A New Plan to Enjoy Life
by Elena Rozhkova / Tasmanskaya, expat living in Ostrava
We live in a bit strange but very interesting times. Everything is changing at a breakneck speed. But we as people actually don’t. Our bodies and our minds are not ready or programmed for such rapid changes. After all, the smallest evolutionary steps take usually at least hundreds of years. There’s just no time for that now. We “don’t have time” for anything. We are permanently running out of time. And still, there are 24 hours for all of us in a day.
It seems to me that most of all many people somehow miss the time to live to the full. Live for real, live in the moment. Work, relax, and think – all with pleasure savouring all the moments. We don’t have, or rather do not make or reserve enough time for that. All seems to be ahead, busy and running: the presence sacrificed to future and the past getting so fast behind that its bright rays do not reach us anymore.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve tried to combine three jobs, three children, a social life, and several educational courses. I didn’t get much sleep. It was hard to smile when everything seemed like a chaos covered with a blanket of eternal fatigue.
So I moved to a new country. A chance to start a brand new story. New language, new people, new rules. And I decided that I wanted to start this life differently. I want to live, and not to rush to an unknown place at the rocket speed during which sweet moments of the present and the past disappear like a shooting star.
So I decided to give my planning a complete restart. Yes, I have started a brand new way of writing my diary. Diaries writing to map the presence and the past have a great mind organising, calming and brightening up potential. And even healing potential for the areas that we are less happy about. At least this is what the neuroscience has proved on FMRI and generations of psychologists have been advocating for decades.
So what is NEW about writing my diary? Where is the “restart”? I still write To-do-Lists to structure the future. But using the modern technology I started to combine the future much with capturing the positive potential of the present and the capturing the best that the past can bring to me. I keep my memories attached to the moments and can draw the strength from them when the times become tough. I write down what is important to me and my family bringing order to chaos, mining for the best of the past and fuelling my future.
How is that done? you might ask. Once in my youth, I did this in beautiful notebooks from ribbons and pieces of photos protruded. Now I don’t carry paper notebooks and diaries with, but I carry a tablet and my phone. And having a good old looking like a paper brother planner inside my devices – one can start making miracles. When I was a child, I dreamed of such a thing. The answer is the DIGITAL PLANNER.
So what exactly is a Digital Planner?
Digital planners are PDF or JPEG files imported into note-taking apps like, for example GoodNotes, Notability or Noteshelf. You can use it on any device you can write on with stylus. It enables to plan and then simply and quickly change the plan into a colourful diary/scrapbook full of photos, notes and your best memories. The time of your life and the emotions you want to disappear in the dark corridors of memory, as they are connected to visual material.
Why is it worth giving the digital planning a chance?
· Less waste: more eco-friendly
· You can re-use it
· It`s synchronizing between all your devices
· You can insert photos or .png files right away from your device
· Digital planners can be categorized and tagged
· They can be very customisable
· Digital planners are cheaper than paper formats
And the results with me? Over the past six months, I’ve become more productive and calmer. I get more sleep. My path to awareness and mindfulness is unfolding. Silver clouds of new thoughts and ideas started to float in my head, because there is space for them. And when I suddenly stumble or start to doubt – I look at my planner. I see my yesterday, my today, and take another step into better tomorrow. All at one place. All at one sight. Like a Gestalt, a framework of life where everything is connected and steadily growing with no space to fade too soon until the life job is done.
Where can you get the digital diary (or a few)? Just Google it and you will see that it is a new small universe. You can buy a ready-made planner or you can create one of your own like I did. I am planning to make more of these “guys”, so keep in touch!
Elena Rozhkova / Tasmanskaya – manager of creative projects, graphic designer and illustrator based in Ostrava. Studied management and economy, marketing, psychology and design at several places in Europe including Spain. Her style of work could be characterized by positive minimalism within Pop art and Naïve art. In her projects she combines serious professional approach with an optimistic and resilient point of view. She speaks English, Czech, Russian and Spanish.