New in the Redhead Paper Shop

I have recently added several new items, including one I designed initially as a custom order for a returning customer. Check them out!

Hello 2024

First up is my annual “Hello New Year” sticker page. I’m going for growth energy with my green stained glass “Hello 2024” set!

2024 Moon Phases

Next up is a full-page single sticker updating one I had last year. Oddly enough, the 2023 moon phase sticker didn’t sell too well, but the 2024 Moon Phase sticker has already outsold last year’s!

2024 Full-Page Month Calendars

This last one was a request from one of my long-time customers, and I’m always happy to design things for them. They wanted a 12-sticker set of each month on a full page. I decided they would be a great addition for the store.

These are sized to take up most of a page in an A5 notebook. Honestly, my handwriting is probably too big for me to use this, but I know there are lots of people out there with smaller handwriting than me!

New Shop Items for 2023

I’ve added a few new items to my Etsy shop just in time for 2023!

Hello 2023 New Year Set

Image of a keyhole in a door with light shining through. Over it is a banner saying "Hello 2023". Added to the main image is a key, a dip pen and bottle of ink, and a bank of lit candles.

I’ve recently started celebrating my personal new year in October, my birth month. But it also feels weird not to acknowledge the traditional new year in my planner. So here’s my set for 2023! I decided to go with a theme of “opening the door on a new year” and combine that with light to symbolize hope for the coming months.

The main sticker is roughly 3.8″ wide by 5.3″ tall and features a keyhole shining with light, a key, lit candles, and Hello 2023. Candles, keys, a magic potion, and a hand holding a 2023 planner add accent stickers.

Order here.

Celestial Themed Set

I designed this set to use with washi tape I got in an OwlCrate* box a few months ago, and I really love this set.

This is a 5×7 sheet of 24 stickers themed around celestial energy and magic. Decorate your collection page with pretty crystals, feathers, and candles. Two larger stickers illustrate moon phases.

* Not an affiliate link, I just like them.

Order here.

Moon Phases 2023

And speaking of moon phases… I always mark the first quarter, full, last quarter, and new moon on my monthly log, but I found a nice graphic depicting the phase of the moon on each day of 2023. (For the northern hemisphere, at least!)

This is a 5×7 sheet of 16 stickers themed around the 2023 lunar calendar. The main sticker is 6.5″ tall by 3.6″ wide. Additional stickers portray individual phases of the moon and include several stars as well!

Order here.

New colorways for Month Tabs

And finally, because I like having new Bullet Journal colors every year, I also like having matching month tabs! I made a brown & green set for my mom, whose current BuJo is dark green. I also made a set of purple tabs some time ago for a custom order, and meant to get that listed as an option for people as well.

Order here.

 

A harvest sticker set from Redhead Paper on Etsy to celebrate autumn

Autumn Goodies in the Shop!

I’ve probably mentioned before now that autumn is my favorite season, yes? Well, I’ve been working on new products, and one of my favorites is is my three-sheet Autumn Harvest set!⁠

A harvest sticker set from Redhead Paper on Etsy to celebrate autumn

Harvest vegetables, leaves, fall picnics, candles, apples, fall foliage, and autumn scenery all make an appearance in the Autumn Harvest set. Use these Bullet Journal stickers to celebrate a season of coziness this autumn. Add that fall mood to your planner pages and Bullet Journal. Celebrate Samhain and honor the equinox. Embrace a sense of gratitude for the harvest season. Some of these stickers are large autumn scenes and some are smaller embellishments.

My Autumn Mood set is another I created recently, trying to emphasize the warm and cozy aspects of autumn. You can also get an entire bundle of all of my Autumn stickers, and buying the bundle saves a little money instead of buying each listing individually.

Autumn mood stickers from RHP - boots and bats, lanterns and pumpkins

These Bullet Journal stickers are perfect for busy Bullet Journalists who LOVE the flexibility of the BuJo system but don’t have time to draw fancy spreads and want more time for drinking cocoa, reading comfort books, and sitting beside the fire.

