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Master the Use of White Space to Create a Breathable Schedule

When you use white space in your planner decorating you are also creating some breathing room in your daily schedule.

Friday-Mar-17

What you see in your planner will dictate how your day will go! 

No, seriously! :D

Of course the tasks and appointments you have scheduled will create the structure of your days and lend to how much breathing room you have in the day, but the decorating counts too!  The layout, the design of your page and the elements (stickers, die cuts etc) that you add, will influence how your day will play out.

Think of it this way; if you see your day's schedule written out in your planner but crowded with stickers and albeit pretty designs, you can still get a crowded feeling, like the day is crammed-full of tasks and appointments, even if it really isn't. But, if there is white space and an airy feeling to the decoration, you will also feel airy and freer as you go through your day.

Did I just get a little too woowoo on you? Just try it for a few days and see if it makes a difference ;)

Butterflies-roses

I'm sure a lot of you want your days to feel less rushed and busy, so first off, you must be careful not to over schedule yourself. Breathing space and calm need to have time on your schedule too. And no, drive-thru coffee on the way to your next meeting or the carpool pick up does not count!

click to tweet: Breathing space and calm need to have time on your schedule too.

If, on the other hand, your days are feeling like nothing but white space, you may want to add more structure to your daily routine, so that all that open time doesn't feel so overwhelming. This way, you'll be able to get a better picture of the time you have available to introduce new things into your day. Check out my post on morning routines, if you'd like more help with that.

Tip-in

What I really want to talk about today is how you decorate your pages!

If it's an eclectic mix of stickers practially overlapping and you are looking for more calm in your day, you probably won't get it. There's nothing wrong with this way of planning, of course, there is no wrong way. However if you are looking to feel less rushed in your day, try adding some white space to see if it makes a differecne. It doesn't actually have to be 'white' it simply needs to be a more open space on your page where your eye can rest as it looks around your page, and your mind can rest too.

Here are 4 tips to help you add a little breathing room to your planner and your day:

  1. Try adding less sticker, especially if you are just adding them for the fun of it
  2. If your days are busy and you don't want to use less stickers, put them on the lines or corners of the boxes, or group them neatly so that the white space is unified instead of spread out in little pockets around the page
  3. Try using clusters on your spread. (more on clusters coming next week)
  4. Use like colours and patterns

In this video I walk you through planning with white space in my Planner Perfect planbook and then I show some more examples from my Happy Planner and Commit30. You may want to pop the kettle on, it's a long one ;)

Here's a look at the other planners so you can get a feel of how it could look in a planner with boxes.

Breathe-happy-planner

Breathe-commit30

HAPPY PLANNING! 

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