206. Using Your Planner During Transitions

All right, we’ve got another Full Focus Planner, Certified. Certifried?. Certified. I don’t know, certifried, that could be fun too.

I love fried foods.

Certified Pro on the show today. She’s already talking. Stacie Simpson is back. She’s actually somebody that I reach out to all the time and I’m like, I need to get a pro on the show. And she’s very, very busy. In fact, she’s coming out of her busiest season and we’re going to talk about that, give you some tips for how that reset goes, and so much more. So let’s get into it.

Welcome to another episode of Focus On This, the most productive podcast on the internet. So you can banish distractions, get the right stuff done, and finally start loving Mondays. Again, my name is Nick Jaworski, your lovable, adorable producer. And I am here again with Stacie Simpson, Certified Pro, not certifried pro. Right, Stacie?

It depends on the day, maybe. But also a Certified Pro every day.

Yeah, I guess on a particularly hard day you could be certifried.

I might be certifried, yeah. Yeah.

I feel like there’s a t-shirt here somewhere, Stacie.

Yeah. And then I need a little menu of fried food snacks, fried plantains maybe? As one of my favorites.

Well, maybe we can couch that or we can put it on the Full Focus Planner community. People can talk about their favorite fried snacks.

I love it.

But I don’t know how long it’s been since you’ve been here. And I did accurately, I was telling my wife, I’m like, “I’m talking to Stacie.” And I did remember, I was like, “I think Stacie lives at a summer camp.” Is that correct?

Yes, that is accurate. You got it. I do. Yeah.

And so we were talking before the call and well, how did camp… Are you done? Camp’s over?

Yes. Yep. Camp is finished for the season. We start right at the end of May with two weeks of staff training. We hire about 100 staff just for the summer. And then we do eight weeks of summer camp that are one week each. We have about 325 campers a week. So we serve 2,400-ish for the summer and session eight ended last week.

So we do all the crazy wrap-up stuff happens in all one day. Campers leave in the morning, we clean everything. We do our closing summer banquet awards thing with our staff. They all leave and that all happens in one day. And then all of our year-round staff take off the next day. So yeah, it was an awesome summer. Crazy busy, lots of activity, but tons of fun too.

I think anyone who’s watching this episode on YouTube might have seen that you’re not in a traditional office. You in fact are in an RV right now.

Correct. Yes. So when we ended camp, my family… Basically everyone who lives in YMCA camp year round, we all get about a week and a half off right after camp where we just totally unplug. We close down the office. We get everything out of our system and recover before we come back to the office and start planning for next summer right away. So the day after camp ended, my family hopped in our brand new RV that we bought at the beginning of summer, but hadn’t had a chance to use yet because of summer being our busiest season with work. So we had been getting it all set up and this is our maiden voyage as some people call it, or the shakedown trip to bring our camper out and experience it. So we’re off of work and offline right now and just enjoying our new toy.

What did you call it, the shakedown?

A shakedown is what I guess people in the camping world call it because you’re getting it out and moving and things shake and rattle and roll in here and you figure out what works and what doesn’t, and what you need to do differently.

All right. Hey, that makes sense.

That’s what it’s called.

It’s funny, you’re referring to this as camping. I think that what you’re in right now looks nicer than my house.

Yeah, this is like glamping. A couple of times I have mentioned to my family that I might just move out to the field where the camper sits. And if they don’t see me for a few days, it’s because I’m enjoying a little vacation.

Let’s talk about a little bit of what you’ve been thinking about. You are a Certified Pro, you do have coaching clients, you do help them with the Full Focus Planner. We had talked before the call about some things you’ve been thinking about and learning and as you exit out of the busiest part of your year, which I think for most people is backwards. I think most people, not at all, but a lot of people, their slowest time of year is the summer and then they gear up in fall to push into the end of the year. But what are you thinking about right now, now that July is over and camp is over as relates to goal setting or achievement or the planner? Where are you at?

Yeah, I think it’s a really interesting time because it’s a change of seasons for me and the type of work that I do. So what I do for our camp that we live at and work at is I’m the Director of Communications there and we have about eight to 12 people who work there year round. So we have a team that’s working together all the time. And summer is our busiest season in terms of true busyness. It’s not necessarily our most productive time when it comes to projects and goals because we’re really in the implementation phase. We’ve spent the rest of the year prepping for this full-on implementation period.

So now, in this in-between time we have to press a really big reset button. And for us, because our work is so annual, and this works for people who do annual planning in their business or in their work or who do quarterly planning, which I know some of us do with the Full Focus Planner or leverage a tool like the 12 Week Year to plan that. You have to take that moment to step back and set that reset button. And sometimes that feels really natural. Like when summer camp ends and then it’s really quiet and all 100 staff go home and all that, it feels natural that that’s what you have to do. Other times you have to almost fabricate that feeling and make a fresh start for yourself.

