TLDR
- If you hate planning but love a good vision board, here’s the reframe: your calendar is a vision board. What you put on it is what you’re putting out into the universe.
- I run The Sisters Enchanted full time, homeschool my two kids, see my grandmother twice a week, and travel a lot. Energy management is the only reason it works.
- I use two ride-or-die tools all year: my Google Calendar for the practical stuff, and my Sisters Enchanted Lunar Planner for how I want to feel.
- I look at my calendar first (what’s already committed), then build daily to-do lists around how I want to feel, and I never time-block my to-dos.
- Two seasonal extras right now: my Good Witch, Bad Bitch Summer tracker and a light homeschool planning sheet for my kids.
Welcome in, y’all. I’m Sara, founder of The Sisters Enchanted, and if there’s one thing I know to be true about women, and people in general, it’s that we don’t love to plan. There’s a subset of us who do (hi, it’s me), but most adults I talk to have some resistance to it. Even people who love a planner. I think it’s because you feel like you’ll make the plan, not stick to it, and then it was all for nothing.
But here’s what I also know: witchy women love a vision board. What’s possible? What images hold the way I want to feel? What will remind me to call in the things I want? So we’ve got resistance to planning and a love of visioning. My offer to you, as someone who’s both a very busy witchy woman and someone who’s spent years working with executive function and organization, is to close that gap. Look at planning as a vision board. When you plan a week, a day, or a month, you’re not filling in boxes. You’re casting what you’re creating for your life.
I have ADHD combined type. I also have five planets in Sagittarius. Chicken or the egg, is it the ADHD or the Sagittarius stellium? I don’t know. But I deeply understand wanting freedom and open space, and how shrinking it feels to look at a calendar that’s just packed. So this isn’t theory for me. This is how I keep a full life from swallowing me whole.
DEFINITION: PLANNING AS A VISION BOARD
Planning as a vision board is the practice of treating your calendar and to-do list the same way you’d treat a vision board, as a space to cast how you want to feel, not just track what you have to do. What you put on the calendar is what you’re putting out into the universe. It turns planning from a constricting chore into an aligned, intentional practice. (Sara Walka, The Sisters Enchanted)
How do I plan if I hate planning?
Stop planning like a robot and start planning like you’re building a vision board. That’s the whole shift. If sitting down to schedule your week makes you want to crawl out of your skin, the problem usually isn’t you, it’s that you’ve been taught to plan in one rigid, linear way: wake up, cram everything into hour-long slots, feel bad when it falls apart.
When I plan a week, I’m asking a different question. Not “how do I squeeze it all in,” but “where is my energy going, and does that match how I want to feel?” I ask what my goal for the year is, what my word of the year is, and whether my week actually reflects it, or whether I’m shooting energy everywhere and then getting upset that there’s nothing left for me. That reframe is the difference between a calendar that shrinks you and one that points you toward the sun.
“When we plan, this becomes a vision board for our lives. Where are we putting our energy? Is it in alignment with how we want to feel?”
— Sara Walka, Founder of The Sisters Enchanted
What tools do I use to plan a busy life?
I use four tools right now, and only two of them never change. The other two shift with the season. Here they are, in no particular order.
1. Google Calendar (my ride or die). This is the practical part, where I have to be and when. It’s on my phone, my desktop, my iPad, always with me. If it’s not on my Google Calendar, I will not be there, because I will not remember. Every trip, every call, every appointment, the kids’ online book clubs, all of it lives here. I’m an all-around Apple person, so my Apple Watch buzzes me ten minutes before anything, and I love that. It means I never forget and I always know what’s happening. It’s free, and honestly, if you don’t use one, go get one. You won’t regret it.
2. The Sisters Enchanted Lunar Planner (my other ride or die). This is where the inner work lives. I create it every year, and you can get it as a PDF or a paper copy. It has a lunar tracker, so at a new moon I can cast how I want to feel for the whole cycle, then check in each day on whether I felt that way and what helped or didn’t. It has a spot for every day of the week with no time slots, just open space, so I use it as my daily to-do list. It also keeps me tied to the new moons, full moons, and Sabbat festivals I’d otherwise blow right past, because I’m stretched thin and I just forget. The tarot spreads are all marked out, which keeps the spiritual part of my family life actually happening instead of slipping away.
