Transcription
[Music] All right, hi everybody. So, I don't wake up at six o'clock every morning, although I have been really trying to. I've realized that if I'm gonna do all these hobbies and things that I want to do, I need more time in the day and I gotta get up earlier. So, I get up early, or I'm trying to. And then I read. I love to read in the morning. It's my favorite thing to do. This is Journey to the Heart. I also have some different recommendations here on the screen of different books that I highly recommend to read in the morning, non-fiction in the self-help, healing kind of category. But these are all books that I've read and absolutely loved and would highly recommend it to anybody looking for a good morning read. I find it just sets the tone for my day. I get to learn something new, get a little bit inspired, and it's just a great way to stay off my phone as well.
[Music] Then I start my day by taking my vitamins. And today's video is kindly sponsored by Ritual. Ritual is an amazing, super transparent supplement company. All of their ingredients are traceable, non-GMO, third-party tested, vegan with no artificial colorants. They have all of their studies, clinical studies, available for you guys online to just go see. They put traceability of their ingredients at the forefront of their company. I personally take two of the Women's Multivitamin in the morning, first thing. As much as we try to get in all of our nutrients in our diet, sometimes it's very hard to hit everything. So, this does a great job at filling those little gaps that you may have missed in your diet. And then I also take one of the Synbiotic Plus, which is their pre-pro and post-biotic blend. And this is amazing for gut health. And I love taking these every morning. It starts my morning off on a very healthy note, which I feel like just carries throughout my day. And it's just a great healthy habit for me. And I have a code for you guys, so you can get 30% off your first month using code flourish30. I will have all of the information in the description, so definitely go down below, check it out. And thank you again to Ritual for sponsoring this portion of today's video.
[Music] Oh, foreign. Then, to combat the copious amounts of coffee that I drink, I force myself to chug down tons of water first thing in the morning. It is a must. Then, before I start planning, I need to play some music. I need to get the good vibes going. I'll either play Folklore or something like that by Taylor Swift, some jazz, something that's just light. I also really love Lo-Fi, just anything that is relaxing and chill for the first thing in the morning. Of course, you gotta have breakfast. You gotta have a planning snack, as always. Today's was a piece of sourdough toast with almond butter, and it was delicious.
[Music] And now I am ready to plan. My planning sessions usually start right before I get started working, and it just helps set the tone for my day so I can set my intention and I have my plan of action ready to go. Then I open up my Flourish Planner and I go to the January tab and I tap the screen. I hit the four blocks and I just scroll and tap on the day. And I wanted to share this process with you guys because I've been getting a ton of questions on how I navigate the planner. The planner has shortcut tabs on the side for the months and the shortcut tabs at the front to each of the sections of the planner. And people were wondering how to navigate this when you don't have links to each day or week. And for me, I just simply use the grid tool or flip pages, honestly. Usually, my planner is always just on whatever page I used last. So I just open up GoodNotes, flip to the next page, and it's really fairly simple for me. In 2023, my focus with this planner was definitely on the design and the intention behind the planner. I really spent a lot of time thinking about each spread and envisioning you guys using it and what would work for the most amount of people. Of course, I know I'm never going to create the perfect planner for every single person out there in the world, that would just be literally impossible. But I tried my best to put as much intention into this planner as possible. So I will definitely have more hyperlink tabs in 2024. But for 2023, we are going to have to exercise a little bit of patience. We're going to use the grid tool, split pages, and we're going to slow down. But anyways, back to planning. So this top section has three slots where you can put your focus, movement, and self-care of the day. And these three things are my non-negotiables every day. I need a focus around of the day. It really helps me to move through the day with purpose. And sometimes it is rest and self-care, sometimes it's work and grind, you know, it changes all the time. But having that focus really helps me to have my purpose for the day. And my daily movement, I have to move my body every day. It is essential to my mental health. I have, I've made it a priority in my life. It's a non-negotiable. And every day I must do something. So I put that there. And then daily self-care. And this doesn't have to be anything extravagant. You don't have to go get a massage. It's literally just whatever is an act that makes you feel good that's just for yourself. It's for nobody else. It's just for you. This is what you can put there. A lot of times for me, it's baths or cold showers. Even though I don't like them, I don't like a cold shower, but it does help me feel really good. It could be reading. But definitely, really do some inner soul searching and you'll find your optimal self-care.
