—cutting and pasting together a dream planner. Instead of tweaking the hundreds of existing planners, they threw all convention out the window and started over.
The Evergreen Planner was developed to answer to these industry-disrupting questions:
- What if you could see your week’s agenda at the same time as you plan your day?
- What if you never felt lost in your own planner?
- What if your planner could lead you through a simple series of prompts that quickly helped you organize your thoughts—but without overwhelming or distracting you?
- What if your planner only contained the things you actually need to get organized and make progress—and nothing that you don’t?
- What if your planner could be so classy that it actually elevated your aesthetic?
- What if your planner could seem so intuitive, personal, and dynamic that it felt like a natural extension of your arm—a fully-functioning hub for your brain?
The Evergreen Planner System
Shelby and McCauley stopped at nothing to design a system that would effectively answer these questions. Even when it was suggested to them that their booklet designs would be too expensive to even manufacture, they pressed on, knowing that our groundbreaking dutch door layout would be key to planning with real life context.
Before it was even brought to market, this planner underwent a lot of rigorous field-testing. Every bit of feedback our beta testers gave us went into the refinement of this planner through six major prototypes.
The result is our wildly effective three-part system:
The Annual is the doorway to the system. This 12-month calendar booklet provides a birds-eye view of your year with the powerful addition of plenty of flex space to map goals and plan your year. Each month spread is followed by three blank bullet grid pages. Learn more here.
The Classic is the muscle of the system. It’s an undated 5-week planner booklet with weekly and daily spreads. This is the only planner booklet you’ll find on the market with a dutch door layout that allows you to see your day and your week’s agenda simultaneously. Each week spread has a vertical calendar to write dates, habit trackers, and plenty of customizable flex space to write lists, map week goals or brain-dump ideas. Each day spread has a time blocking section, correlating to-do list, micro-journaling prompts, and plenty of flex bullet space. These booklets come subscription box style every quarter—or in a year bundle—so you never run out of planner. Learn more here.
The Cover is the glue that binds the whole system together into one unit. Handcrafted locally in genuine leather and designed in a traveler’s journal style, it protects your planner booklets with class. It has six pockets in varying sizes to carry loose papers and lists, extra spine elastics for additional booklets, and two elastic loops to hold pens or washi tape. It’s enduring, and incredibly stunning. It is a piece you will use and treasure for years. Learn more here.
This planner has become an integral part of our intentional lifestyles. It helps us bring our goals into context with the realities of our lives, and translate our long-term intentions into daily choices.
We dive more into this in today's episode, and share the impact that this innovative system has had on each of our lives. We also invite you to imagine how it might change the game for you.
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Web: evergreenplanner.com
Instagram: @EvergreenPlanner
Learn the Evergreen Planning Method: evergreenplanner.com/renew
Tuesday Nov 16, 2021
Tuesday Nov 16, 2021
🗓️ Download Free Planner! evergreenplanner.com/free
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Planning while postpartum? At first glance it sounds over-the-top, almost an oxymoron. In the past we've even written about how the postpartum season can be an excellent time to take a break from your planner. So why did we choose to do an entire podcast episode on planning while postpartum?
You have to remember that when we say "planning", we are talking about self-compassionate planning. And perhaps there is not a better time to practice self-compassion than when you are in a season of recovery like the postpartum season. When we say planning while postpartum, we aren't talking about planning our biggest goals, or mapping our business' trajectory for the next year; we are talking about the simple, but extremely useful, form of day-to-day planning that helps us get out of our heads, sort our priorities, and let the non-essentials fall away.
Postpartum should be a season of rest. One where we focus on healing and soaking in those newborn days that pass so quickly. It should be a season where family and friends rally around to bring meals, help with other children, and take over housework. And even when this ideal can't happen, we can still choose how we will approach our season of recovery. We can choose to set expectations for ourselves a little lower so we are able to focus on what matters most.
But it's incredibly hard to rest when you have a smattering of to-do's rattling around in your brain. It's hard to know what's essential and what can be left for another day (or dropped completely), when you're foggy from sleep deprivation. It's hard to track how well you're healing physically, mentally and emotionally, if you try to do it all in your head.
And that's where a planner begins to make a lot of sense.
In this episode, we talk about the unique ways we (Clari & McCauley both had babies this past spring, so navigating the postpartum season is fresh!)Â and other mamas have used the planner while postpartum.
If you're pregnant or in the postpartum season, give it a listen. We believe you'll find it both encouraging, and also inspiring as you navigate the postpartum time. And if you have any friends who are in that season, we'd love it if you'd share it with them!
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Web: evergreenplanner.com
Instagram: @EvergreenPlanner
Learn the Evergreen Planning Method: evergreenplanner.com/renew