Reddit reviews The Phoenix Planner - Best Daily Calendar and Agenda for Goal Setting, Boost Happiness and Productivity - Gratitude Journal, Habit Tracker, Quarterly Business Planner - 6 Months, Undated - Charcoal

So I have two things to say about this:

• You have to be kinder to yourself when you don't do what you want. Like I know it sounds so ridiculously cheesy and cliche and whatnot but I'm serious, it helps. Also setting lower expectations helps too. Yeah, maybe if you're neurotypical and have all the time in the world, you list of deep cleaning your entire house, grocery shopping, working out, doing cleaning out your closets, returning those things that have been sitting in a bag on your floor for the last month, etc could all be doable.
  
  • But we are not neurotypical. We do not have the luxury of just being able to "do it" (Thanks Shia LaBeouf for the wonderful mental image every time anyone ever says that). So we just have to make due instead.
    
  • Instead of having a huge laundry list of stuff to do (likely including actual laundry), cut that list down into more achievable and smaller segments, and prioritize that shit. Instead of trying to deep clean your entire house, say you're going to clean your fridge and that's it. And if you still have energy/motivation, clean more in your kitchen. And hey, if you find yourself two hours later realizing you've been down the rabbit hole of what ingredients you can make with that random shit you found in your fridge, well at least you started trying to clean and you can try to pull yourself away from this random person's life story and how they had a life-changing journey and this led them to figure out onions taste good in soup and get up and start trying to clean again.
    
  • So back to what I was saying about being kinder to yourself, you have to remember that even though you want to hold yourself to higher standards for doing things, sometimes you just can't. And it's shitty and unfair but if you're worried about wasting time, moping about what you can't do is, unfortunately, a huge waste of time. This is coming from someone that realized I have cleaned every shelf and cabinet in my kitchen a few days ago when I had only wanted to throw away food that had expired. I wished I could have not just spent a ton of time doing something that really didn't actually need to be done, but there was no point dwelling on it.
    
    • You have to forgive yourself for the things you both do and don't do. Start with that and start with the little things. Oh, you forgot to buy that one thing at the grocery store because you got distracted by how many different types of artisinal cheese they have? Fine, put it on the list to get next time or plan another trip. Didn't get anything done on your to-do list because you played video games or went on reddit all day? Oh well, tomorrow's a new day and you can try again.
      
  • Also! I almost forgot! Routine is everything!! So whether you're in school or working or what, set aside a specific time to write your lists and whatnot. Like for me, my mind races so terribly before bed thinking about all the things I need to do. So I like to write out my tomorrow's to-do list the night before so my brain can take a break from thinking about it (if you haven't tried writing before bed and you have issues with a racing mind, highly recommend this). Or maybe you have time in the morning while eating breakfast. Just take 5 minutes to try to make your smaller and more comprehensive list. Also if remember to make that list in the first place is hard, set alarms! I'm constantly setting reminders on my phone to remind me to make lists, write emails, text people, do things, etc.
    
• Okay so about lists and journaling! I am so bad about remembering to write in things. I had planners all throughout my school life and I think if I had 150 days of class, I probably had 20 days of writing done. But my out of school self has loved this life planner I found. I wanted to make one myself but got bored halfway through trying to do some online designing stuff and just looked around a lot until I found one that I bought. I got the Phoenix Goals Planner from amazon. So it's pretty blank to start and goes in 12-week sections for 12-week goals. There are calendars you fill in and dates for weeks, etc so you can start it whenever you want. It's nice for me because it makes you write out the how and why of your goals (yay for SMART goals). And it has a breakdown for each week as well as each day. So like you'll have your goals for your week and places to write them down and how many days that week you want to do them and can check them off for having done them. And you can write little goals for each day as well as just use the space for to-do lists and whatnot. I forget to write in it all the time but it's nice when I actually remember to. I might also try bullet journaling at some point because I absolutely love doing hand-lettering stuff and I'd like the option to also have daily entries and whatever I feel like instead of a more rigid planner like the Phoenix planner.
  
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  Okie-dokie so that turned out way longer than I thought. It was just kind of a wall of text so I tried to format it for easier reading. Also u/Micro_Social this is for you too but I just ended up to the parent comment you also replied to instead of to you directly. But lol this was supposed to basically be: 1- Be kinder to yourself and learn to forgive yourself. 2-Look at this cool goals planner I found. But ended up being so much longer. Hope it's worth the read 😂