I’d been wanting to share some of my perspectives on structuring life in support of productivity and creativity, but it’s been a January. (Are we officially saying that now?) And now that it’s February, I can happily say I’ve found a bit of a groove.
In this episode I share my 2025 goals, routines, planning approach, and thoughts on how we (both I and you) can get things done. I don’t claim to have it all figured out, but I can say that understanding my strengths and preferences helped me start building new systems that work even better.
I can’t wait to hear your thoughts and curiosities after you listen. The comments are open for further discussion! I’d particularly love to know if you are also using multiple planners.

Links Mentioned
- A6 Hobonichi Techo Original English (*)
- A5 Sterling Ink Compact Common Planner
- A5 Wonderland222 All-in-One Unstacked
- Simple Scrapper Membership
*Affiliate links help to support the work we do, at no additional cost to you.
[00:00:00] Jennifer Wilson: This year I am really focused on the structure of how I'm getting things done rather than what I'm trying to get done. So let's dig into that in this episode.
[00:00:15] Welcome to Scrapbook Your Way, the show that explores the breadth of ways to be a memory keeper today. I'm your host, Jennifer Wilson, owner of Simple Scrapper and author of The New Rules of Scrapbooking. This is episode 291.
[00:00:34] Hey friends, Jennifer Wilson here for a solo episode. I'm going to officially state here that I'm going to not promise myself to do these episodes in the future because I procrastinate on them. It's much harder to talk to myself and try to structure something that makes sense than it is to have a conversation with another person.
[00:01:01] So in the future when I have I have a lot more to share. Frequent guest, Alissa Williams has agreed to come on and be the questioner to help me talk through these things. But since I do already have this outline here on paper for myself that I've been tinkering with over the past couple weeks, I thought I would push through and give it a shot to share my plans for 2025.
[00:01:32] Now let's just start with the situation of January. I've seen so many memes recently of folks saying that they have they're trying this new plan of trying to get through January, and I think many of us have felt like that. It doesn't help with the crazy winter weather that so many of us here in the United States have had on top of a lot of upheaval in so many different ways.
[00:02:04] And of course, all that's on top of the things that are going on in our everyday lives, our goals, our ambitions, our own routines, our obligations and commitments to ourselves, our families, and our communities, and of course, our jobs. So, all that to say, I feel like January has been a ramp up to 2025, a little bit for me.
[00:02:32] I've been able to practice things, start implementing, and build on top of them. And that's what I will be talking through with you today. So I've got five different categories here. We're going to start off with some big picture goals and my One Little Word. We'll talk a little bit more about my personal routines and, again, how I'm giving myself that structure and a container for success.
[00:02:57] Some work routines, how that is layered on top so that I'm getting things done that I want to get done. Maybe even having a little bit more work life balance, which is It's kind of a strange, elusive thing for someone who works almost exclusively at home, has, you know, two different jobs, Simple Scrapper, and then also my part time work at the university.
[00:03:23] And I do that in part because of the flexibility it offers to be able to pick up my daughter from school at 2: 40 or leave at 3 o'clock for her volleyball game. And so, finding work life balance while still acknowledging how lucky I am is an interesting thing. Item number four is talking more specifically about my personal creative hub, how I'm planning for my scrapbooking hobby, and the habits that I want to implement and continue to grow to support that.
[00:04:02] Because again the through line here is what are the things that I am using to get things done. How am I going to get things done? When I decide what that is, it's not so much a focus this year on what I want to do. I know I want to scrapbook. I want to enjoy my time. I want to relax. And so we'll be talking about some of the ways that I am doing that.
[00:04:30] And then finally, I just will wrap up with a few final thoughts on how I'm approaching the podcast this year. This is something that I continue to work enjoy and has become such an important part of the rhythm of everything we do at Simple Scrapper. And yeah, we'll just wrap up there with some of my goals for the year on the show.
[00:04:54] All right, are we ready for this? I think that question is for me. I hope that you enjoy this episode, and I also hope that If you have questions for me as I'm talking, did I not explain something clearly enough, do you want to understand more, you want more details, please leave a comment on this episode and I will reply. So that we can talk more. So that you can take these nuggets of wisdom, you know, and process which ones might work for you and apply that to your own situation. And of course leave the ones that make no flippin sense to you at all. Because we're all so unique and so in the spirit of your way, I hope you know, this is not a prescription I'm just sharing what I'm hoping will work for me in this year.
