Liz Armbrecht

I’m spilling all my secrets in this one!

“Liz never forgets anything” or “Liz, how do you always know what to get someone” or “I want to be like Liz, she has her life together.” These are phrases I hear every once in a while, and I find them both very flattering and also deeply embarrassing. I’m glad I have an outward façade of competence, but, the truth is, it’s hiding a great deal of anxiety and a Google calendar full of time blocks and reminders.

So if you, too, want to project this air of having your s*** together, here’s how I do it:

1. Put loved ones’ important dates in your calendar

Put special things in your calendar, whether digital or paper, including:

• Loved ones’ birthdays
• Loved ones’ kids’ birthdays or adoption days
• Anniversaries
• Special events
• Surgeries
• Vacations

The nice thing about a digital calendar is you can make yearly events recurring on your calendar and then you don’t have to remember every year. While waiting for dinner at a friend’s wedding, I put their wedding date as a recurring event in my calendar so I don’t forget the anniversary. If someone tells me they’re headed out on vacation or having an important procedure done, I’ll put it in my calendar immediately. That way, when special dates roll around, I can shoot them a text and let them know I’m thinking of them or send gifts/care packages.

I make these events ping notifications in my digital calendar and also make them a separate color so they pop out among all my other events, meetings and time blocks.

2. Allot time each month to do gift planning

I have a recurring reminder on my calendar on the 15th of every month to plan the month-after-next’s gifts. (For example, March 15th I’m planning May birthdays.) This way, I’m always ahead no matter what other tasks I have going on.

The week of the 15th, I make sure to block out time to do the planning. This is mostly for birthday gifts, but also includes Mother’s/Father’s Day, anniversaries, or special care packages to friends I want to send. (I do give/send Christmas gifts, too, so I do all that planning in October.)

During this blocked time, I:

• Write down the names of the loved ones as well as what my targeted budget is for the gift
• Sit and think about the loved one I want to give a gift to, especially the things I like about them or the shared interests we have
• Freewrite/brainstorm items or experiences that might be a good fit for this person and budget
• Refer to my list of ideas—I keep a space on my phone for writing down gift ideas when they pop in my head. Sometimes I have an idea for this particular person, sometimes I don’t.

When I’m done idea generating, I then block time (if I don’t have time right then) to do research and then mark in my calendar when I want to have each of these things bought/created/delivered for these events.

3. Make recurring reminders for house upkeep

I like to call myself Head Housekeeper because I am in charge of directing all upkeep for the house and family. I don’t oversee any maids, but I have my trusty Google calendar (are you seeing a theme here?) that helps me remember when certain things need to get done.

I make myself reminders for things like:

• Replacing the air filter (every three months)
• Cleaning the insides of appliances, including filters (once a month)
• Washing and vacuuming my car (once a month)
• Giving Morph his medicines (once a month)
• Replacing the smoke alarm batteries and testing the alarms (test once a month, replace the batteries twice a year or as needed)

4. Subscribe to a cardmaking kit

Ohoho, a piece of advice that doesn’t involve the Google calendar!

I subscribe to Paper Pumpkin*, which is a monthly crafting kit that typically has cards for me to make, but sometimes has treat boxes or other papercrafting activities. First, making the cards is a relaxing activity I look forward to each month. Second, I have beautiful handmade cards that make my friends and family very happy to open them!

With the price of greeting cards as high as it is these days, I find this to be a very good investment for the amount of cards I like to send for special occasions.

*I am not being paid to promote this, I genuinely love their subscription box and have been a subscriber for years!

5. Scrapbook and/or go through your photos regularly

If the #4 wasn’t enough of a clue, I love papercrafting, and scrapbooking is my favorite! I make physical scrapbooks for some of my photos, but I also do a yearbook for my family every year. To ensure I’m not spending most of December trying to remember what all happened throughout the past year, I block out time each month (using my Google calendar, of course) to scrapbook the month’s activities.

This has the added benefit of giving me allotted time to go through memories and enjoy them all over again, which helps with the blur that happens when things get busy and days/weeks/months seem like they’re rushing by at a breakneck speed.

And, I use this time to clean out my photos cloud of screenshots, duplicate photos, or bad photos. That way, when Google lets me know that I’m almost capped at my storage, I know that every single one of those photos really needs to be saved there!

6. Own the role of Activity Director for your friend group(s)

Get on your friends’ a**es to hang out!

