Hello and welcome to the Planner Pals Podcast, a podcast hosted
by two true planner pals. My name is Mark and I go by Mark
Your pages. And I'm Jess or Jessie Curran,
and in this episode, we're looking at messy versus curated
planning, considering what the pros and cons of each of these
are, why neither of them is right or wrong.
And we really wanna know where you guys fall on the messy
curated spectrum. We're definitely gonna be
sharing where we fall. But Mark, when it comes to this
topic, why is it actually important to talk about?
I think it's important because we're unveiling the reality of
planning, you know, what you see online, which typically is going
to be the best of the best versus maybe what your planner
may look like. It's on a spectrum.
Not everyone actually normally plans like that, but some people
actually do. Like Jess and I fall on very
opposite sides of the spectrum when we're talking about this
topic is like, what do you mean? Of course my planner is messy.
She's like, no, it needs to be perfection, but I think just
really going through and normalizing and it's just key as
we're talking about it because like we said, what you see
online maybe looks a little bit different than what yours looks
like, and that's totally OK. The biggest part, as we all
know, is that your planner is for you.
So it's really important to make sure that it's working for you.
But also not saying that I can't be a little bit of both or
meeting kind of in the middle, especially if you're a
Perspicity biscuit about certain things like headers or the way
they look or the way your boxes look and kind of falling inside
of there. Yeah, and we definitely want to
say from the get go, whether you're doing messy planning or
curated planning does not mean that your planner isn't
functional, right. We're not saying that either is
going to be like better in terms of your productivity or in terms
of getting things done or fulfilling really the purpose
that you give for your planner. It's more so just thinking about
the overall kind of final appearance of your planner, I
suppose. And whether you learn more to
the messy side, more to the curated side or very much smack
bang in between. It can also differ from planet
to planner, which I think is an important something to consider.
Like some in your lineup might be quite curated, quite kind of,
you know, aesthetic leaning, whereas other ones might be like
complete scribbly messes and such.
And I think it's kind of also nice to be able to have separate
spaces for separate things because in a way they also
fulfill different needs for you. Or at least that's what I find
my planners do. Oh, completely.
I mean, some of those planners are like, OK, I'm writing very
nicely inside of this one. Like it's very intentional
because it has that kind of space, like the one I use for
all of my ink swatches. I'm very precise about how I'm
writing. I take my time, I go very slow
because I want it to look somewhat normalized, even though
it's different colors. Whereas my day-to-day completely
different story. But just why don't we, maybe
we'll do something first is like really kind of define what we
mean by messy versus something that's a little bit more
curated. Because I think that could be a
little confusing, right, depending on how you're thinking
about. So why don't we go into how you
define those for us because you're you're very good at
defining things versus me. I'll ramble on for hours about
what I think it is and then double check myself on if that's
really how I feel. And repeat ourselves like 3 to 6
times in between there. But in terms of messy planning,
we're thinking like fast, low friction planning.
It's really get in, write your stuff down and get out with not
necessarily a lot of concern as to how it looks.
We're thinking kind of scribbling notes.
It could be crossing things out. Really just the idea of taking
your brain and putting it onto paper without too much
consideration of the kind of, you know, structure of the
layout or the sizing, spacing, those kind of things which are
more so considerations that might come in with curated
planning. So for curated planning, we're
thinking it's very intentional about where information is
stored, what information possibly is stored.
It's visually placed in a way that is appealing after the
fact. Typically it's a lot neater,
doesn't necessarily have to have perfect handwriting or anything
like that, but the placement of pieces within the planner has
been done with a bit more intention I suppose then our
messy planning kind of compatriots.
And I think when we define those, those even sound like
very opposite sides of a spectrum.
It's like you're either one or the other.
But I think the reality really falls that we probably fall
somewhere in between there. And like you said, it might be
depending on the type of journal that you're using.
I know for me, it's very much about the time that I have to
accomplish what I'm doing. So if I'm trying to write things
down quickly because I'm in a meeting and I'm taking a
handwritten notes, that's going to look a lot messier perhaps
than a page that I'm setting up very intentionally.
Like we talked about the perfect header, everything spaced out
appropriately and trying to figure that out.
So I think talking next about maybe where we fall on that
spectrum might be a good kind of space.
And we're going to start with you, Jess.
I'll give you 3 guesses as to where I fall.
Yeah, I definitely consider myself to be more in the curated
kind of space when it comes to my everyday journal, everyday
planner in particular. I enjoy having it look nice.