[00:05:47] So my two big picture goals are to streamline And to build. Build is my one little word. I want to build on progress and success of 2024. I want to keep going. I don't want to reinvent the wheel. I want to build strength. I want to build a cozier home. And of course I want to build the business. I would say these are not new categories at all.
[00:06:18] But I'm excited about this lens. So I'm going to talk a little bit about how I came up with the idea of Build to acknowledge all that's come before and look at that with gratitude and celebration, and while also still striving for the future. And at the same time, I'm very interested in streamlining and simplification.
[00:06:40] And so. The Lens of Build also gives that a a boundary, a, a place of restriction in terms of don't burn it all down, especially the things that are working. Streamlining can mean pairing back, making more intentional decisions, acknowledging what is working for you, even if it takes longer or doesn't make sense to others.
[00:07:07] So for example, over the past year and really even since 2020, I have been really embracing the paper planner experience. I find a lot of joy in it. I love playing with my stickers. I love just working with it, and I've returned to Tomoe River paper this year, and that has added a kind of a new level of joy on top of what I've been using in previous years.
[00:07:36] And so I'm looking at how can I make things easier for myself, even if that is multiple steps or takes some time to build. There's a project that we'll talk about at another time on the podcast for Simple Scrapper that's kind of on the table for me and it's going to require some, some time, some collaboration with my team members.
[00:08:07] It, it probably won't be fun in the process, but it will provide a better experience for everyone on the other end. And so those are the types of things that I'm thinking about is how can I use the momentum and lens of this year. To build things that will last and stand the test of time and support, you know, my life, my business's life, my family's life into the future.
[00:08:39] All right. Hopefully that makes sense. Sometimes I think that when we're talking about streamlining and building, those feel like a little bit at odds, but I think I'm seeing them as these points of, of balance for myself. Thank you.
[00:08:59] All right, let's transition to more of the personal routines.
[00:09:06] So if you are on our email list, which I hope you are, if you're not, you need to head over to simplescrapper. com and click any of the buttons to sign up for the focus finder or sparked workshop to make sure that you are getting. emails from us. But I shared how I had gotten myself into this place of checking my email and all the news and social media, first thing in the morning.
[00:09:35] And then I was just stuck with all these browser tabs open that I had to make decisions on to, you know, I was basically creating work for myself before I even started my day and also giving myself anxiety, focusing on other people's priorities a little bit of, you know, comparison, especially on social media.
[00:10:00] Well, maybe I should do that or why am I not doing that? And so it wasn't. Good place for me. And so even since I've started this outline to share this for the episode This past week. I've really been focused on a more intentional morning routine That starts with me. That starts with my own practices.
[00:10:24] That starts with some of the things that I've already been doing well with, such as exercise, which of course is amazing. If you're someone who has struggled with movement throughout your life, you know how much of it a victory it is to have that already be in a rhythm. And so I'm I'm really trying to give myself a container of a few hours in the morning to make sure I am checking the boxes on the things that are most important to me before I dig into what the rest of the world is going to tell me is important.
[00:11:00] And so let's start with that as the context of how I'm approaching these things. Now since the beginning of January, I've had some pretty good success with These particular practices that I'm going to talk about, but sometimes they were happening first thing, sometimes they were happening after lunch.
[00:11:20] And then a couple days they didn't happen at all. And so having more of a specific routine with a start time of For me, it's 5 40 a. m. That may or may not be early or late for you But that helps give me a time anchor to the things that I was already doing so that I can Leverage their benefit for me.
[00:11:49] So I'm doing three different things Inside of my planners to start the day. The first thing I do is I have a A6 Hobonichi. This is the traditional daily format and it's the smallest Hobonichi. And I am using this solely for recording of facts. So what happened yesterday? We talked a little bit about this last year on the podcast about things that I was Trying to figure out how I wanted to do.
[00:12:20] One of my members and friends, Susan, she actually jumped into this right away. We were kind of on the same wavelength. And I saw, I got to see hers in person. And it helped me embrace, This doesn't have to be a creative activity. It doesn't have to be perfect. It is sitting down and literally writing things that happened Recently because for me a lot of my scrapbooking a lot of my journaling My documentation anytime I've tried anything in any format.