I hate the phrase, “We should do this more often,” and I used to be the worst offender when it came to saying it.

One of the biggest culture shocks of becoming an actual adulty adult out of college was the fact that everyone is so freaking busy we just don’t hang out like we used to in college. But everyone always agrees, when we do hang out, it was more than worth it, and we have to do it again.

So instead of just saying, “We should do this more often” at the end of a get together, try one of these:

• Use polls—I use the polls feature in Facebook Messenger or Google forms to poll availability for our friends. I just list out dates my husband and I are available, and then (I’m not kidding) nag everyone until they fill it out.
• Set up the next date while we are currently hanging out—I stand in front of the door and don’t let anyone leave until everyone pulls out their phones and we have the next date on the calendar.
• Plan regular vacations/weekend getaways with friends—We aim for yearly, and sometimes we get more than one in! We move the location around to try and even out who has long travel distances/times and who is paying for hotels or can stay at home, etc.

Bonus: Trick them into playing Dungeons & Dragons—Get your friends hooked on dnd, and then they have to hang out with you regularly in order to find out what happens next in the story/level up their characters (a dnd player’s favorite activity ever).

7. Make time for benefits planning

Depending on what you have available from your work, make time annually or bi-annually to check in on your benefits. Keep track of your FSA (flexible spending account) spending, monitor your retirement account(s), and use all of your PTO each year.

I make myself reminders to check in on my FSA every couple of months, I do PTO planning at the beginning of each year, and I look at my retirement account every time I get a notification from my servicer.

I also make time for the free educational webinars my job provides about my benefits. This is part of my compensation, and it’s really important to me that I’m maximizing my usage of these features.

I’m also the biggest proponent of using your PTO every year. Not using PTO is NOT a badge of honor; it means you’re giving your job extra work that, let’s be real, they don’t deserve from you! If you need ideas for how to use your time off that’s not a week-long vacation, try one of these:

• Staycation: Lounge around your house, get some personal writing done, enjoy your space without thinking about work
• Weekday day off: Plan a fun activity in the middle of the week for a little break. For example, is the weather going to be nice? Go to a local winery—you’ll find the crowds a lot more manageable than if you go on a weekend!
• Make a 3-day weekend: You don’t have to go anywhere; just pretend there’s a Monday holiday and give yourself two benefits: a day off and a four-day week after.

8. Block time for anything and stick to it

Whether at work or at home, I put actual blocks on my calendar for everything and anything that needs to get done. That way, when someone asks if I’m free a certain day, I can look at my calendar and see what I had planned immediately. This makes me better prepared to say no if an activity is not a good fit for that day/time, as well as better able to enjoy that activity because I’m not thinking about something else I (feel like I) should be doing.

You don’t want to get to Saturday and realize you essentially double-booked yourself: You committed to an event or activity, but you actually wanted to get something knocked off your list, and you don’t have time for both.

For example, we are in the process of moving cities, and I have many of our upcoming Saturdays from now until the move blocked out for certain house prep tasks that need done. Otherwise, we’d get to the summer and be panicking trying to get ready to leave!

9. Write. It. Down.

As you have a thought, get it down on paper or in your phone. Don’t say you’ll remember, because you won’t! There is so much happening day-to-day, the busyness overwhelms the brain and it forgets, and forgets, and forgets.

I will write random notes to myself in my paper planner, I will track to do tasks in my Microsoft To Do app the moment the phrase, “Oh, I should…” crosses my mind, and I yell at my husband from the shower to add things to our shared grocery list.

Then, every morning when I go through my list for the day, I compile notes from all these places to make sure they a) make it on my to-do list for the week if they need to get done immediately, b) get assigned out to future weeks if I know when they need to get done, or c) get added to my general list of to-dos that don’t have a due date and I haven’t decided when to do them yet.

10. Follow others for inspiration

Other people have a lot of wisdom to share, and I love to soak it up via newsletters, blogs, or Instagram. Find people whose work, art, or story fills you with joy and inspires you and give them a follow! Here are some of mine:

• Productivity and goal planning – Full Focus
• Reflection and personal development – Amanda Simply Well
• Papercrafting, and also my amazing, inspiring mother – Really Robin Stamps
• Travel – A Dangerous Business
• Writing, and one of the greatest, most entertaining newsletters I subscribe to hands down – Ann Handley

What makes you feel like a really real adult and that you have your life together? I’m always looking for more ideas because, seriously, I don’t really feel like it’s all together…..