Check out some of my seasonal bundles and best-sellers for more stickers at even more value!

Introducing Redhead Printables!

Redhead Paper Planner Printables digital downloads

I’m very excited to announce that starting in August, I’m adding lots of printable downloads to my Etsy shop!

I already have a few daily planning pages and a travel packing list there, but I’m adding actual planner kits now. Two planner kits are currently available, and more will be coming.

I have the Live Like a Redhead Planner Kit and the Crazy Cat Lady Planner Kit.

Planner Kit Printables

The Live Like a Redhead printable kit has 21 pages to help you plan out your life, define and achieve your goals, and be mindful of your finances.

Pages include:

  • Cover
  • Yearly Overview
  • Monthly Overview
  • Monthly Calendar
  • Week at a Glance
  • Today’s Plan
  • My Goals
  • Vision Mapping
  • Project Planner
  • Budget Tracker
  • Expense Tracker
  • Income Tracker
  • Financial Snapshot
  • Health and Fitness
  • Meal Planning and Grocery List
  • Lists
  • Books to Read
  • Brain Dump
  • Password Tracker
  • Workflow Planner
  • Habit Tracker

The Crazy Cat Lady Planner Kit has all of those pages plus a Pet Care page…and it’s decorated with adorable cat pictures!

How to Use the Planner Kits

Printable Financial Snapshot worksheet from the Crazy Cat Lady Planner Kit

The Financial Snapshot page gives you a year-at-a-glance overview of your income and expenses, so you can take a longer view of your financial situation. The Workflow Planner allows you to consider daily, weekly, monthly, and annual tasks that need to be done. The Habit Tracker is a four-week tracking sheet for five different habits–because you don’t want to try to change too much at once!

Download the file and print as many as you’d like! This listing is for a digital PDF download that you print yourself. No physical items will be delivered.

Other Printables in the Works

I’m currently working on designing a Budgeting and Debt Reduction Planner Kit, and I’m planning a Write Your Novel Planner Kit. I’m also thinking about a Medical Planner Kit, since I’ve been working with a customer of mine who is a doctor to create trackers for various medical conditions.

Free Printable Downloads

Just a reminder, I have a Downloads page here at the website so you can get an idea of what I’m making. I’m also adding one more today!

This is a printable daily plan. I’m listing it in three versions at my Etsy store, but you can get the black and white one here for free!

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I’m open to suggestions for other printables you want. Tell me what your planner needs are!

New Downloads Page

This is just a quick post today. I wanted to let everyone know that I’ve set up a separate downloads page on the website. That way you don’t have to search through the tags to find my free downloads.

Right now it isn’t a big deal because there are only a couple of printables. But I plan to start adding more printable downloads in the next few months, so I wanted to have a place to collect them.

Currently available to download are my weekly time-blocking worksheet and a two-sided printable bookmark I created inspired by The Dark Is Rising. Over time I plan to add daily dockets, a spring-cleaning checklist, packing lists, and more.

If there’s a printable you’d like to see created, I’m happy to take suggestions! Let me know in the comments on this post!

Digital Time-Blocking is also an alternative

Free Time-Blocking Printable for Better Productivity

I love my Bullet Journal. But it isn’t perfect. I often use it in addition to other tools, including a time-blocking worksheet, Google Calendar, and a timer.

One thing that isn’t easy to do in the Bullet Journal system is future planning/scheduling. Sometimes, when I have a large project I want to get done, the only way for me to “find” time to work on it is to make time. But in my Bullet Journal, I don’t keep a daily or weekly schedule the way you would in a paper planner. I rely on Google Calendar for my appointments & meetings, writing them in my monthly log and looking at the calendar every day. That works well for me.

So when I need to block out my schedule and make time for my project, I print out a blank weekly time-blocking sheet and start marking what I have to do each day of the week.

Cal Newport seems to be the first person who wrote about time-blocking, back in 2013. He does time-blocking a little differently than I do. He recommends blocking out every single minute of your day. I don’t do that. I suppose I could just block in “Play Skyrim” or “read a novel” instead of leaving those blank spaces. I’ll talk more about that later, though.