[00:12:54] I end up focusing on my feelings now That might be very in line with what some of you do and maybe completely the opposite of what others do but for me I Was not doing a good job of documenting the facts of our life when we're the volleyball games What shows were we watching? When did my husband travel?
[00:13:15] You know what? What conversations did I have with Emily about her friends? Just what were the things of our days that may be even mundane, like needed to call the washing machine repair person? Things like that. So now I have a place where I put those and a routine to document those on the regular.
[00:13:39] I'm really focused right now on just those daily pages, but slowly starting to build on other parts of that particular book. For example, in the front, there's a section that many call the, the calendex, which has basically the entire year on two pages. And I'm using that just for when we ate out. And I'm really excited to say that we've only eaten out three times in January so far but I'm writing that on there both as a record of, hey, what did we actually, where did we eat and did we like it, and to, you know, have a gauge of, you know, are we eating out the amount of times that, that we want to as a family.
[00:14:23] And so I'm slowly building in other sections with that, but I'm not putting any pressure on myself to. Do everything all at once and that goes for all three of these planters. Now my, my, I'm not sure which one really is my baby because the next two are the ones that I spend even more time in. They are two A5 planters.
[00:14:48] I have a sterling ink. And a Wonderland 222. The sterling ink is more of my personal planner slash diary. I use it for tracking habits on the monthly tracker. I'm doing a daily reflection on how I'm feeling in the weekly vertical section. I'm really loving that boundary of, I just have to fill in this box.
[00:15:17] It helps me. get out what's on my mind, it will trigger me to then maybe try something different because if I'm complaining to myself about something in particular, I can then work on it. It actually really helped me over the course of this month realize that my sleep routine was a little bit off and I needed to try something different so that I wasn't getting up way too many times every night.
[00:15:48] Many women of a certain age know how much of a struggle this is and how much it impacts your overall restfulness. It's something that I've actually struggled with for a long time and a lot more as I've gotten older. And so I am working on some different habits and supports to help fix this so that I can sleep better.
[00:16:13] Mostly through the night, and I don't know that I would have undercovered, uncovered that as a priority if I wasn't doing this journaling. I'm also using the Calendex page in the Sterling Inc. to keep track of symptoms such as headaches, joint pain, itching just with little dots of, you know, severity, so if I can notice any trends and also to Indicate, oh, maybe you need to do something different because this doesn't seem to be working, or maybe it's an infrequent.
[00:16:51] So again, I'm really trying to use this, the sterling ink, as a, a special place the more personal side of this is where everything about me and my inner life is living. And that is kind of complemented by what I'm using the Wonderland 222 for. Now these are very similar planners overall. The only difference is the Wonderland 222 has More daily pages in the back and that's because I'm using it for my weekly planning of here are the appointments that I have the things I need to do and when and An overall list of these are the things I want to get done this week And then I do a daily page in the back every single day To write down these are the things that I'm actually going to do today and that's helped me feel less overwhelmed.
[00:17:45] Because when you look at the big list it's hard to make decisions and we end up doing those little things first and not getting to the big ones. If you know you know for sure I know. I'm very very guilty of that. And so it helps me saying okay you know what can I tackle today how am I feeling? I've already I've digested that with my journaling, okay, what, what could I tackle today?
[00:18:08] Can I tackle a bigger frog? Or do I need to do some of those smaller tasks? And so I'm really enjoying having this as the more functional planner to keep track of all the things that are, that need to be done, that need to be handled, that affect my time, and, and have that a little bit separate from the place where I'm reflecting.
[00:18:35] And you know, talking more about myself, if you will.
[00:18:40] So, in addition to that daily routine, I'm really working on weekly routines that support this happening. So, for example, In the Wonderland 2 2 2, I'm setting up the week with my Coco Daisy stickers, writing out all my appointments, and identifying the priorities, forwarding any tasks from the previous week, and I tend to do this on Friday, and if I For some reason wasn't able to do it on Friday.
