Over the week, I did find two new apps to use but they are not time-wasters. The two apps are Wellos and Fable.
Screen time recap last week
Wellos is a health app that I have access to through my insurance. Fable is a book tracking app that also has book groups. I saw it through Instagram before I got rid of it and Fable is a great alternative to Goodreads since I’ve been trying to drop Amazon. (Goodreads is owned by Amazon.)
Even with the addition of health and reading tracking, my screen time for the week went down by 58% from the week before.
By creating a barrier to the apps for myself by only accessing them on my computer, I have greatly increased my reading time. I was able read the majority of the first Wheel of Time book in about 3 days. (The book is 744 pages!) I also finished reading ‘Home is Where the Bodies Are.’ (Not my favorite read.)
My previous main planner had the goal of simplifying my life. But it began doing the opposite. I started obsessing over the daily details and then writing down the same exact things everyday, believing that it would automate my life and bring myself into consistency. I’ve been drowning in this postpartum season of life and simplifying sounded good. Then comes the Makselife planner. I had bought this planner around April when it was on sale and around the same time I bought the other planner. I’m not sure why, but I had dropped it after it came and I tried to only use the goal work in the beginning of the book to find myself again. April through July ended up being chaos and my whole life and house looked like it. I brought the Makselife planner out of my shelf and put everything else away, telling myself to only use this planner to try and level things out and it has worked for the best.
The Makselife planner was made by a life coach named Sierra Friend and it came out first in 2019. Being a planner enthusiast, I had seen it around but the relatively high price tag always pushed me away. A one-year Makselife planner is regularly $76 according to the website so it’s one of the more expensive specialty planners. The company describes itself as a luxury planner company so the price makes sense.
The purpose of putting the goal planning pages with the daily agenda pages is to keep your goals up front and plan out your days and actions with your goals in mind. Most planners keep the two separate or a goal planner company only releases a goal planner but not a daily agenda so this planner is unique in that it keeps the two completely together in one book.
There are 8 areas of life in the book that are the areas for goals and weekly actions. That may sound like a lot but in my case, most of the 8 can overlap or each can have its own goal that ties in with a goal from another life area, especially since my life has one overarching theme in it right now which is motherhood. According to the company, you don’t have to use all 8 areas if that’s too much for you but each area is important to the facets of most individual’s life and goals.
With this in mind, this planner has been my best tool for finding myself again and calming the sea of chaos around me that is my mental health, physical health, and physical environment.
They just came out with their 2024 planners at the end of September and I am anxiously awaiting being able to dive into the goal setting pages for the start of the new year.
As I’ve been taking a long commute to and from work, I decided to start listening to audio books and I decided to start with a book by Holly Pivec and Doug Geievett called Counterfeit Kingdom. As a Christian, I frequently watch YouTube videos regarding Christianity and Christian culture. So when channels I watch often like Fighting for the Faith and Alisa Childers began recommending this book, I added it to my reading list.
As a quick explanation, this book is a summary of the apparent beliefs of a movement within Christian circles called the New Apostolic Reformation. One of the main things in this movement is a belief that there are current-day apostles rather than just the past apostles that are described in scripture. This book explains this and other beliefs in this movement in detail.
A strange additional detail about this movement is that most of the churches that are in this movement deny being in this movement. This appears to be the heart of why this book was written, in order to show the unbiblical part of these beliefs, because many who wouldn’t normally be influenced by this movement have been influenced by this movement.
Even as someone who isn’t an expert in religion or Christianity specifically, I’ve noticed these beliefs in my local churches. One of the ways I see this myself is through the jargon or buzzwords that are used in the movement. Because our culture is so centered on hashtags, trending, and buzzwords, we all are easily able to adopt words like this even if it means something slightly different than what we think it means. An example phrase is “prayer declarations.” Many in the NAR movement just talk about prayer but in teachings from the pastors of the movement, they only talk about prayer declarations, which is to say that in prayer, the person is declaring to receive what they are “praying” for. The scriptural view of prayer is of a humble request of God, not a declaration that God must give or will give what the person is “asking” for.
A cultural example of a hashtag or trending phrase becoming popular or viral but it wasn’t understood by a large part of the population was “Netflix and chill.” This phrase is still used jokingly out of what its original meaning was, which was a code teenagers were using for sexual activity in order to hide it. But it still went viral because it was popular and people heard it often online so it caught traction. I think because we start to hear the phrases or buzzwords like “prayer declarations” on the radio like on KLOVE or in teaching videos online, they sound Christian in their use, they gain traction. They sound good but they don’t actually mean the same thing.
I could say more about how much I agree with the thoughts of this book, but I will end here. I highly recommend this book to Christians not as a blaming book or a pointing fingers book, but as a helpful tool for true discernment. Being able to understand false teachings and discern them from biblical teachings is taught in scripture in the New Testament as being an important skill for the Christian to have. (Acts, 1 Timothy, Titus, and Jude contain some of these examples.)
Over the past few weeks, I have been off work because I left my most recent retail job suddenly and have been awaiting the start of my new job. In that time, I have been focused on my home, my health, and working on my Codecademy courses and it has been amazing. This was a much-needed rest and reset time and during this time, I have also worked to find tools that will help me to maintain my helpful routines even when I start to work again. The main tool that I have now and I’m looking forward to using in the coming weeks of managing work and home life is the Simplified Planner.