3. The Good Witch, Bad Bitch Summer tracker (seasonal). This one’s a guide full of suggestions for spiritual, physical, practical, and relational self-care, the kind that helps you build a summer that feels amazing and solidifies your foundations. More on how I’m using it below.
4. A light homeschool planning sheet (seasonal, specific to my family). I homeschool my two kids and I have my master’s in education, and even so, I think education usually gets planned way more strictly than it needs to be. More on that below too.
How do I actually plan my week, step by step?
I look at the practical first, then I build the feeling around it. Here’s my real process, the one I run week by week by week.
First, I open my Google Calendar. That shows me every appointment I’m already committed to, a class I’m teaching at The Sisters Enchanted, dinner with my grandmother, the kids’ taekwondo, a doctor’s appointment. Now I know exactly where my time is already spoken for on the practical, earthly plane.
Then I pull out my Lunar Planner and make a checklist for each day. I start with how I want to feel. Say I want to feel expansive, or adventurous, or like a sunflower facing the sun. Then I look at how much room each day actually has. If Tuesday’s already loaded with commitments, I don’t pile to-dos on top of it. On the lighter days, I start dropping in the to-dos: packing for a trip, making a phone call, recording a video like this one, going for a walk. Because here’s the thing, the fastest way to sabotage the way you want to feel is to overload one day with ten projects and ten appointments. You will not feel like a sunflower. You’ll feel buried.
I also don’t time-schedule my to-dos. That’s on purpose. It gives me the freedom to move with my energy. I wake up and knock out the hard things first, then later in the day, when I’ve got less patience for frustration, I do the softer ones, like the walk. Google Calendar is the solar, outer work: what does life look like right now, what has to happen. The Lunar Planner is the lunar, inner work: what am I doing today that lets me feel the way I want to feel.
DEFINITION: THE SOLAR/LUNAR PLANNING SPLIT
The solar/lunar split is my two-layer planning method. The solar layer (Google Calendar) holds the practical, fixed commitments, where you have to be and when. The lunar layer (a daily, time-free to-do list) holds the intentional, energy-led choices about how you want to feel each day. Practical structure and inner alignment, working together. (Sara Walka, The Sisters Enchanted)
How do I stay aligned with my values during a busy season?
I track what I’m actually living, not just what I’m planning to do. This summer, summer 2026, I’m putting more hours into The Sisters Enchanted than ever. That’s a gift, all this content to make and all these ways to serve people, and it does pull time from my body, my kids, my relationships. So I lean harder on my seasonal tools to keep me honest.
The Good Witch, Bad Bitch Summer tracker is doing a lot of that work. I’ll be honest with you: I made a vision board list of things I wanted to do at the start of summer, and then I lost it. It’s somewhere between my house and our fifth-wheel RV, tucked in a bag or a folder or folded in half inside a book. So I grabbed a fresh one and started backwards listing everything I’ve already done that gave me that good witch, bad bitch energy. River tubing. A trip to California. A couple of hikes. Paying my quarterly taxes and my property taxes in full, which, let me tell you, feels badass. A Toy Story movie marathon with my kids where we watched Toy Story 5. Filling it in shows me where I’m actually living in line with my values and priorities. And if I couldn’t put anything on that sheet? That would give me real pause. I’d know I had some foundational work to do.
How do I plan homeschooling without over-planning it?
I plan lightly, and I plan around how my kids want to feel. I have my master’s in education, and I still believe education doesn’t need to be scheduled as strictly as it usually is. There’s so much to learn, and learning is lifelong. The real goal for me is making learning a habit, not hitting a rigid syllabus.
So I keep it simple. My kids are in book clubs, so I use a planning sheet to remember what date they should start reading each book. And I ask them the same questions I’d ask myself or anyone here at The Sisters Enchanted: How do you want to feel this school year? What do you want to do to feel that way? Where were you frustrated last year, and what structure would support you better? If you could learn anything this year, what would it be, and how do you want to learn it? Then we reflect, and I look at month-ahead calendars, drop in our trips and book club dates, and ask where we’re going to be and what we could go experience while we’re there. (And for those of you in Holistic Witchery, I just five-eyed my homeschool planning right there. Go back and see if you can spot what I did.)