[00:19:13] I really like to have it done by Sunday evening. You know, in the worst case, I have Monday morning. So I have a slot and two backup slots, if you will. I'm also continuing to work on the Aligned project this year. This is something that we did last year inside of the Simple Scrapper community. There's a full year of weekly prompts to connect you with the season.
[00:19:38] And last year I did that in more of an, an art journal, memory journal type of format and all of those images and comments are inside of our community in a classroom. And this year I'm revisiting the prompts with a new lens more as a student, not as a teacher and just doing some journaling each week in the sidebar of my Sterling Inc.
[00:20:02] So remember I'm doing daily journaling in each of those weekly columns. So we have our. vertical page for the week, Monday through Sunday, and I'm journaling every single day in that little column on the left hand side where you might be listing tasks for the week. That's where I'm doing the journaling for a line to give myself some context for the week in terms of my reaction to the prompt and the connection to the natural season.
[00:20:31] As I mentioned before, I'm really trying to build on this over time in alignment with my word that we don't build everything in a day. And so I do have an outline. I'm not in Trello of how I envision using each section of each of these planners, but I'm only picking one at a time to start developing the practice around.
[00:20:57] And as I've gone forward, I've been able to see new needs, to identify new needs, and understand Where I might want to add more information and maybe the places also that I don't care as much about. One of the things that's been really fun for me is to start a book log for the first time and I'm doing this in the back of that sterling ink planner where I'm recording you know the start date the finish date and Also, using a color coding system on, is this part of the Simple Scrapper Book Club?
[00:21:34] Is this part of one of the Book Girl's, Book Girl Guide, Book Girl's Guide Challenges? Or is this just something else that I came across? Having that has been fun and I can't wait to Print out little pictures of my book covers as part of that. I've always had a lot of, FOMO is not the right word, but I've just a lot of like seeing a lot of joy from others who keep visual and written book logs.
[00:22:05] And I'm excited to do that and it's So, I can read it, I can document it, and I can also use it to provide a feedback effect to making me want to read more so that I can document it in this planner.
[00:22:15] Alright, I think that is everything for the personal routines. This might be the section where you might have the most questions for me. At first, I thought, Oh, that's all. I'm going to be talking about three planners. Are you, are you crazy, Jennifer? Are you really thinking that you're going to be able to keep up with this?
[00:22:34] But having very clear and specific objectives for them, as well as the routine of how I'm touching each of them on a daily basis, has made it actually I was thinking just recently, if I am going away for a personal reason, I would take the Sterling ink with me, most likely. I might take the Hobonichi if it was going to be an extended period of time, but I think I could backdate a few entries of what the facts that happened if I needed to.
[00:23:07] And of course, if it's So if I have a longer trip, particularly where I might be working, then taking that Wonderland 2 2 2 will be really important as well. All
[00:23:17] right, on that note of work, let's talk a little bit more about what has changed for me and how I'm planning for this year. So as part of that rhythm to set up my week in the Wonderland 2 2 2 I am looking at Trello, which has a lot of my personal priorities, it has my creative hub, and we'll, we'll talk a little bit more on that.
[00:23:45] I'm looking at ClickUp, which is what we use for my work at the university. I'm looking at my calendar, of course. And not just this week and which appointments I'm writing down, but maybe what's coming up. What Simple Scrapper events are coming up that I'm leading and that we need to prepare for. And so I'm looking at all of those different things to make my plan for the week.
[00:24:12] And I'm working up to Making more monthly plans, but I think I'm doing that. It's just more in my head right now. And so I'm not trying to, again, build systems that aren't necessary. I'm just trying to build things that are streamlined that fill specific gaps as I identify them because that's where we always kind of can get ourselves off track at the beginning of the year as when we build this complex machine that we can't operate with ease.
[00:24:49] And so that's definitely not my goal here.
[00:24:52] Part of this idea of building is closing the loop on especially those boring but important projects. And so having this rhythm of making sure I'm checking in with places where I've outlined bigger picture goals and responsibilities it's helping me to make sure that I am closing those loops and planning time for those things.
[00:25:20] You know, I think what's really interesting and stands out to me so much is that all of the work I do, and even this, this goes for your family too. When you think about how You are just one person as part of a system, and we all are part of different systems. You know, you can even make these akin to, like, ecological systems.