How to start time-blocking

Start with the essentials. We all have commitments we either can’t or won’t give up. For most of us, there’s a full-time job, for instance. For those of us who can’t work from home, there’s commuting time.

So I start by writing in church, my work week, and commute time, because those are unchanging. Sleep is important, so I block out the time I want to be sleeping. I also put my television shows on there, because I don’t want to miss them (right now it’s just The 100, but iZombie is back next week!)

Time-blocking printable worksheet by redhead paper

Add Negotiable Commitments

After the essentials, I add any meetings or appointments I might have. Those can vary from week to week, depending on what committees I’m involved in or if I’m volunteering somewhere.

If you have kids with sports or activity commitments, you’ll need to put those on here, too.

Once my time-blocking worksheet is filled in with everything I can think of that I must get done, that’s when the magic happens.

Block in Reactive Time

Here’s something I hadn’t thought about before reading Cal Newport’s blog. Even if you have a job that involves a lot of necessary interruptions, you can handle that with time-blocking. Just mark in “Reactive Work.”

Newport writes:

“Even if you’re blocking most of your day for reactive work, for example, the fact that you are controlling your schedule will allow you to dedicate some small blocks (perhaps at the schedule periphery) to deeper pursuits.”

I think that’s a great way of coping with the reactive work. Part of my day job involves me being available to give tours at a moment’s notice. I’m going to talk to my coworkers about each of us blocking in reactive work time to co-ordinate how we share the load. I have lots of other duties besides the tours, which means I also need to be able to schedule in deep work time blocks.

Block in Project Work

This is where I look at the time that’s left over on my schedule. I figure out how to spend that time and how much of it I can give to my project.

In this case, it’s my writing. I’m way past overdue on my latest novel, and it needs a serious commitment from me now that I’m recovered from the nasty case of bronchitis I had for a good part of this month.

Looking at my time-blocking sheet above, I see a lot of blank spaces on the calendar to do things like laundry, meals, and playing with the cats or reading.

But I also managed to find time for a solid 17 hours of writing in this week.

Leave Yourself Some Free Time

I think it’s important to leave some flex in your blocked out schedule. For one thing, life happens. Electricity goes out. Tires lose air. Germs attack. Not only that, but other people may not be privy to your schedule, so interruptions happen–some more important than others.

Not only that, but time-blocking should never be an exercise in pain. The goal of a time-blocking sheet isn’t to keep your nose to the grindstone 24/7. It’s to be intentional in how you use your time. It’s to make you aware of just how much time you have, if you put off checking email until after you do the deep work you’re committed to.

Now, since Cal Newport recommends blocking your entire schedule, I had a go at doing just that on Google Calendar. The good news is, you can create a time-blocking schedule pretty easily on a digital calendaring system, too. I’m not sure if I’m in love with scheduling everything, and it takes a little more work than doing it on paper. But here’s what it would look like on GCal.

Digital Time-Blocking is also an alternative

Use a Timer during your time blocks

Another useful tool with your time-blocking printable is a timer. The Pomodoro Technique, designed by Francisco Cerillo, has you set a timer for 25 minutes. You work on your project until the timer goes off, and then you take a short break. Every four Pomodoro sessions, you take a longer break.

I’ve learned first-hand how well this works. During NaNoWriMo my friends and I often have word wars. We put our heads down and write for a set period of time (often 15 minutes, sometimes 30 minutes). At the end of that time, we compare to see how many words each person has. The point of the word wars isn’t to have perfect prose. It’s to get words on the page so you have something you can polish later.

Free Time-Blocking Printable

Do you have a project you need to commit to? I can help! Click the button below to download a PDF of the blank time-blocking worksheet. No email required!

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Let me know how it works for you!

Additional Time-Blocking Resources

For a deeper dive into time-blocking, check out this great post on RescueTime’s blog: Time-Blocking 101.


Get a free time-blocking printable for planning and time management from Redhead Paper!