Then I move on to the space where I can put three of my top priorities for that day. These are the three things that really must get done. And I love having those top three priorities because it forces me to sit down and really think for a minute about what is the most important thing to get done today. What really are the three most important things on my list today in my head? And then write those out. And it feels so good to just see right in front of you those three tasks. And once you attack them, it feels so good to cross them off. And even if you don't get to the rest of your to-do list, if you got those three things, it just feels amazing and you feel like you're moving the needle forward. And I just write out the rest of my to-do list, all of the little things that I have to remember to do, errands, returns, work tasks, dog things, I don't know, anything you can think of that you need to do that day, write it down. And then I have a little space that says, "For tomorrow." And this space can either be put down a couple of your tasks that you know you have to do tomorrow, or you can put it in at the end of the day and you can kind of make a quick to-do list for tomorrow as a way to kind of shut out your day. And you go, "All right, how did we do today? What are the things that I need to work on tomorrow?" You can make yourself a quick list so that whenever you go to plan your day the next day, you already have the main things written down so you don't forget.
All right, so now that I have my priorities straight, I go through to my schedule, my little plan of action. And I just start planning out a general schedule for how I'm going to fit all of these tasks on the left-hand side of my planner into the day. And this is a really important step for me because sometimes I will write out a whole to-do list of things to do, but if I don't have a plan of how I'm actually going to time block this into my day, a lot of times a lot of those tasks don't actually end up getting done. But when I take five minutes to quickly brainstorm, all right, I can do my emails for an hour in the morning, and then I'll film the video for two to three hours in the afternoon, take an hour lunch break, then I'm going to, you know, try to fit in this here. And you kind of start to really map out your day in a way that will work. And you start to get a little bit more realistic about what you can actually do because when you start mapping things out, you realize the day goes by so much faster than you could ever imagine. And it really forces you to get down to the nitty-gritty of what you can really realistically accomplish today and what would feel good to accomplish today. And you are making a plan on how to fit it in, which is a recipe for success. It gives you a great head start to the day and allows your brain to already kind of practice the day as you're writing it out, which psychologically can really help you whenever it comes to do each of the.
[Music] Now it's time to make your planner look pretty, add a little bit of flair. I've been doing this forever, you guys. All right, I don't just do this for the camera. I don't just do it. I mean, of course, I made this planner look especially aesthetically pleasing because I was filming, but I was that girl in class who would be like, highlighting her whole notebook and adding, you know, calligraphy to the titles. Like, I am just, I'm that person, you know? I have to, I have to make it look pretty. It's just what I do. I love to look back at my planner when I do this. It's an act of creativity for me and I just personally love it. And I don't care if anybody says it's a waste of time because creativity and doing something to motivate yourself is never a waste of time. So if you want to take an extra 10 minutes in the morning to make your planner look pretty, please be my guest, please do. And post it and tag me and we can, you know, nerd out together and be friends.
[Music] And that's the final planning session that I do. And of course, today's planner, I tried to make it look very aesthetically pleasing because I am filming a video. But it doesn't always look like this. Sometimes I literally am just haphazardly writing things in chicken scratch that nobody can read but me. And that's completely fine. And maybe I should share more of those spreads because I have plenty of them. But, you know, today I tried to make it pretty and just have a cute little moment to myself this morning with my coffee and my toast and my music and just was able to plan and set my day, set my intentions, and create a mindful, balanced day for myself that I was looking forward to going through and doing. So my planning process is always changing. I'm always tweaking it a little bit here and there. But usually, it's always the same: setting an intention, and planning out my workout, getting my priorities straight, planning a to-do list. Sometimes I do just have a simple to-do list if it is a chill day and I know I don't really have too much going on. But on days that I have a lot of different things, it does really help to do this full planning session with the full scheduled to-do list and everything. And it really helps me have those power productive days that I need.
Before you click off of this video and go on with your day, I wanted to give you one more tip, which is: do the hardest task first. Which for me is my emails. Psychologically, my email inbox just, it gets me every single day. And I really don't like doing it, which is why I do it the first task that I do. And I just attack it and I get it over with. And then it's off of my list and I can check it off and move on to other tasks that I'm looking forward to and more excited about. But I have to attack the task that I don't want to do very first thing. Just do it, get it over with, and you'll thank yourself.
All right, that's it for today's video. I hope you guys enjoyed it and picked up some planning tips and maybe just a little bit of inspiration for your 2023 morning routine. So let me know what your favorite part of your morning routine is below, and I will see you in the next video. Bye. Thank you.