So I'm making sure to kind of pre plan what my layout
structures are going to be before I get in and actually
draw things in. I want to make sure that the
boxes are appropriately sized so that everything fits nicely.
Which does often tend to requiring a lot of pre planning
before you plan the plans, which feels just like maybe a little
bit of overkill. But it means that then the end
product is something that is very nicely organized, easily
structured. I can find everything I'm
looking for and it looks good, which makes my brain happy
because one of the things that I find for curated planning is
that the curation part is just part of the joy of it.
It's part of the enjoyability of the process, at least for me.
Now we're going to get into a conversation about when things
maybe go a little too far. That's not right now.
That's a future topic point. But there are other spaces that
I do messy planning, or at least what I would consider to be
messy planning. I know that to the outside eye,
it still probably looks fairly curated.
It still probably looks fairly neat.
But for me, anytime I feel like I'm using my natural
handwriting, which I have very slowly kind of gravitated
towards in my everyday planners and such, because I felt like my
natural handwriting was not consistent enough, quote, quote
wasn't consistent enough to put in my planner or you know, all
the letter forms didn't have the same sizing and spacing and all
of that kind of thing. It would add to that feeling of
messiness. So I was kind of tending towards
doing all caps writing because all caps I could find that it
would be very consistent looking.
Everything looked equally spaced.
And then there was that kind of cheerleader effect with all of
the letters. So the curated part there, yeah,
was kind of shining through. Nowadays, though, I use my
regular handwriting in all of my journals except my five year
journal. And that's because it's a five
year journal and I still want it to be matchy, matchy.
And I've done three years so far of all caps.
So I'm going to continue. I mean, I've been an all caps
person ever since I started my bullet journal almost nine years
ago. I think we may have talked about
it on a previous episode, but if not, you know, when I started, I
was very intentional about a handful of things.
I was very intentional about thinking about grid spacing and
layouts and how I wanted that to be structured.
And my handwriting was one of the other really big things.
And the third was experimenting and using different types of
pens and tools and things like that.
But the handwriting part was something I actually adopted
from my dad because all my life growing up, he always wrote in
all caps. And when you're in school and
you're going through, that's never an option.
You know, everything has to be grammatically correct and
uppercase and lowercase and all these different things.
And then suddenly, for whatever reason, when I started the
Bullet Journal, I just made that decision to start doing that.
And it's so because I have to really think about drawing or
writing anything in lowercase. I was doing something with the
Uniball the other day and I was writing Uniball, which their
logo is all lowercase letters. And I was like you and, and like
it was, I was like almost like forcing my hand to write these
lowercase letters. It's just impossible for me
sometimes. So it's just really funny how my
handwriting is kind of changed in doing that.
But I feel similar to you, not because it looks matchy, matchy
your uniform. For me, it's just as like that's
how I'm writing and it's odd for me to go and do something
different. But I also really love the way
like some people write in like the squares.
So like say you have like a line grid square page.
They write like each letter inside of each one of those
squares. And I've always loved the way
that it looked, but I could never accomplish that.
And so I'm just like, well, all caps looks better in something
like that too. I've seen some really beautiful
lowercase letters in there too, like that.
But it's just like you see those things and you're like, I'm
going to try that. I'm going to try to do that.
And then like, either you're really good at it or I feel like
you're, you're really bad about it.
But like adopting those things in your journal or making a
decision, I think is an important part of it too.
Because that really kind of hurts to guide the direction
and, and can be curated without like overly curated to like a
entity degree where like you forget for a second that you
said you were going to do that and you're like, burn this to
the ground. Yeah, definitely.
I think that for me, when it came to writing in all caps in
my journal, it was very much one of those as seen online type
things. The main creators that I was
seeing creating bullet journal layouts and such used all caps
and there's. So when I got started, I'm like,
OK, well this seems to be something that is common to this
system, so I will do that too. And then because of that
cheerleader effect and the letter forms looking nicer with
just writing in all caps, I figured I'd just stick with it.
Mainly because my regular everyday handwriting, if I am
not kind of like, consciously aware of what I'm doing, the
italicization of it will change, and that lack of uniformity
across a page will give me the heebie jeebies.
It's not the kind of curation I like.
If it's going to be italicized, cool.
But it all has to be on the exact same angle of slant,
otherwise I will get irked. Oh yeah, see, this is where I
fall my complete opposite spectrum of you with those kind
of things. I'm like, meh, it's whatever.
