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The year is coming to a close. The new one looms around the corner with a mysterious question mark wavering on its horizon. 

What will this New Year bring? 

This is a time when many begin to look inside themselves to determine what habits could be streamlined and how one can make one’s actions just a bit more intentional during the coming year.

This is also a time when millions of people contemplate using a daily planner to attain those promising and thus far hypothetical goals. 

Especially ambitious mothers who are simply looking for ways to keep everything—and everyone—together, on task, and with any providence at all, happy. 

Moms NEED planners.

Most are familiar with the basics of planner use but fail to see the great benefits they offer for inner growth, productivity and extra time for families. 

Here are 6 exceptional benefits of using a planner. 

Some are quite obvious, but some you may never have considered before. You may even be convinced to take your daily planning to the next level.

1. Managing Your Precious Time

How many times have you ended a busy day feeling deflated as you utter those defeated words, “I ran out of time?” Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that you did not run out of time, you just didn’t manage your time properly.

Using a daily planner enables you to manage the way you use your time more effectively. Yes! You certainly can get all the kids to their activities and appointments, have lunch with your friend, do the laundry, write those notes, clean out that air return and still have time to read the kids a book before bed. If you layout all those necessary tasks in your day and place them in optimal time slots in your planner, you will set yourself—and your family—up for success.

Setting about your day in this manner ensures that you stay on track to getting things done, have extra time left for your family and go to bed with a feeling of accomplishment instead of defeat. Sweet and restful dreams will be sure to follow!

2. Enhancing Your Productivity

If you study the meaning of the word ‘productive’ you will find that it not only describes a state in which you get a lot of tasks done, but it also alludes to the quality with which you get those said tasks done as well. Don’t we want all of our accomplishments to be quality ones? Even—and especially—the tedious, day-to-day tasks we do inside our own homes and within our own families, which are so important?

Using a daily planner to organize when, where and how you do your tasks will help you with the amount of things you can get done and more importantly with how well you do them. It will enable you to not be busy, but to be productive!

3. Benefitting Your Health

A daily planner can help you stay mentally, physically and emotionally healthy. When you can track your daily water intake, time spent exercising, meal plans etc. you have a very visual view of the care you are taking of your body.

When you are able to take the stress off your mind by planning, you allow your brain a rest to think about more important things.

Carving time out of your very productive and time-managed day to take care of your emotional well-being leaves you feeling balanced and at ease. Planning some time to spend alone, or to be creative—or whatever floats your emotional boat—benefits your emotional health. Which benefits those around you. Just thinking of all those benefits is benefitting!

Using a planner can help you do all that with no guilt about shirking any duties looming about you. You planned carefully for this, so you can relax.

4. Multiplying Your Time

It may seem counterintuitive to say that getting more done and being more productive will actually grant you more free time, but it isn’t. It’s science! If you want to fit several ping-pong balls and a cup of sand inside a mason jar, you can’t do it if you put the little grains of sand in first. It only works if you put the big ping-pongs in first and then fill those cracks in with the smaller grains of sand.

Planning your day in a planner enables you to fit those big priorities and little priorities all in one day, or one week, or one month. When you’re managing your time wisely, and productively accomplishing your tasks, you unknowingly make time for all those things that are important to you.

5. Relieving Stress and Anxiety

A lot of the regular pressure that adult women, and especially mothers, experience on a daily basis comes down to worrying about missing important things on a long list of important things to do. There are so many floating variables on a mother’s to-do list that she can often be left feeling out of control, ill-focused and constantly as if she is falling short of her own capabilities. In other words: she’s stressed. When a person is stressed they often do fall short of their capabilities.

If you are able to stop those to-do list variables from floating around by using a planner to securely fasten them to appropriate time slots in your day, you eliminate the un-needed stress of the unknown and the worry of the forgotten. There’s no need to stress when it’s all written down. When it’s on the paper and off your mind you can focus more appropriately on each task as it is at hand.

6. Keeping Records

An unexpected perk of planners is actually in their abilities to help you look back as well as planning forward. This works both practically and sentimentally.

Practically- If you can’t remember when you had your last dental cleaning, you may simply leaf through your planner and find where you wrote that last appointment down. Can’t remember when you last changed the fire alarm batteries? Or had your oil changed? Or enjoyed a kid-date with that sweet middle child who sometimes gets lost in the bustle? You wrote that out in your planner last time so it’s simple to find at a glance! Keeping track of shots, prescriptions, medical appointments, grooming dates etc. is something you won’t even have to think about if you’re already writing things down.

Sentimental- There are few things more enjoyable than strolling down that lane called memory and smiling at where you were a year ago or cringing at where you weren’t ten years ago.

Daily planning allots you the perfect space to easily, simply and fondly jot things down that you would like to remember. No need to feel as though you must commit to a full-length journal entry. A very quick scribble to document that funny comment your 6 year-old made while eating breakfast will suffice.

If you aren’t convinced yet by the many advantages of using a daily planner then the challenge is really quite simple. 

Try it for yourself! 

You’ll experience just exactly what I’m talking about—and maybe even a little bit more.