[00:25:46] And we couldn't do these things that we do. And move things forward without the others who are also contributing that. And so I think as I'm looking to streamline and looking to build at the same time, I'm seeing how much is already in place. How much gratitude I have for all the people in my life and their contributions.
[00:26:15] Some of which, you know, we don't, maybe we don't even interact on a regular basis, but they're doing their part behind the scenes and of course this continues out further You know, I don't know the individuals who pick up our trash every Friday But they're part of the system that helps keep things running.
[00:26:39] So I think the more that I Look at my own rhythms and understand what I have control of. It helps me feel more empowered to do that, as well as feel grateful for how I am supported by all the privilege that I have and everything else that I have built as part of my life. Yeah, I don't, I'm not sure how to say that.
[00:27:07] I hope it, I hope I'm making sense here a little bit. Deep thoughts for January 2025. Okay, let's transition more to the creative side because this is a scrapbooking podcast. I have mentioned, I think multiple times, that my focus this year is more on layouts. I find joy in creating layouts. I love seeing my The photos that I take of my layouts and having that digital record of them.
[00:27:41] I, I don't love as much the process of putting them in albums, but I appreciate it when I have done that. I enjoy that one off small project nature of individual layouts and it was a lot of thought last year that made me realize how much bigger projects weigh on me, how much I procrastinate on them, and they feel often overwhelming to complete.
[00:28:12] And so my goal is to Not start new projects to keep track of layout ideas and keep making layouts But also this is a transition year where I need to start figuring out how I am going to finish those projects That are still in flight. I had a member actually and she's a creative team member to ask me that yesterday We have these sessions called the creative hub happy hour every month where we centralizing all of your plans and ideas and I was kind of explaining my whole system here.
[00:28:48] And she's like, how is this going to help you get those projects done that you said you wanted to get done? And I'm like, it's not, it's really not. It's what I'm setting up. And I'll talk, this is what I'm going to describe here is what I'm setting up for the future to help me continue to be an engaged, satisfied, consistent scrapbooker that, you know, in alignment with, with what I help so many others do at Simple Scrapper and to make layouts.
[00:29:17] And so I need to still figure out the parts of this rhythm and routines that will support me in getting the projects done. The most kind of low hanging fruit for that are the finishing day events that we host inside of the community. We do one every other month. So the first one will be in February and the next one will be in April.
[00:29:39] Those are the most likely candidates for me to work on those specific projects. And also kind of, you know, Having those as touch points or milestones in the year will also help me gear up to spend more time on that. And that also includes working in advance and then maybe even scheduling time after.
[00:30:01] That is the best thing I have at the moment, but I will kind of go into this saying that I don't have a clear plan yet, and that's okay. What I do have a clear plan on is that having my creative hub in ClickUp did not really work for me because it started getting confusing. I would go back in and I couldn't figure out where to find the things that I had added.
[00:30:33] I think it's an amazing tool. It is very powerful. For me, it was easier to use than Airtable or Notion, easier to set up, but still more powerful than Trello or Asana because it does have the database capabilities. And we are still using it at work, and I think it's amazing for a team because it is easy to update, easy to expand but for my personal tracking, it just became a little and I had to manage the system rather than having a system that helped me manage my life.
[00:31:13] And also for those reasons where I kept going back to paper, I just, It didn't make sense anymore. So I did move my Creative Hub back to Trello. I still had my old Creative Hub there and I was able to move some things over. But I'm really trying to keep this streamlined in alignment with what I teach in our Creative Hub Essentials class of you need to start with what you need and nothing more.
[00:31:40] Yes, you could build a machine. You can build something big that does all the things. But if you're not going to be able to keep up with it, to understand it, to use it. It doesn't serve you. So my Creative Hub right now is very, very simple. It has a reference to a spreadsheet that we're going to talk about in a moment.
[00:32:00] It has a reference to that list of how I want to use the planners. I've just described how I'm using them, but it has my kind of It's a big picture vision of what I might want to add. It has some project lists that support my one little word goal. So for example, building a cozier home, you know, some of the things that I want to do.
[00:32:21] It's, none of it is super exciting, it's not a renovation, it's, you know, hang that darn curtain that you bought a year ago with the curtain rod that you bought a year ago, or hang that fan that you bought more than that many years ago following through on some things, and, and of course doing some painting as well.