I mean, I've taken it using like different type of letter forms.
So even though I don't write in lower case letters, I have this
font that I like to use. I call it Big Little.
It's stupid because it's like it's uppercase bigger but still
uppercase, but smaller than the other one and and then uppercase
and you know, and kind of go in like that.
And it kind of gives us really fun like visual effect of
something being, you know, the start of a sentence or start of
a header. But I still get to run in all
caps, just in different sizes. And it's like a really fun way
to kind of do it. It takes away for me, it also
takes away the stress of having to have perfect letter form
because the whole purpose of a font like that is to be fun and
kind of exciting and a little bit different.
I use it a lot when I'm doing like Halloween spreads because
it has a little bit of like a spooky kind of feel to it, but
it's just really fun and easy to do with something like that.
So I find that over time with my letters, again, I'm not overly
worried about every header looking the same.
But I also personally feel like I let go a lot of that like
curatedness when I started using fountain pens and different inks
and different nib sizes because every single week look
different. So no longer do I have probably
maybe my first 3 or 4 bullet journals are all in just black
ink, right? I may have experimented with
some layouts or whatever, but that as I've gone on and used
different pens every week is a different color, you know?
So it's just like, OK, well, I don't have to worry about
feeling overly worried about that feature anymore because I
know that's how I'm going into it and I'm totally OK with it.
It's definitely weird flipping through notebooks and being like
all black, same fought. And then you get to the ones
like all different sizes, all different colors.
Look, Mark, what a little crazy over here.
Oh dear. So I guess we could probably
safely bet that you would consider yourself more in Camp
Messy. Yeah, I think if you're looking
at that scale where you have, you know, messy over here and
you have, you know, completely curate on the other side, I'll
say I'm messy leaning maybe because I do enjoy a curated
page. I and I think when I set up my
Ebola journal spreads for instance, for the week, it's
very set up nicely. I'm measuring things.
I have a straight edge ruler. You know, I'm using certain
pieces. I want them to look nice.
I think the only time where I start to get like a little OK
with the messy is when I'm using stamps and those just innately,
you know, you have wet ink and things can happen and you don't
put them on straight. And at first that really
bothered me a lot. But then I just started to just
say, well, that's the personality of stamps.
Sometimes it's perfect. Sometimes it's, you know, cock
eyed one way, maybe got a fingerprint over here.
So I think for me it's just been like slowly introducing myself
into being OK with it, especially when I'm writing
notes. You know, I use my bullet
journal for work almost exclusively.
So when I'm writing things and handwriting notes, I can't spend
the time making sure every single letter is in line and
perfect. If I write something wrong, I'm
not grabbing the correction tape and going over it and then
rewriting when it's dry, just crossing it and I keep going
with it. I mean, how many times I spell
things wrong and I'm like, oh, I'm missing AE and I like draw a
little, a little E in between, like some of the letters.
No one cares, no one's seen my nose.
But like, to me, I know it should be there.
I should learn how to sell, you know, basic words.
But I think like those kind of things, just it'd be more of a
functional, usable journal. I don't care really kind of what
it looks like when I'm into it. And and to me personally, that
just is more fun. I think it's just a really easy
way to go about it. It worries less about again, the
visualness of it. And I also think it just looks
like a really well used journal page when you're done with it.
It's just full of ink and everything else.
Like I feel productive when I see pages like that.
No, that's very fair. And I think it is also good to
note that like, you know, just because you lean and can't messy
or lean can't curate it or whatnot, does not mean that your
journal is not functional, does not mean that your journal isn't
working for you. But sometimes when we do see
people who are, you know, primarily sharing one type or
the other, it can lead us to question, am I actually doing
this right? Like am I actually a real
planner or have I gone astray somewhere?
Am I doing something wrong because of that?
And I think that social media in particular has a big role in
this. You know, the idea that the
things that do get widely shared or often kind of like put right
in front of our face, are those things that possibly just look a
little more curated. You know, they have that kind of
visual appeal to them, especially if we're thinking
places like, you know, Pinterest and Instagram and such.
Those places are very kind of aesthetic first as opposed to I
want to say like value first because I think there is value
in aesthetics. You know, I said it kind of like
adds to the joy of planning or whatnot.
But if we're thinking about like form and function, yadda yadda.