Reclaim your time and energy with us
If you’d love some help reclaiming your time, we’re running our Reclaim Your Time and Energy Challenge right now. It’s free, it’s ongoing, and you can join anytime. It happens in our community space, where you’ll get a PDF guide that walks you through different ways of thinking about time, not just the linear “wake up and go to bed” way. There are so many more ways to think about time, and I use all of them, in my own life and in everything we do here at The Sisters Enchanted.
So here’s your homework, if you want it. Get a Google Calendar if you don’t have one. Start a to-do list. Ask yourself what you have to do in one week, then place those things on the days ahead, week by week, in a way that keeps you aligned with how you want to feel and doesn’t overextend you. Try it and see.
Thank you so much for being part of The Sisters Enchanted family. And until next time, stay magic, Enchanted Sister.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does “planning as a vision board” mean?
Planning as a vision board means treating your calendar and to-do list the way you’d treat a vision board, as a place to cast how you want to feel, not just a place to track obligations. At The Sisters Enchanted, I teach that what you put on your calendar is what you’re putting out into the universe: you’re creating your life with it. The reframe matters because so many people love visioning but resist planning, since planning feels rigid and self-punishing. When you plan this way, you’re constantly asking whether your energy is aligned with your word of the year, your goals, and how you actually want to feel, instead of just cramming tasks into time slots. It turns planning from a constricting chore into part of your witchery practice.
How do I plan if I have ADHD and hate rigid schedules?
Start by separating the practical from the intentional, and stop time-blocking everything. I have ADHD combined type, and a packed, slot-by-slot calendar feels shrinking and constricting to me, so I don’t plan that way. I keep all my fixed commitments (appointments, calls, classes) in Google Calendar, then keep a separate daily to-do list with no time stamps on it. That means I can move with my energy: hard things first thing in the morning, softer things later when I have less patience for frustration. The freedom of not assigning a clock time to every task is what makes the whole system sustainable for a brain that craves open space. You’re still organized, you’re just not caging yourself.
What tools does Sara Walka use to plan her life?
Two tools stay constant all year, and two are seasonal. The two ride-or-dies are Google Calendar, which holds all the practical logistics and syncs across my phone, desktop, iPad, and Apple Watch, and The Sisters Enchanted Lunar Planner, which I use for daily to-do lists, lunar cycle tracking, and casting how I want to feel. The two seasonal tools right now are the Good Witch, Bad Bitch Summer tracker, which helps me stay in line with my values through self-care and intentional experiences, and a light homeschool planning sheet for my two kids’ book clubs and reflection. The tools shift season to season depending on what I need, but the calendar and the Lunar Planner never change.
What is the solar/lunar planning method?
The solar/lunar method is a two-layer system I use to plan. The solar layer is the outer, practical work: my Google Calendar, which answers “what does life look like right now and what has to happen.” The lunar layer is the inner work: a daily, time-free to-do list where I choose what I’ll do each day to feel the way I want to feel. I look at the solar layer first to see where my time is already committed, then build the lunar layer around it, keeping lighter days lighter so I don’t overload myself. Practical structure and emotional alignment work together instead of competing. It’s how I keep a very full life aligned rather than overwhelming.
How do I stop overloading my days when I plan?
Look at your fixed commitments first, then only add to-dos to the days that actually have room. When I plan a week, I check my Google Calendar to see where my time is already spoken for. If a day is already full of appointments, I don’t add anything to my to-do list for it. I save new to-dos for the lighter days. The fastest way to sabotage how you want to feel is to stack ten projects on top of ten appointments in a single day, because then no reframe in the world will make you feel expansive. Protecting the open space is the point, not filling every gap.
What is the Reclaim Your Time and Energy Challenge?
It’s a free, ongoing challenge from The Sisters Enchanted that helps you rethink your relationship with time. It runs inside our community space, and when you join you get a PDF guide that walks you through non-linear ways of thinking about time, beyond the standard “wake up, get through the day, go to bed” model. It’s the same thinking I use in my own life and in everything we build at The Sisters Enchanted. You can join anytime since it’s ongoing, and you’ll find the details in our community space.