[00:32:43] And that's just one of them. I have some other ones as well for my personal priorities. But then the rest of it, I'm really focusing on what are those routines, the monthly, weekly, and daily routines. So I have those as checkpoints. I've described kind of a lot of what those routines are. There also includes, you know, looking at the one little word content Responding to the prompt in a journaling format, and of course that's going to be in my sterling ink planner as well.
[00:33:11] I'm not making that a project, I'm making it as a journaling check in. And so having my creative hub be even more focused on routines, this is an alignment with my idea to have structure that I can build on, that I can work with that supports me. So, it also includes, on a weekly basis, making sure that I have at least one appointment for photo management, and that I'm RSVPing and trying to attend at least two crops inside of our community, not as the host, but just as a member or participant.
[00:33:50] And so, if I do those things, if I take those actions, those are in support of creating more layouts and staying more connected to my hobby and, and of course, eventually getting those projects done too.
[00:34:03] So I mentioned the spreadsheet. Eventually, I will promise to share this publicly as a tool. I did share a draft version inside of the membership related to that conversation we had yesterday for the Creative Hub Happy Hour. But what this is, is a Google Sheet with multiple tabs. I have an album index, a layout index, a story list, a product list, and a photo management tracker.
[00:34:32] And so these are All the different parts of my hobby that I want to keep track of, and it includes both completed, in progress, and, you know, want to do items. I'm able to sort it and filter it. I had built something similar. In ClickUp, but then I realized it was very difficult to share with others, to create a template for others to use as well, and that it was becoming increasingly difficult for me to get the information out of it.
[00:35:07] And so I felt, I felt like I was at a decision point where I needed to decide I was going to go all in or I was going to move this information out and to me it made the most sense to use a Google Sheet of all the different tools I've tried over the years. I think a lot of us still come back to spreadsheets whether you're using a Google Sheet, you're using Apple's version, is it, I don't even know what it's called Numbers, I don't use it.
[00:35:37] Or you're an Excel person. Spreadsheets are a great simple tool for information management and that's something that I go back to again and again and it's an easy way to share this with others. So I'm really, really excited about this particular tool because it It gives me a place, it gives me a home for new layout ideas.
[00:36:06] It gives me a place to record, oh I bought that little set of three papers and embellishments for a particular story. It gives me a place to track my progress on the albums that I want to finish. And I'm layering in some of the Library of Memories information as well. I, I don't find that that drives the stories I tell, but it is how I organize my layouts.
[00:36:32] And so I like being able to see things with that lens. So, I realize a podcast is not the best format for sharing information about a spreadsheet, so I'm happy to answer any additional questions. I will include at least one screenshot in the episode so you can get a glance at it. And then, of course, in the future, as we refine this, I will, I will promise to share this as a resource for everyone.
[00:37:00] I just don't think it's there yet. And if you've been listening to this podcast for any length of time, you know I don't like to do things that are half baked or not ready. I want you to have trust that anything that we provide is going to be great and useful. All right, anything else that I have missed here?
[00:37:22] Oh, one thing that has been helpful to me and also has a, I have a lesson learned attached to it, is that on those daily pages in the back of my Wonderland 2. 2. 2. So this is a, this is a very functional planner. I am trying to draw some more sketches of layouts that I want to make. And this has been fun because once I draw that sketch, I kind of feel that compulsion of like, well, now I have to make it.
[00:37:52] Well, one day I didn't really have a sketch vision, but I did have a story vision. And so I wrote down, here's the products I want to use and here's the photos. This is like going to be the title and the point of the whole layout. And the next day, I ended up drawing a sketch, but it was for a completely different set of products.
[00:38:10] And as I was planning on working on this layout, I realized I was kind of getting them mixed up in my head. So I have learned to not keep two layouts in flight, at least in this format or at least give them more details or more layering. I need to maybe at least create a A sticky note for the items that I have already gathered, so I remember what it goes with.