I think that the form part of that comes first on those
platforms, which if those are the places you're getting your
main source of inspiration for your planner, then oftentimes if
yours does not look like that, it can not necessarily like
fully consciously, but maybe subconsciously you're like, my
planner doesn't look like that. I don't think my planner is like
a real planner or it's not really planning because it
doesn't look or like fit the mold of what these other things
that I'm saying online are kind of presenting.
Oh, 100%. Actually one of the first times
early, early on in my bullet journaling career on Instagram,
supermassive black ink was a page I love so much.
I don't know that she post as much anymore, but she used to
and you know, you would see these awesome pages that she
would do and she only uses black ink.
That's it. And I was like, oh, like she was
actually I think the first person when I bullet was
starting a bullet journal that I was like, oh, I'm going to only
use black ink. Like if she can make her pages
look that awesome only in black ink, I can too.
Like she was a huge inspiration early on.
And I remember like found her for a super long time and I
remember one time she was showing her other pages.
So what she was showing on her feed was, you know, perfect
black ink lettering all nights and all of that.
And she flipped to a different page, and that's where she was
working, like actually working. And it looked nothing like that.
It was just like a everyday journal with someone writing
down their notes and task and stuff.
And that moment for me was like, oh, OK, and this is well before
I fully understood like the social media of bullet
journaling and or the bullet journaling of social media,
whichever way that is where, yes, what you're presenting
looks beautiful and perfect. It is art, right?
You're, you're going to show and always put your best foot
forward. But the reality of what that
looked like was just like, oh, good, I'm not, I'm not wrong in
what I'm doing. I was like, she's just showing
her best work on her pages. But when she's actually working
in it, she's a human being. And like that was, I was like, I
was like, oh, it's OK now. I was like, that permission
almost. I had to see that to be like,
yes, I don't have to be perfect in this journal for it to be a
journal. I think that, you know, one of
the things that gets me about this kind of point of
conversation in particular is the idea of like, Oh well, the
plans you see online are fake or something or the planning that
people is doing online, you know, presenting that's like
overly curated or very visually appealing or whatever.
That's not their real plans. And I mean, in her case, she had
functional pages that she was working in that did look a
little bit different. But I do also feel that for a
lot of the people who are presenting their planner online,
given the time it takes to make that they're not spending more
time setting up another one. I'm certainly not.
So my curated pages or whatever, those are my planning pages.
That is where I am doing my planning.
It's just that I'm also quite mindful as I'm going through to
make it look nice. One, because sharing on the
Internet, but also 2 for own personal journaling fulfillment
and enjoyment and such. So it's one of those things that
like, yes, some of the planning that we're seeing online or the
planner layouts or whatnot, those ones that do have a lot of
visual appeal, some of them don't represent the real life
for those people. Them also made in the kind of
like aspirational planning kind of space.
Whereas for some people, sure, it may look nice and have visual
appeal and whatever, but they're still actively using it.
That is still how they're getting things done.
It's just that that visual appeal aspect is something that
adds some kind kind of like purpose fulfillment for them in
their planner, whether that be joy or the fact that if they
like the way it looks, they're actually going to use it or like
whatever it is. For me, it's very much the idea
of if I like the way it looks, I will actually come back to and
use it, whereas if I don't like the way it looks, I will not
come back to and use it. It's definitely interesting when
you do sit back and take a look at it.
I was trying to think there was like probably over the past
several years. And if you remember the names of
these, Jess, tell me or maybe you'd even see it.
I don't remember. Or again, Planner Pals, if you
remember seeing these people, but they used to do like these
full spreads for like their monthly overviews and they truly
were art like the most beautiful line detail coloring all these
pieces. But it took them weeks to be
able to make that one page. And there's like two people that
I there's again, it's like in my mind, there is one I remember.
There was Isabel Hoops. She was, she's an art teacher,
so the work she was doing was just crazy awesome.
And then there was Love with Miss Jay or Love by Love with
Miss Jay. Gosh, her work was gorgeous.
It was in a corettable like it truly was and then I remember
one time she had it like half done and it was like middle of
the month. She was like still working on my
monthly overview and I was like, girl, don't even call it a
monthly overview anymore. This is straight up art.
Like you don't need to worry about.
Isabella is a whole other level. I mean, Oh my gosh, hers.
I swear. Like I don't even have words
like she would draw like horses for April and you were like, I'm
sorry, is that a photograph? She's like, no, I didn't color
pencil. Like damn, that is awesome.
