Jack of Many Trades

Why Planner?

Originally posted: 2022-02-15

Over in journalsandplanners we're trying out a sort of snowflake challenge and since I'm trying to post more this year, you're getting my answer here!

Either here or in your own space, talk a little about what draws you to planners and/or journals? What about them makes you happy?

To understand how I feel about organizing, I feel like I need to tell you that when I was ten or eleven, I started reading books about study skills because I knew these were things I was supposed to have. They didn't really help much but I was introduced to the idea of planning your day out in blocks of time and I was obsessed with it.

I never successfully did it, but I was obsessed with it all the way through starting college, and then time ceased to mean anything because I was working all night and not sleeping like a normal person and let's just say that I wonder sometimes if I'm still paying off my sleep deficit from college the way I'm paying off student loans.

About this time I did start keeping a notebook, at first those science notebooks because I love graph paper and then moleskines appeared. I would write down story ideas, and I'd write down class notes interspersed with story ideas because why do one thing at a time when you can do two? I ended up with a kind of proto-bullet journal, where I was just writing, taking notes in class, doodling, doing research, making lists, all in one notebook because otherwise I'd either forget or lose the one I needed at any given time. Later on I faded in and out of this kind of journaling but if I was doing anything, I was doing it like this or I tended to fall apart at it.

As an adult I got into planners because I had specific things to keep track of and phone reminders are great for some things but they're also not viscerally satisfying. I had a filofax and I had a traveller's notebook and I bullet-journaled off and on. Paper is satisfying even if I end up going through and purging every so often. But I still have the same problem, that I can only really do one book at a time. Once I started tracking astrology and magical timing, it was into the planner I went because it's easier than writing everything down all the time. (I still get behind on my writing things down, but not as much because a bunch of it's already in there.)

I write things down because if I don't, I forget. Everything. But it also means I have a place to put my stickers!