And I think the quarterly approach with the Full Focus system gives you the opportunity to do that each quarter, even if things aren’t that reset, even if it is status quo, you get an opportunity for a reset and to leverage that if you choose to. I think though this time of the year, not just for people in a line of work like I am with a seasonal, really summer busy time, but for any parents who have kids going back to school in the fall, I know there’s a wide range of back-to-school dates depending on what state you live in or if you’re in public school or private school or whatever. But I know a lot of the clients that I work with through Full Focus coaching are moms who are either working a full-time job or running their own business and doing all the mom things.

And there’s a big shift for parents between what summer, what life looks like in the summer when kids are at home or doing summer activities to what life looks like in the fall when school starts. So with a lot of my coaching clients right now, we’re re-looking at the ideal week. We’re starting with a blank slate and taking that opportunity to just reset and evaluate everything from the prior season and then be looking forward to what might need to be adjusted or tweaked going forward into the next season.

I started asking this question, Stacie, have you ever fully hit your ideal week?

Oh gosh, probably not. I don’t know. I do this little thing when I’m talking with my clients. I actually add a word in there and I refer to the ideal week as the ideal week template because my goal is, I release people of trying to achieve the ideal week because I think for people wired like I am with some perfectionist tendencies, it can really bog you down and feel very stressful and a lot of pressure to try to hit that ideal week when it’s nearly impossible unless you’ve set a really low bar for yourself in your ideal week, which if you have the capacity to do that, good for you. I can’t do that.

I try to shove it full of too many things. So I like to think of the ideal week as a template. And so when I’m sitting down to do my weekly preview, I use the ideal week to guide my planning for the week or when I am evaluating my prior week and thinking how much time did I spend with my family, how much time did I spend on a particular project or a particular goal, I’m using the ideal week as a template, as a guide, not as a very prescribed outline of what I need to do. I don’t really hold myself to the standard of trying to hit it exactly. But I definitely change my ideal week every quarter because I’m setting new goals every quarter.

I really focus on quarterly goals or breaking down my annual goals into quarterly goals and life changes. That’s the beauty of having the quarterly system, I think, is that it can change with how life changes.

Okay. Let’s move on to another topic. You work at this camp and you told me something before the call that I thought was very interesting. Which is that everybody who’s a full-time staff member at this camp is also using the Full Focus Planner.

Yeah. So I can tell you the background on that and how that came to be, if you’re curious? So what’s interesting is that, so I work with my husband, he’s the executive director of the camp. I’m the Director of Communications. And then all of our neighbors, because we all live at camp and work at camp, so all of our neighbors and friends are the rest of the staff and fill in the rest of the spots. So when the Full Focus Planner first existed, which was like what, 2016 maybe somewhere in there?

2017? Something like that? I don’t know.

Okay.

This happens every time that this comes up. Everyone goes to 20…

I know. We should just look it up and know. So, the fun fact is that my husband used the Full Focus Planner before I did. He is an early adopter of things. So we followed Michael Hyatt and had read some of his books. But my husband is the first, he owned the first iPhone. We’re hooked up to Starlink right now. He will be the first one to try something. I’m not so much like that. I want somebody else to try it first and tell me how it is. That’s how we were with the Full Focus Planner. He got it, he used it and he said, “Stacie, you’re going to love this thing.” And it was right at the same time that I was starting to work self-employed and do some consulting. And it really helped me build my business at the time, which is a story for another time where I think we talked about it on a Path podcast I was on or episode that I was on.

So he has been on and off a user of the Full Focus Planner as well, and we both kind of speak this language. And there came a point a few years ago where he said, “I really need to get my staff using the Full Focus Planner.” And using particularly, we use the idea of quarterly goals. And then we use the Weekly Big 3 as a reporting out feature. So at a weekly meeting, we all share our Weekly Big 3s with each other as a team so that we know each other’s priorities, we can support each other’s work. We can prepare each other for what we’re going to ask other people for in the upcoming week. And then we all know each other’s quarterly goals as well. So we use the terminology and the structure as a team, which is so helpful. It helps us to just all be on the same page.

So we offset our quarters from traditional quarters a little bit to go a little bit more with our annual workflow. So we have the summer as a quarter, so ish, June, July, August is a quarter for us. So starting September 1st, we’ll be starting a new quarter. But we are coming back from vacation this upcoming week. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, we’re doing an offsite retreat for three days to do our annual planning and our fall quarter planning, plan for summer 2024. And I coordinate the order of the actual planner books. So I’ll be like Santa Claus bringing the whole box of new planners that everyone’s selected for the new quarter. And we’ll have our fresh books to break the spine on Monday, which is really exciting.