But like this things like that though, where you have to look
at it from that perspective though and appreciate it for
what it is, because at no point ever was I going to ever draw
anything that looked like that. It inspired me to look into it
more or to think about it or whatever, but I knew this that
was not happening over here. So I just looked at it and said
I appreciate the art of it. I appreciate the time.
I appreciate them sharing it and going through with it.
For me, it never made me mad or feel like I wasn't doing
anything the right way. I will say there are some
stamping artists like that, that used to like stamp out whole
pages and I'm like, well, that looks perfect.
Why can't I get mine to look like that?
You know, you're just like it's stamping.
You have to practice it, you know, but.
I think that's a really big thing too.
But I know there's people who hated on those people that were
like, oh, like, this is ridiculous.
That's a waste of time. Why would you ever do that?
And I was like, chill out, my friend, appreciate this artwork.
Like that's what it is. I think that the thing that
always got me about those this is a waste of time comments.
I'm like bra, pot, kettle black. Like it was a waste of time to
write this comment. Go touch some grass.
Do something with your life. Well, it is.
It's just like for anyone to look at anybody of work and say
that. Now I would say that if they
were spending more time designing those pages and
completely flopping on their work and their life and their
other things that they had to accomplish because they were
more focused on that, then yes. Like if you're, if the point of
doing that was to make a functional page that you were
using and again, helping you improve kind of your day today
and you were failing at that, absolutely.
That is not a productive spread that you made for yourself.
I definitely was guilty of that early on.
I remember one time somebody had posted, it was like something
with like clouds and they had like really cool drop shadows
and something. And I was like, oh, I'm going to
do something like that too. And then I went to go like right
in the cloud and I was like, there's only like I can fit 3
words inside of this. I was so focused on like how
this cloud looked, I was not even thinking about how will I
write inside of this cloud. Yeah, definitely.
And I think that's one of the things that I've had to learn
over time with, you know, sourcing inspiration online,
whatnot, is that some layouts look absolutely gorgeous and
they would not work for me at all.
And being able to figure that out for yourself, it does kind
of come with, you know, reps time in the game type of a
thing. Like I know that horizontal
layouts, while they look cool, aren't going to work for me
because I love a long ass checklist.
It needs to be like a full length of the page for just one
day of the week kind of a thing because your girl got stuff to
write down. But in looking at those layouts
and looking at the kind of, you know, functional stuff that they
have in there, all the structures or whatnot, just
because it doesn't match the style of planning I need for
myself doesn't mean that it is not functional for that person.
Even if it is curated or even if it is messy kind of a thing.
I think that one of the things that we've kind of edged into
and touched on is this idea of, well, if you've got camp messy
and camp curated, what happens if you go to the extremes of
those? What happens if you kind of take
it too far in either direction? Because I think that both of
them do have their kind of innate pros, but if you get a
little bit too aggressively into either side, you can kind of run
into some decent cons. So I'm gonna let you start.
What do you think the cons of curated planning are?
Well, I talked about this. I did a previous episode.
I think if you are so focused on how it looks, then you don't
actually write down the things that you need to.
And I was very guilty of this before.
I was talking about like headers, for instance, for pages
where I'm like, well, hold on, I had this theme that I was going
for with this certain lettering and I don't have that pen with
me right now. So I wouldn't write it like
that's pointless. That doesn't make any sense.
So, you know, big part of that is just going in and like
getting it done or you have to be so like on point that like
that pen or that marker or whatever tools you're using are
always with you. So I think for, for from my
perspective, that is kind of it. I think if it's holding you up
from writing things down and kind of getting into it, it can
cause more of a mess. You know, if you're like, oh,
well, I can't write this in my notebook, so I'm going to write
on the scrap piece of paper and then you lose said scrap of
paper because it's not attached inside of your notebook.
Well, that's completely defeated the purpose of what this planner
is for or that type of planner, if it's one that you're writing
in often, like you said, if you have an intentional planner that
is there to to help you, you know, be intentional to help you
focus on a skill to do something like that, that's a different
story. You know, I can't really think
of any other negative other than really just kind of it holding
you back from doing things. I don't know if you have any
examples as a curated planet yourself where you've had a
little bit of a can't move forward moment.
Yeah. No, I think that you've kind of
hit the nail on the head with most of it there.
It's that idea of just like fueling perfectionism, I feel
like is a big one. It's like if you turn your
planner into such a curated space where if things don't look
a certain way or you don't have the right pain or something like
that, you can kind of just build this almost avoidance for being
able to use your planner or your journal or whatnot.
