I’ve always liked having a planner handy. Calendar, contacts, lists…all the info you need at your fingertips. Or in your purse. Whichever. Instead of one of my trusty Filofax or Kikki K’s, I recently purchase an Erin Condren life planner. I’m really digging this thing. I got to customize the cover with my name, choose my layout and colors and when I wanted it to start. I really like this thing! I’m making myself really use the planner again. For a long time I was good about writing everything down to account for it – chores, workouts, writing time, what the kid needed to do, etc. And I did very well. Then I got out of the habit. Then I got sloppy. Nothing really worked anymore. Instead of going back to my planner, I let chaos reign. Sometimes chaos is easier than taking control. Or so it would seem on the surface. Eventually chaos takes over and it’s incredibly time consuming to get caught up again. That’s what I’m doing right now. So once again, I jot down things that I need to do, items I need to check on, what workout to do that day, what chores to do that day, and I added four little blocks to the bottom of the page. Those are my writers blocks. The four boxes represent 15 minute blocks of time or 500 words. I still have three to do for the day. Plus a workout. It’s still doable and I know I can write for 15 minutes, then workout. Write for 15 minutes, clean out under my bathroom sink. Write for 15 minutes, get ready for bed. All completely doable. Controlled. I’m going to push myself to stick with this and see how much progress I can make. Time to get one of those blocks in before I have to go pick up my daughter. Daily word count as of this writing: 609