We’ve talked a lot about this as it relates to perhaps an executive assistant or making somebody aware of like, “Well, here are my priorities for the week.” I’m curious, when people at your camp are using the planner and you’re reporting Weekly Big 3s, is this entirely a work thing? Weekly Big 3, these are our three priorities for work for the week? Or are they being empowered to go, “This is a work life/balance.” I’m just curious how it works in a situation like this?

Absolutely. Well, because I have trained them well on the Full Focus system, we do an annual refresh where I retrain them from beginning to end on the Full Focus system just as a good reminder. Especially, we don’t follow the system as much during the summer because we’re just in like, you’re just putting out fires constantly. It’s less proactive, honestly. So we start the fall off fresh.

Different team members have a different comfort level in terms of sharing out and integrating some of their personal goals into this. But they are definitely empowered and welcome to… Many of us include personal goals in our quarterly goals within our team. It’s a little bit unique with our situation because we also all live in community together. And so for people in other workplaces, they might be more or less comfortable doing that. But I think it helps because you really understand.

I mean, just to give a super tangible example, one of my colleagues in the spring who’s getting married this fall, he and his fiancé had decided to do a very specific fitness and diet routine and program. And so when we shared out our quarterly goals for that quarter, he shared a lot of specifics of the plan that they were following, how often he was going to be working out for accountability. But also he specifically shared which things were in their food plan and which things weren’t. And to set social expectations, he said, “So if you bring muffins or brownies to the staff meeting, and I say, no, thank you, I’m not trying to be rude. But you’re helping hold me accountable to my personal wellness goal.” And then that made us all feel like we could support him in that way. It went really smoothly and he reduced some social pressure then when it came to food.

So really specific, really tangible example, but I think it is helpful to know what’s happening in your colleagues’ personal lives and be able to support them in that way and integrate work and life in that way too. So, absolutely. And when it comes down to more of the nitty-gritty of the Weekly Big 3 is, if someone has something big personal going on in that week, it might mean they’re in the office less. It might mean they’re not as responsive when you need things. So having the opportunity to share a personal Big 3 in with your work priorities is helpful for everyone for awareness, and we can support each other that way too.

It sounds amazing. Love it. And sharing that language is very helpful. I mean, my wife and I, even if we’re on a phase where one of us is planner light. Or depending on what’s happening, things get busy. Even being able to say, “My big three, here’s my schedule for the week.” Just being able to focus everybody in that same worldview is very helpful.

And I have to ask, because this comes up a lot in the Full Focus Planner community, this question of how do I get my partner or my spouse to also be on the planner? And it sounds like your story was that it was pretty simple because you were the one who it was sold to.

Yeah, for my husband is, he ebbs and flows with his planner usage. And he’s maybe more on planner light sometimes. I find that the softer approach is better to getting him… And it’s personality based too. I know if I push too hard, he’s just going to be like, “No. No, no, no.” But using just a small piece, and I think the Weekly Big 3 is a great way to do that because on the weekend to say to my husband, “Hey, I just want to share with you, I have three really big projects that I’m trying to work on this week. And just so you know, it’s this one, this one and this one. Is there anything that you have going on this week that I should know about? Do you have a Weekly Big 3 set?” And he knows the terminology already. So to just kind of prompt that question and then you get some momentum from that.

And I think I still, if you can get your partner or your family to do a weekly family meeting, I feel like that’s the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that I’m still working on with my… I have an incoming sophomore boy, and my husband, and so we’re trying to get this family meeting concept down where we can all share our Weekly Big 3s. So personality-wise, maybe somebody out there has a better chance of getting that going first and then bringing in the planner concepts or tools into that? But getting a weekly family meeting is my pot of gold that I’m still chasing after.

Yeah, we’ve had various iterations of that over the last few years, and it’s just very, just with schedules, it’s so hard. And it makes me think that perhaps I’m just not prioritizing it. I mean, we eat every day and we do stuff every day.

Right. You spend time together.

So now you saying is reminding… Yeah. So I don’t know why this is so difficult? I think some of it has to do with the timing that I want to have this meeting. I don’t want to have this meeting on a Wednesday. I would preferably have this meeting on a Sunday. So that’s sort of hard. And then it’s the weekend, so the kid’s out at a friend’s house or on a trip, or we’re cleaning the house and we’re out of time. And that’s a goal for the week too. So you saying that is a good reminder to me that I also agree that it feels better when we’ve done it, even just my wife and I?