Because if you can't do it right, you're not going to do it
at all, which is definitely a problem area.
I also kind of find that sometimes, depending on the kind
of layouts you're going with, and if you haven't very
intentionally picked your layouts or you know, if you're
making it yourself, drawing them up in a way that is going to
match your planning style because you've just done it for
an overall visual. Then sometimes you can have like
missing details. You might not be able to Add all
of the things in that you need to.
You might not be able to, I don't know, just jot down a
quick note or something that's going to be important for future
you to remember. But you tell yourself, I'll just
remember it because there's nowhere in your kind of very
laid out structured setup for those kind of like quick drop
note type things. The stuff that you can't
necessarily predict if you are or aren't going to need it.
You can also get into the realm of like performative planning in
a way, if you're very, very caught up on that idea of the
curation of the information and you know, making look visually
appealing or whatnot. Are we doing this in such a way
that it is going to fulfill the purpose we've given for the
planner or are we just doing it because because it looks good or
the kind of like visual aspect of it is appealing in some way?
That's probably what kind of worries me the most.
What I get worried about in terms of my personal curated
planning is the kind of time taken to pre plan a structure
before I put it into my planner to then write down my plans to
then go and execute on the plans to get the plans done.
That's the part that worries me the most.
I had an instance the other week where somebody was sharing some
information with me and I was like, oh, I need someone to put
this, but there's nowhere on my current weekly to put it.
And it didn't occur to me that I could just, you know, whip out
Notion or whatever and jot it down into my notesbook over
there. At the time, I wasn't at a
computer or whatnot, but I kind of had this panic moment like,
Oh my gosh, I feel like I need to write this in my planner, but
I don't have anywhere in my planner to write this.
So then I can't write it in my planner.
So do I just remember the plans? Because I'm not going to
remember the plans, but I don't have anywhere in my planner for
it. Spiral, spiral, spiral.
Yeah, it didn't work out well for me.
So we've talked about the negatives of curated I shared,
but I think it would be so Jess, as a non messy planner, what do
you think are the big negatives for that type of approach?
I think that in thinking about the negatives of messy planning
is mainly kind of like Jess. What are your personal reasons
for not messy planning? And for one, it's just mainly
the idea of being able to reference things later.
When it comes to messy planning, I find that when I start to lane
messy, I usually get too messy, and then trying to find
information after the fact becomes very difficult for me.
Either that or because I'm just jotting things down very fast
and very scribbly or whatnot, I often won't be as intentional
about what information gets added there.
Which means that then really key important things can get lost in
a swamp of everything else. Because it was also quick and
easy to write down. Like yes, frictionless writing
things down quick, love that. But then actually being able to
go and use that information after the fact becomes kind of
difficult. I also find that with the messy
planning, because there is such a joy and a kind of appreciation
of things that are visually appealing, I will come back to
things if they are visually appealing.
If it's scribbly and messy, I feel it's very disposable and
thus I won't come back to it and actually reference the stuff
I've written down. So it might give me kind of
instant relief about being able to get things out of my head and
onto paper or whatnot, which could be a benefit.
But in the long run, actually using the information coming
back to it and such I won't be inclined to do because I won't
want to work in the system when it looks too chaotic or not laid
out in a way that kind of works later for future Jess's brain.
Interesting. Yeah.
So I would say like my resolution for that in my case,
because I've kind of been a little all over the place, is
utilizing my index pretty hardcore with those special
ideas. Because a while back I always
thought like entry into my index had to be an entire page of
content. And what I've realized over
time, especially with the way that I plan, because I don't
always have a dedicated page for every idea because maybe it's
not that many grouped ideas to be a collection page yet, is I
will start writing those things or those ideas into my index.
Because I also felt like my index had to be perfectly
curated with like exact lines and numbers and all of that.
And I'm realizing again, more and more over the years is like,
it is more important to be able to find that information again
than worry necessarily where it falls in line.
I sometimes will skip pages in my journal, especially if like
I've had like bleed through or something that just doesn't look
great for my next page. And then I will come back to
those for like messy notes or something like that.
And then I go into my index. I'm like, oh, I have page, you
know, whatever through 20 right now, but the page I skipped was
on page 15. And I'm like, but I'm like,
Mark, that's not what this is about.
It's about the topic and where to find it.
