Tanya M.

I’ve always been an avid list maker and when I was working full time outside the home, suffering with Rheumatoid Arthritis, and we were raising three young boys, all I had time for was to make lists in my planner. My lists served to make sure my family was fed and healthy, the biggest fires fought and the squeakiest wheels oiled. We were in pure survival mode and time flew way too fast.

Before I knew it, our oldest son was nearly a teenager, my chronic illness worsened because of my job stress, and my husband and I decided enough was enough. I quit my job to stay home with our boys in 2013. That’s when I started using planners in a different way. Not just to make lists but to improve our quality of life….I became a total planner and productivity junkie. I read all the productivity and time management books I could get my hands on, including The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Getting Things Done: The Art to Stress-Free Productivity. They really helped me get a handle on what I needed to organize all the ideas, to dos, and goals in my head onto paper so I could achieve stress-free productivity. A state of zen where I knew exactly what I needed to work on at any given moment and I could knock it out.

So then came the quest for the perfect planner to help me achieve that and I finally dove into the Franklin Planner system in January of 2021. I had heard of it before, of course, but never took the time to learn about how the system worked. I took the free online training and I was hooked….What I love most about the Franklin system is that it’s value-based. Those first exercises in the training of identifying my values and what that looks like in my life was life changing. Even those most mundane tasks like decluttering and cleaning house are more meaningful, rewarding, and worthwhile…

You can hear more from Tanya on her blog, Mom’s Small Victories, or her youtube channel where she shares tips on planning, productivity, goal setting, and living with chronic illness.