3 Tips to Use a Work Planner Productively

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While my personal life planners are lively and colorful, my Nekmit planner is all business. I like to keep things simple and consistent. To truly use a work planner productively, I would recommend reducing the fluff and keeping it streamlined for less clutter. I personally prefer neutral black covers with minimal design elements. What I like about the Netkmit planner is that it is perfect for functional planning.

Keep it simple when you are trying to use a work planner productively

While the options for colorful pens and markers are endless, I like to keep to only blue or blank ink. The Pilot G2 gel pen, especially in black is my all time favorite pen for work. Here’s why. 

You need to build a visual routine, especially if work is not where you are trying to explore creativity. If you are not in the kind of profession where artistic creativity is required, keep the pen color neutral. Being neutral and consistent for most items, allows you to leave room for colors where only serious attention is necessary.

I bullet or number every item in black ink, highlight or check off the item once it’s done, and only add notes in a colorful pen occasionally. This is reserved for key words I need to jump off the page in case I forget the detail. Simplicity in color may help you use a work planner productively.

Even the highlighter chosen is limited to one color for the week. If color coding is not ingrained, then it will just become an extra obstacle for your mind to decipher. Pick one highlighter color if you can. My basic favorites for work highlighters are the BIC Bright Liners.

Separate important projects/assignments from basic administrative tasks

I used to highlight or check off tasks for a project, assuming I’m done with it. But more often than not, immediately after a meeting/email, I have 3 follow ups that have stemmed from it. This is often inevitable in most jobs because there are revisions that need to be made for the final product. Because of this, I like to organize managing overall projects vs additional follow up items in a specific way. The layout of my Nekmit planner introduced this possibility detailed below.

It’s really helped to completely separate project focused tasks and follow up items. This method can potentially help you use a work planner productively as well. A project focused task might be to create the foundation of a slide deck that outlines the project. I can add general slides for background, timelines, plan of action, data, and recommendation. This is why I really like how the Nekmit planner is split into 3 sections. I add these project elements in the middle part of the Nekmit planner and ignore the headings.

The follow up items on the other hand would be to set up meetings to discuss each part of the slide, reaching out via email to a subject matter expert, or simply that I need to message someone about adding to the deck on their specific portion. These items I’ve added to the top section of the planner as you can see in the image below.

The next project focused task would be to consolidate all the feedback based on the meetings, emails and messages and so forth. To me, the follow up items are always the ones that get most easily lost and also suddenly asked about in meetings.

Friday consolidation will help you use a work planner productively

In a project based role, not all tasks need to be completed the day of. Sometimes the due dates are weeks or even months away and people are given the autonomy to create their own timelines as long as the work is done on time. This often means that as I work towards completion of “Project A,” there are urgent ad hoc things that come my way during the week that need to take priority and “Project A” items will have to be pushed back. Now of course as the due date for “Project A” gets closer, I would prioritize it higher. 

Therefore, lastly what I’ve found really works for me is after highlighting or checking off all the items I’ve completed in my Nekmit planner, assessing all the tasks I couldn’t finish during the week on Friday and writing them down again for Monday. It’s very easy for items to get forgotten over the weekend, especially if the task is as small as, “forward me that email.” I will write these for Monday at the end of the day on Friday so that nothing gets dropped upon my return from the weekend.

And that’s it! Try these 3 tips to use your work planner productively.