So that it, for me has always been a really important part of
planning is that if I have an idea that I'm looking for or
trying to keep in my mind, regardless of how the rest of
that page looks, I'll be like, oh, this topic was on this page,
just a part of my weekly page, but just to be able to reference
it again. But I understand what you're
saying about it. But I feel like that the counter
to that is to be a little bit more organized about how you
keep your journal. And then that we don't have to
worry about it being on a perfect page or a perfect spot
when you go into it. You can just write and then come
back to it later. Excellent.
So curate your mess. I've got it, can do it.
There you go. That's all you got to do is, you
know, think about it that way and everything can lean curated
if you really want it to. Yeah, I I think that given the
fact that either of the extremes does have some kind of negatives
associated with it, there is really decent benefit of having
a happy medium like falling somewhere in the middle, whether
it be more kind of messy leaning or curated leaning.
Because both of them do have their pros and do have their
cons, finding a blended or hybrid system can be a just
happier place to exist in. Yeah, and I feel you completely
on this idea of like messy and curated.
Like a great example, for instance, I was jotting down a
list of I was signing my team up for some training classes, but
everybody had to volunteer for that training class.
So they had to message me and say, Mark, I would like to be
signed up for that. So I went ahead and started
writing down a few names and I drew a little line.
I was like, oh, I have a table, You know, once they're signed
up, I'll check off over here. The thing is, I didn't think
that I have 13 people on my team.
I was like, well, not everyone may message me, so I'm not going
to save 13 spaces for this. The problem is, you know, 13
people did. And so I had probably enough
space for like 10 people because I was like, some people might
not. And then I had to like go a bit
beyond that. And I had already written notes
below this little like mini chart that I made.
And I was like, now this looks ugly, but I was just like, it's
OK, You know, like yes, would I have preferred that?
It looked really nice because I spent the time to be like, oh,
names and checked when it's done.
Like yes, it would have looked very cool.
But at the end of the day, I just made sure the people's
names were there, and then I signed them up for it.
But that was a moment where I was like, oh, I should have
taken a beat and I should have just said, OK, Mark, what are
the possibilities with this? I didn't want to hold me back
because again, I was in the moment and doing it.
I wasn't truly really worried about it.
But like that I think is a great example where like, I should
have just waited a little bit and curated like that little
piece, a little bit of my notes and it would have just like
fulfilled me a little bit more. I'm fine with it.
It worked. It did.
It's a job, but I would have liked to be a little more more
perfect. Yeah, whereas if you're someone
like me, you would have held off until you had all the
information before you made the table.
Which doesn't necessarily help you in the moment though, does
it? Because then you're kind of like
kicking work to future you who already has enough problems like
future you doesn't want you to pile on, stop piling on future
you. But I do that very often when it
comes to my planning and making things look and kind of like
encapsulate all the information possible, Which I mean, I guess
this is just one of my my biggest weaknesses is feeling
like I have to have all the information before I can take
action on things. And that does definitely
manifest in my planning and my layouts and such.
You know, in thinking about setting up for a new month or
whatever, one of the things that I like to do is put in project
collections or effectively just checklists of stuff that I need
to do in order to reach certain goals or work on sort of
projects or whatever else. And rather than just draw up a
space in my layout and call it a day, I will jump into my layout
planner, which is a digital document.
I will type out all the things that I need to do.
I will structure them on the page to make sure it looks nice.
I will know exactly what dimensions of box I will need.
Then I will go and draw the box. So it's like, cool, you've pre
planned your list before you put it into your planner, which was
supposed to help you planning out your list.
Yes, that is exactly what I did. Well, see, the thing I get into
is like, then isn't, I mean, technically you're doing work
with it, but then I feel like it almost moves into that
performative part because you have all the information to get
there. So really all you're doing in a
way is just rerunning that information for yourself.
I guess if you're going to use it again later, I can see a
benefit to that. But I think it's like when it's
in the moment though, that you're just like, well, wait,
you know, in my instance there, if you're like, OK, well, I need
to have everyone's name and know they're going to sign up before
I make this chart. But for me it was I need the
name and I would just sign them up instantly.
I wasn't waiting for like the full list to then do it.
So like it wasn't helpful necessarily in that part.
But then I would have felt like, well, I already did all the
tasks for that. So why am I going to come back
and rewrite that inside of my journal if I've already done it?
The point of it was the checklist.
So like I feel like sometimes that's where I get a little like
back and forth on it where like I see the benefits of it, but
it's not helping me in that moment.