I had first heard of the Simplified Planner about 5 years ago when I had first started paying attention to the planner community on YouTube and Instagram. At that time, I thought about trying the planner but I didn’t want a daily planner that had a shared weekend page because I worked a variable schedule. During Covid from 2020 to 2022, I worked from home and didn’t use hardly any planners except for my Plum Paper planner that I used as a pregnancy and baby journal.
Now I am starting a job with a consistent schedule and I’m having to manage life with my toddler as well and the idea that Simplified as a company puts forth sounded appealing to me as a relatively new mom who works and is the primary household manager. The idea of simplifying or living a simplified life sounds so good to me! So for that reason, I decided to take advantage of the sale that Simplified has on their 2023 annual daily planners to give it a shot. And I am so glad I did!
2023 Simplified Planner in Butterfly Garden
The Simplified Planner’s layout is a basic planner layout with the weekdays having a page-per-day and the weekend is on one page. Half of the daily page has an hourly timeline from 6am to 9pm and the other half is a to do list and the bottom quarter of the page is blank for notes. This layout is perfect because I can make regular to do’s and timed to do’s because I don’t have a lot of appointments. So I use the timeline for loose time-blocking. The planner also has monthly calendars which allow for planning in advance, at least that’s how I use it.
2023 Simplified Planner daily page
I have enjoyed this planner so much!
2023 Simplified Planner weekend page
Not only does the company make these gorgeous planners, but they also provide tips that are so helpful. For me, the tips and life ideas help immensely after going through the major life change of having a baby and admittedly losing myself going back to work after only 8 weeks postpartum.
2023 Simplified Planner monthly pages
In the front of the planner are what are called the Simplified prep work pages which are meant to orient you into the new year. I did this at the beginning of April but it was the fresh start that I so desperately needed. These prep pages were developed by the founder of Simplified, Emily Ley, and from the stories she has shared, she GETS IT when it comes to working-mom life overwhelm. I won’t share photos of the prep work because I wrote and highlighted all over my prep work pages but they are all about Simplified’s Process of Simplifying, how to use the planner, preparing for the new year, ideas for new routines, the Simplicity Challenge, (which is also shared on Simplified’s social media) and your yearly bucket list.
When I say that I desperately needed this fresh start, I mean it. This prep work was so refreshing for me as a mom of a 16-month old who is struggling hard with postpartum depression. It makes you think about how to improve but it doesn’t push you hard into the whole “hustle” “make it work” “just do it” kind of culture that many goal-oriented planners tend to push you into.
I know that this company is also 15 years old so I’m way late to the party, but I had to share how much this planner and process have helped me out of the figurative drowning that I was struggling through. The company also publishes a podcast which I tend to watch on YouTube and that has also helped me because the whole thing is just positive and so filled with light. Emily has also published books, which once I have read them I can share more thoughts about them. I started reading A Simplified Life on Kindle but it has questions that I really want to dig into so I ordered the physical copy on the Simplified website that I’m waiting anxiously for. Even reading chapters 1-5 has continued to help me in my struggles so I look forward to being able to use it as a reference and a workbook.
I know I’m not alone as well because the company has a Facebook group for the Simplified community which is amazing. I honestly just want to thank the Simplified team and Emily for everything they do because it helped me SO much.
(This post is not sponsored. Links are not affiliated links. This post is all my own opinions and inspired by my experiences. Photos are my own. The products mentioned belong to their own company/trademark.)
One of my goals this year is to reduce the packaging and plastic packaging that I end up buying when buying household products. One of the products that I have to buy regularly is deodorant and it almost always comes in a proprietarily shaped plastic container. This lead me to search the internet for plastic-free deodorant and of course, the first one to come up is the deodorant from the brand Native.
Native three pack of deodorant
Native is a brand that comes up frequently when one is searching for deodorant and body wash but they also have lotions and toothpastes. Currently, it appears that soap and deodorant are their only plastic-free or low-plastic product options.
Reviews of their deodorants seem to be fairly good but I will have to put them to the test compared to other aluminum-free deodorants that I’ve tried. I hope to have a good review of the deodorants soon!
After I had watched the documentary “The Social Dilemma,” I have been off of social media and permanently deleted my profiles from Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter. After a couple of days of the quiet of not hearing all the opinions and news from my social media newsfeeds, I began to search for other sources of news. Through my research of the people in the documentary, I went to the website for the Center for Humane Technology and on the “Take Control” page, I found different news sources that allow you to have more control on the news you see. The main resource that the page highlighted for this use is AllSides, which is a balanced news source that filters multiple articles for many of the same stories based on user feedback to say which “side” the news headline and article comes from. Some are labeled as being from the Left, the Right and the Center. This allows you to understand the writer’s bias, since many if not all writers and news organizations have a particular bias. For example, my local newspaper has even announced its chosen presidential candidate that it endorses and the reasoning why. This leads me to compare its news stories to those of other writers to see what is common between them and what is different. In using this system, I hope to view news stories with a clear mind and to understand what is actually happening rather than what each side claims about the other. I know that they do this because it’s their job to make their own side look good but I find it confusing. I also don’t want to just find news stories that I agree with but basically want to cross-examine as many stories as I can.
(No sponsors, the links are provided above for convenience.)
PaperCat 