Do you spend an hour (or more!) flipping through the layouts in the display of planners at your favorite store? Maybe you’re hoping the next one will have all the productivity hacks you need to make 2023 your year. “This one looks great, but not that cover,” you might say. “This cover is awesome, but nope not enough lines,” you might say.
Have you ever opened one up and said: “There. I’m home.”?
There is no one set of lines, dots, calendar squares, or cover art that will make everyone happy. It doesn’t exist. But what does exist is a planner made for Christians, by Christians, with creative hearts in mind.
Here are 10 ways to boost your productivity with the 2023 Creative Christian Planner:
1. Picky about your covers? Ok, pick one!
When you download the Creative Christian Planner, it comes with this year’s set of curated covers created by designers with various tastes. Because the truth is, if you don’t love, LOVE the cover of your planner, you won’t want to pick it up. Period. If it’s a bland pound of tree that sits forever unopened, the only planning you’ll have accomplished is that it’ll end up in the recycling bin before June. 
2. Words of God (in Color!)
At the beginning of every month, there is a full-page verse graphic ready for you to color in! Mindful adult coloring books aren’t just for older millennials (ok, the baby boomer generation might have us tied).
What’s the longest you’ve ever pondered on one verse of the Bible? How long have you sat with it, and your thoughts, reflecting on its meaning and the guidance that verse can have in your life? If your answer is “not very long,” then try sitting down with the verse coloring page for January and see how it feels. I’d imagine that by December, you’d have a year full of amazing creations in your planner, and 12 months of honest reflection with these verses. Starting each month in the stillness of creativity and biblical advice is a productivity hack waiting to be cracked wide open by my fellow #CreativeChristianPlanner friends.
3. The freedom of dot grid pages
Every amazing planner has them, and so does the Creative Christian Planner. Dot grid pages arrived on the planner scene with the intention of creative freedom. These blank canvases are at the end of each month’s section, and there’s also a full section of blank pages at the end of the planner. And there’s nothing stopping you from simply adding more, and more, and more of these pages wherever you want when you customize your planner!
Here are some great uses of the dot grid pages shared from past Creative Christian Planner users:
- Worship service note-taking
- Class notes
- Meeting and caucus notes
- To-Watch and To-Read lists
4. A new week, a new verse
Each week of the year comes with a Bible verse for inspiration. These are verses that have been used in worship services inside the Church Of Christ, or included in articles found in the Pasugo: God’s Message Magazine. You might even recognize some of these verses when they were featured on the Instagram account Bible.Verses.INC. Or, some of them might be totally new to you!
Isn’t it a great feeling when you turn that page on Monday (Oh, Mondays…), and instead of feeling the blah that’s often associated with the start of another week of work or class, you get to feel a spark of inspiration from God’s guidance?
A Bible verse might just be a sentence or two, but letting yourself be inspired while planning ahead and making every week’s verse the theme of your joy for the week is a productivity (and happiness) hack you’ll look forward to.
5. Add-On: Parent Pack
If you’re a parent, I urge you, with all the years of my motherhood experience, to download the Parent Pack that’s available as an add-on to the Creative Christian Planner (you should get the link to it in your email once you sign up for the Planner).
In it you’ll find:
- Weekly Overview: know what everyone’s big tasks are for the week
- Family Timetable: including space to indicate when your family is attending worship service this week
- Cleaning & Chores: enough room for everyone in the household to help
- Gratitude Reflection: if you’re a parent, you just thought of that kid who needs this, and you’re right
- Family Hour and Date Night Planning Helpers
- Budget Sheet
- Emergency Contact Sheet
Print and laminate the sheets you love to reuse and post them where everyone can see them in your family!
6. Add-On: Daily Insert
If you really want to take your planning up a notch, then I’d suggest downloading the Daily Insert among the available Add-Ons. In the same style as the rest of the Planner, you can print and insert as many of these as you need. Need 365 of them? That’s ok. Need just enough for Monday-Friday for work? That’s ok. Need just enough for Saturday-Sunday because that’s when your minute-by-minute responsibilities kick into overdrive? Go get some ink and paper and get as many of these as you need!
7. Add-On: Self Care
Whether used as a periodical check-in, a scheduled monthly reflection or a daily to-do list, this one-sheet of Self Care inspires balance in our lives. This sheet revolves around these main areas in our life:
- Spiritual
- Physical
- Emotional
- Social
Ask yourself, “What have I done in this area lately?” It can be an easy, quick self-diagnosis on what to pay more attention to. And “spiritual” is up top for an obvious reason: without that, we know the rest can fall apart.
8. Add-On: Well Being
If you’d like more variety and a robust reflection challenge, downloading the Well Being Add-On will keep you busy throughout the year. It’s a series of themed reflections, mostly to do with our involvement in the Church Of Christ and the quality of our membership. These prompts guide you through recovering after making a mistake, about being helpers to the Church Administration, and even looking forward to 2024 when the time is right.
It’s easy to get lost in the nitty-gritty of planning—the dates, the schedules, the time slots, the lack of availability. But these moments of reflection bring calm and stillness to our minds, and assurance to our heart. It takes an uncluttered mind and heart to effectively plan your life.
9. Space to share your faith
At the bottom of every month, there are two really important boxes marked “Share My Faith With” and “Faith Goals.” As members of the Church, we understand how important it is to make sharing our faith part of our life’s routine. This space acts as a reminder, a tracker and promise; a reminder to ourselves to start those conversations, a tracker to make note of what you’ve accomplished and what’s next, and the promise we already made to God a long time ago, to share our faith whenever we can.
10. Trusting God
But none of these hacks will do anything for you if you don’t know what it means to trust God in your plans. At the front of every copy of the Creative Christian Planner, there is the same Bible verse: “For everything there is an appointed season, and there is a proper time for every project under heaven.” Ecclesiastes 3:1 Modern Language Bible.
When’s the time? When’s the season? Well, dear Creative Christian Planners, only God knows the final appointed time of our plans. But we hope that through using this document created by INC Media it’s brought you closer to His plans for you. We hope that it has inspired you to boost your productivity in the areas of your life that will bring you closer to being worthy of the amazing season He has in store for us all.
Download Your 2023 Creative Christian Planner
Ready to take on 2023? Download your 2023 Creative Christian Planner and customize it to fit your life. Don’t forget to share how you’re using the planner on social media and tag instagram.com/incmedianews on your post!
Happy Planning!