So I think maybe it's important for you to know kind of what you
want from it before you start to do it, which is, like I said,
maybe sometimes just taking a beat and being like, OK, do I
need to plan this out or do I just need to go for?
It. Yeah, To clarify, I'm not
writing a full project plan in my journal after the project has
already been done. All right.
If that's anything that anybody was picking up there, no, that's
not the case. Also just making sure I know
exactly what goes on the list so that then I can plan the layout
so it will accommodate the full list.
As opposed to putting in a section that I think will
accommodate the list and then finding, oh actually you needed
like 2 columns for this or you only needed one column for this.
One instance of that I can think of is when I was making a guest
list for my birthday celebration.
I drew in the amount of space I was actually going to need for
the number of guests I was inviting and then I just had
this like weird, awkward space below it and like what do I do
with that? I I got out a sticker, put it
over the top and made the box longer, even though I had no
intentions of inviting more people.
I just wanted to fill the space up so that it looked nice.
So we've got the ass box with four guests solid.
Yeah, I mean, there's definitely ways to go about it.
I mean, I think like, that's a great example.
It's like wasted space. You know, it's like, well, I
plan for this to be one thing and it went a different way.
And so like, I have to like, retrofit the space to do
something else. Now that can kind of get in your
way a little bit where you're like, OK, well, if I would have
just kind of went with it, I could have drew a box around it
later and said, oh, pretty. Exactly.
But it's all good. It's, I think it's one of those
like it's a process that you learn over time, you know, and
I, I think that throughout my planner history or whatnot, I
have tended more into the curated space.
I have tended slightly more into the messy.
I think in terms of the messiness of it, the only things
that I would consider messy in my everyday journals and such a
layouts that I made that I didn't like.
That's just because I didn't like them.
It's not because they're actually messy.
It's just that something about it gave me the ick and I'm like,
no, I'm not going to use that. So regardless of where you fall,
it's all good at the end of the day.
It's really just making sure that your planning system term,
your planners or whatnot, or fulfilling the needs you give
them. Whether that be, you know, the
joy of having curated spaces in there that look very nice,
Whether it be that idea of being able to think on paper and just
get things down really quickly and all of that type of thing.
Both are valid, both can work. Just make sure that in either
camp, you're not falling into the major cons that are
associated with going to the extremes.
So not being able to find your information again because you
wrote things down messy and now you can't even read your own
handwriting anymore. Or not curating to the point
where it's like OK cool, I have to make three like mock ups of
my layout before I put my layout into my journal to then write
out my perfect plans. Both of those are problems, and
they're probably not aligned with the functionality that you
want for your planning system. Yeah.
And I think just knowing that it's absolutely OK to be
somewhere in the middle or some leaning way with it is to say
like it's absolutely OK that this looks this way.
And I think also too like something I've done, I have a
handful. I know you've talked about like
R&D journals too, like if you really want to plan something in
advance and just have like a resource for that, you know,
grab another journal and kind of sketch those things out and
allow yourself to be messy as you are exploring that.
Because it's almost like we said, you're giving a purpose to
a journal. You're saying, OK journal, you
are my messy sketchbook journal where I just think out ideas or
do whatever with. But like you can work that all
out there so that when you go to like set up a new weekly or
daily or monthly, you have that and you're like, oh, here's the
spacing. It looked nice.
It works well, you know, like I used to have a version where I
would actually take notes, like inside of the empty space, you'd
be like, this worked out really well for me or this wasn't
enough space, maybe rethink this and almost kind of like critique
each week as I went through with it.
But that's what's really helped me get to a point to say, OK,
let's be thoughtful about what we're doing, but know that it
also needs to be workable too. So I think for all the planner
pals, just know like you don't have to be one way or the other.
You might change over time or you might just change
day-to-day. And if you feel like sometimes
you want to be a little extra buttoned up, absolutely create a
page. Take your time, have fun with
it. But if you want to let loose,
you know, let your hair down a little bit and have fun.
If you need to give yourself permission to that on a separate
page that no one will ever see, I say go for it.
Live on the wild side, see what happens.
And we, of course, would love to know Planet Pals.
Where do you think you fall? Do you learn more curated, more
messy? Very much in between.
If it depends on a different space or a different journal, we
would love to know. Let us know either in the
comments on YouTube or you can hit us up at Planet Pals Podcast
at Gmail dot com or over on Instagram at Planner Pals
Podcast. An awesome episode as always,
great talking about these different pieces and planner
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And as always, thanks for watching.