Yeah, just to know to have… I mean, I think relationship-wise too, to know what your partner’s priorities are. Even if it’s just for the day or if it’s big picture in life that brings you closer together. And I think that there’s a lot of value in that.

Okay, Stacie, now you’re on a break from work for another couple of days, I think. I guess the question that everybody’s asking, it’s all over the news, it’s all over social media is, are you using your planner while you’re on vacation?

Yeah. I know, this is such a hard one, and I sometimes contradict myself when I’m talking to my clients. And this is where I think it’s one of those things where you truly just have to try things out and see what feels good for you, because everybody’s different too, and situations are different. I have found lately within the last six months to a year that I feel so much better when I consistently use my planner, even when I’m on time off. But I think that might not be true for everyone. So it’s almost like a controversial, in my own mind, thing that I think for some people totally just unplugging, turning everything off, getting off the grid is the right answer.

For me, I find it very challenging to get back my momentum when I come back into real life. And I have this constant feeling, maybe it’s like the perfectionist in me or just the high achiever in me, when I am offline thinking that I’m missing something, thinking that I should be doing something. So when I’m on time off, I will try to set a Daily Big 3 also, but I do a couple of things to make it still feel like time off. I make those big three very manageable, like the smallest possible task. So I feel like I’m making some kind of progress that day.

What kind of task are we talking about?

So today, I completed a task where, well, this is a good summer camp example. So part of what I’m responsible for with summer camp is lost and found that is leftover after all the kids leave, which is an insane amount of things somehow.

I’m sure.

And some of it we can send it to an office in town where parents can come pick it up. So I had a Post-it note with six parents’ names on it that I had been moving over from page to page in my planner. And all I needed to do was send an email to these people and say, “Hey, your stuff is ready to be picked up. Thanks.” It’s like a one-liner. So I sent six emails this morning that each had that one line, but it was a whole Post-it note checked off of my Big 3. So one thing, but I felt like I made some progress. I felt like I didn’t leave those people hanging because they needed that information. So I wasn’t leaving anyone waiting to hear from me. But it took maybe three minutes maximum to pull out my computer and get it connected to the internet. But one thing that was done.

And then I have for this week, one of my Daily Big 3s each day has been to read for one hour, and that’s in a fiction book, read for leisure for one hour. Because that’s personal, that’s fulfilling to me, that fills my bucket, but I don’t necessarily stop to refocus to do it unless it’s on my to-do list. But I do enjoy doing it. I just am not necessarily a self-starter with doing it. So either something that’s more personal enrichment or even something that’s work related, but just like a quick grab task are helpful to me. And then I try to put only three things on the day and not have the whole list of the other tasks.

What’s interesting is that let’s say that’s not you and you’re like, “I don’t want to use my planner, it’s my vacation,” whatever, which you could do. Here’s a free tip from your friendly producer, Nick.

Okay, yeah. I want to know what you’re thinking.

Is that you could just, on the last day of pre-vacation, you would just write, or maybe the day you come back, you would write like, “Don’t touch planner for 10 days.”

Oh, yeah.

And then when you don’t do it and you come back, you check it off. And you’d go like, “I did it.”

Yeah, I did it.

So either way, you’re winning. So that’s a real inception idea of not doing something while doing it.

I love it. I am also the queen of doing something that’s not on the list and then writing it down just to check it off. I did it the other night. We had a board meeting. I’m the president of a school board for a school for kids with autism and ADHD. We had a board meeting. And the next day I sent out the meeting minutes and I closed my computer and I went, “Oh, I sent out the meeting minutes, let me check that off my list.” And I realized it wasn’t on my list, so I added it and checked it off.

I have to show you, Stacie, I don’t know. I actually bought a… And I’ve talked about this before in the podcast. I bought a stamp that I use for my Big 3s.

I love that.

And specifically, it’s a little check. You can’t see it, it’s a little check mark stamp. And the reason why, and I was like, what I want… First of all, who doesn’t love to use a stamp? Number one. Number two, you know that [inaudible 00:25:39].

I was just going to say, you need the big handle.

I wanted that. I wanted to lock that in.

Yes. Chomp, chomp.

Yes.

Yes. The satisfaction.

Yeah, I wanted to get that dopamine hit.

Absolutely.

And tie it to accomplishment. And so this was $4 or $5 on Amazon. So I highly recommend it for anybody who is interested in that.

All right, Stacie, before we go, we got to do some rapid-fire questions that I’ve been asking our Certified Pros, our certifried pros. Let’s see, number one, when do you do your Weekly Preview?