[00:38:35] And so maybe making the sketches in the planner isn't the best thing. Maybe I should make them on the sticky note. I think Shamel does that a lot. I see that in her live videos. And then I can put that with the photos and the supplies. But I have been enjoying it, and I think anything that I do to start a layout,
[00:38:57] It's just about getting that ball rolling and having something in place that's tangible, physical, that I can see, that I can touch, having it on my calendar. Make a layout probably isn't going to help me. And so I'm continuing to learn those tools and practices that do help.
[00:39:18] Alright, oh hey, I have one more thing actually here. And this is something else that came up in that Creative Hub Happy Hour session. So I'd already added A calendar appointment for myself for Monday morning before 9 a. m. to work on photo management for about just 30 minutes to make sure things are imported and moved to the right place.
[00:39:40] Maybe I'm working on a little backlog, but if I could just spend that 30 minutes, I'm going to be more caught up and connected with it. And then. A member, and she's also a creative team member as well, shared this suggestion of connecting calendar appointments or reminders. With specific checklists or pages in a spreadsheet or a project management tool, really just linking it to where you're keeping track of that item.
[00:40:14] So what I did is I went to that calendar entry for my weekly photo management session and I put a link directly to my spreadsheet, directly to the photo management tab of the spreadsheet so that when I do that, I know exactly. What I've done and what I need to do next. So, for example, I haven't created my folders for 2025 yet inside of Lightroom.
[00:40:38] And so that is the very next step I need to take. And that is on that tracker sheet. And so that's the next thing I will do. It's a really, It's a simple step, but if you're someone who uses a digital calendar and then you're also using another digital tool to keep track of things and you're not keeping it over complicated with having something fully integrated that is your calendar and your project management system if that's just too much, linking the calendar item to something else.
[00:41:10] And I'm going to talk a little bit more about that in a second, but I'm going to talk a little bit more about You've already heard that I've updated our kind of icebreaker questions, as well as done some tweaking to our my way episode questions. I like to keep things interesting as I listen to folks answer questions and it has that has evolved over time. I'm better able to, you know, ask better questions of them.
[00:41:52] And so I've made that update. I have a really simple goal this year of having great conversations with interesting people. If I happen to find someone that maybe is Tangential to scrapbooking and crafting and planners and memory keeping or photography. I might invite them, but really I'm, I'm actually really interested in just talking to scrapbookers about the topics that interest us.
[00:42:21] You know, what's going on with products? How have you changed? How do you keep track of your ideas? When do you scrapbook? So even similar to a lot of the questions that I ask our featured artists, I want to dig into the behind the scenes of what is working well for each of our guests. I can't say there's anything new or dramatic coming.
[00:42:47] I am going to have to figure out how to edit all of our graphics because of this Instagram change. Now, I don't know about you, but my particular feed has not changed to a rectangular vertical format yet. They are still squares, so that makes it a little hard to plan. Some of my other personal accounts have, but my Simple Scrapper account has not as of this recording.
[00:43:12] But I'm definitely thinking about that as well. Trying to maybe target things around episode 300 to introduce some new graphics, but we'll see. They could just look the same and be taller. We'll figure that out as we go. What I know is that so many of you Enjoy these conversations. I'm sure there's some of you who tolerate the conversations, but those who are loyal listeners, they know that we're going to talk about things that you care about.
[00:43:47] We're going to help you feel more connected and inspired in your hobby so that you can be more consistent, feel more satisfied keep scrapbooking, keep supporting our industry so that it's there for us. And you know that fundamentally. I want to help scrapbookers tell their stories, get things done, and the best place that we do that is inside of our Simple Scrapper membership.
[00:44:15] And what has been most surprising slash not surprising over the past year or two has been how every single new member says, podcast for so long and now it was finally time to take the leap. So I know there's many of you out there who have been thinking about it. And so I want to just take this opportunity to invite you to come check out our community.
[00:44:38] We do have a new monthly payment plan, just month to month, cancel any time that we introduced this year. And yeah, I want you to see what it's like to be part of this warm, generous, kind community. We're on our own platform. We are not on social media. So it's a great place to focus on your scrapbooking, focus on connecting with others, and to give you the rails that you need to have a plan that supports you, like my plan that I've just talked about for 48 minutes That will support you and your hobby as well.
[00:45:24] So if that sounds interesting to you, I hope you will check it out. I will, of course, include the link in the show notes for the episode. And as always, please remember that you have permission to scrapbook your way.
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