I said planners and gadgets don’t work. Not for me.

Well, I found one that I had to try, and I’m loving it.

Lara Casey’s PowerSheets www.cultivatewhatmatters.com — I kept seeing all sorts of YouTube videos touting them, and with all the detail provided, the idea entered my mind that this might just possibly be a truly useful tool. So I took a very deep breath and ordered the Powersheets Starter Bundle ($100, roughly) . . . and prayed I wasn’t throwing that $100 down the drain.

My box arrived yesterday, Wednesday, after I ordered late Saturday. Not bad at all.

Let me say this up front: This is NOT a “Planner” in the traditional sense of the word. The Powersheets Goal Planner is a guided evaluation of your present and past life, and a chance to consciously plan where you want to go from here — what you want to be able to look back on when you’re an 80 (or 90, or 100) year old Geezerette. There are monthly sections for short-term goals and evaluation, but this is a tool to work in conjunction with your regular calendar/planner.

And this not the usual trite and frivolous planner. Casey and her development team invite us to go deep, to look at our fears and insecurities, to transform the way we see them, and to consciously create lives for ourselves — based on what we value, not on what some external authority tells us is supposed to be important. Somewhere I saw that Casey comes at this from a faith-based perspective, but there’s nothing cloying about PowerSheets; I am comfortable with them as a Catholic, and I think a person without any faith value would be just as delighted at using them as I am. WE get to determine what we value and want to accomplish.

There are a multitude of YouTube videos introducing the Powersheets — my favorites are Elyssa Nalani and Ashlyn Writes — but you can just put Powersheets in the search bar and have at it.

I’ve made a start with the preliminary evaluations, but I’ll be revisiting these early pages often in the next two and a half weeks, leading up to Christmas, developing my thoughts, going deeper inside myself to see not only what’s important (that’s kind of obvious?) but past the generalities into a more specific vision.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED PRODUCT.