Belle de Jour Power Planner follows time management principles to help us balance the different aspects of our lives.

One of the first rules of time management is to make time tangible. Most people perceive time as something intangible, or unlimited, after all, how long does a day or an hour really last? It usually depends on our energy, our motivation and many other factors. When we’re having fun time passes by quickly, and when we’re caught up with some arduous task, for some reason, time moves extra slow. So, to manage our time better, we need to view time more tangibly, like it was a space or cabinet that we need to organize.

More often than not, like some of our rooms, our schedule becomes cluttered, all our notes, meetings, scribbles are everywhere. There are more tasks than time to do them, tasks are jammed into any available space or pocket of time, in no particular order! Most especially, it becomes a haphazard arrangement, making it difficult to see what exactly we need to do and when we can actually do it.

First lesson is to realize, same with our rooms wherein, there is only limited space, there is only limited time. Our day is limited to a number of hours wherein we need to fit all the things that needs to be done. Like a cabinet, we can only fit so much in our schedules.

With any organization strategy, we need to group similar things or similar tasks together and like in our cabinet, to keep things organized, we need to assign drawers/areas to a certain kind of clothing i.e. socks, underwear.

In a planner, we need to have “spaces” where we can assign similar tasks or appointments. This orderly arrangement allows us to see clearly how many tasks needs to be done, or meetings to go to, in specific time period. More importantly, the layout allows us to see when we’ve reached our space or “time” capacity.
Thus, with the Belle de Jour Power Planner, we’ve assigned areas/spaces for specific items that help organize our weeks.

• a. URGENT TASKS TO FINISH: This section is for the tasks we need to really, absolutely need to finish within the week.
  
• b. IMPORTANT STUFF TO START: This is for important tasks that we should be starting now, to avoid cramming in the next weeks.
  
• c. PERSONAL TREATS TO ENJOY: All work and no play, makes a Belle de Jour girl really grumpy. This is for the treats that we want to do with our family, friends or ourselves!
  
• d. ERRANDS TO RUN: This for the little things that we need to do, go to bank, buy shampoo, clean our rooms, etc.
  
• e. MOST IMPORTANT TASKS (MITs): This part is for the 3 things we absolutely need to finish within the day. The idea being, no matter what we do today, these MITs are the really important tasks that we want to be sure of doing. Trick here is at least 1 of our MITs should be related to our personal goals, the other 2 can be work related. This ensures that each day, we’ve done something to make our dreams come true. Also, we need to do our MITs first thing in the morning, whether at home or work, ‘cause chances are, if put off, we’ll get so busy and run out of time.
  
• f. SCHEDULE: Each day is segregated to morning, lunch, afternoon, and dinner that you may organize your to-do list, meetings, dates according to each time pocket.
  

We always seem to forget that time is limited. Thus, it is important to keep the visual space limited to “make time visually more tangible”. This makes us more realistic about time. Listing priorities be personal or professional, our MITs keeps us focused on the important things that needs to be done and not let the little things distract us.