Oh, great question. I do my Weekly Preview on Sunday afternoons at 4:30 Eastern time. And I do them on a Google Meet video session with anyone who wants to join me. And it’s free and it’s virtual. And you can find the link in the Full Focus community on Facebook where I post it occasionally. And it’s super fun. It’s a great way to hold myself accountable by hosting a session for other people.

That’s amazing. And we’ll definitely have a link to your website, and I’m sure people can find a way to that.

That’d be great. To hook up with me, yeah.

So it’s Sunday at 4:30 Eastern. Which planner are you using currently?

Currently, I am using whatever this one is. It’s linen. It’s standard binding. And it’s a color that I don’t know what it’s called. Sienna? Is it called Sienna? It’s a brick color.

Okay. The connections are not great, and the lighting’s a little weird, but the Sienna one, that does make sense. Yeah.

Okay. Okay.

All right. Have you tried a coil?

Yeah, I’ve tried almost everything. I just bought, what I’m going to start on Monday, so I haven’t received the package yet, it’s waiting for me at home. Is the Portfolio with the coil, that’s the newest combo, right? That’s the only thing I have not tried. But I am not a loyalist to a particular style. I like the coil, I like the standard, I like the Portfolio. Pocket is not for me, but I respect it.

It’s funny you say that because I’m the same way. I’ve never made it through a calendar year with the same line that I started with. I’m always like, “I need something novel.” And right now it’s a Pocket.

Pocket? Hey. Okay. All right.

So there you go. Yeah.

All right. I mean, I’m all about trying everything once and seeing what works for you.

And then, what are you using to write in this planner?

Ooh, that’s a great question. I use, where did I lose my pen? I use a Pilot G2 ballpoint pen with the 0.38 tip. So it’s the fine, fine tip, 0.38.

I didn’t realize that those came with different thicknesses.

They do. They do. My novelty pen that’s for special occasions is, I use what’s called a PenGems pen. They come in all different designs and colors. So it has a gem in, like a little gemstone in the top of it. And then it has in the top of the barrel, it has different colored pens. So the one I’m holding right now, if you happen to be on the video is, I really like coffee, so I like different shades of brown. So this is my coffee inspired pen with all the little brown gems and it has a twist top. And so I also have ones with colored inks. So I have a pink barrel with a pink ink, a brown barrel with a brown ink and a blue as well. So that’s my fancy-schmancy, but not my everyday.

Okay. So what gets the fancy pen?

Maybe if I’m just feeling fancy? It’s not for any type of, it’s not category based. It’s more of a feeling. If I’m feeling a little bougie, if I dressed up that day.

I’m feeling fancy today.

Today, I put on mascara to talk to you. So I might use the fancy pen today since I’m wearing mascara. It’s a fancy day.

Stacie, as we wrap up here at the end, we’ve talked about this transitional moment you’ve had. We’re talking about your spouse and your team at work using the planner. We’ve talked about vacation planner. Do you have any final thoughts or just big picture planner goal achievement, thoughts on your mind that you could leave our audience with?

Oh, man. I think probably my big picture takeaway reminder is the planner only works if you use it. So the consistent use. And I’ve experienced this too, I think for people who take a little break from their planner or get distracted from it for a while, it can feel overwhelming to jump back in. But just picking a Daily Big 3 or a Weekly Big 3 and roll with it and build on from there. I just want to encourage people to, if you feel overwhelmed or if you feel like you can’t jump back into it, just scale it back and do one little piece and then get it going consistently. Because it can really change your life, but it’s in small steps. It doesn’t happen overnight. So just take in the next step, next small step.

That’s great advice. Maybe good advice for me in this season of my life, perhaps? Just make sure I do the small things. Where can people find you, Stacie, if they’re going, “Stacie sounds cool. I want to talk to her more.” Where could they go?

Yeah, absolutely. So I am in the Full Focus Planner community on Facebook. So you can find me there in the members or tag me in a comment. I also have a website, which is staciesimpsonconsulting.com. And those are probably the best two options. You can find my email address on that website as well.

Yeah, well, we’ll put a link to that in the show descriptions so you don’t have to type anything in. And Stacie, please enjoy the rest of your vacation. Enjoy getting all your new planners. And thank you so much for joining us today.

Awesome. Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me.

All right everybody, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of Focus On This. As a reminder, this is the most productive podcast on the internet, so make sure that you share it with your friends, all of your planner friends, all of your non-planner friends. Just say, “Hey, I got a podcast for you.” And of course, go hang out with all the cool people in the Full Focus Planner community. They’re achieving things every day. So why not go? It’s free. Check it out. And we will be here next week with another great episode. And until then, stay focused.

Stay focused.

Thank you.