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 going to be talking about planning as
a form of procrastination. Most of us have fallen victim to
it before. It's not necessarily where we
want to be when it comes to making great plans and actually
executing on them and getting things done.
So we're going to be looking at instances that we have fallen
victim to this, why we think this happens and possibly some
ways forward. But it's OK if you have fallen
victim to progress the planning. We are right there with you.
It happens to the best of us, but being able to actually
identify when you're doing it is really the first step to finding
a solution. So Mark, what would be an
instance where you have found yourself procrastinating by
using planning? So I have this happen all the
time, Jess. It's when I have a wonderful
idea that I want to record, but I don't want to put away a lot
of my materials to do so. So I think this is the biggest
area in my life where I do that, where I'm like, OK, I'm going to
set up this video, but I have to have all my materials ready to
go. And then I'll get distracted by
something else or just not really be focused.
You know, I think in my mind I want to do it, but like, I'm not
kind of feeling it. So I've got, you know, the
markers out, the inks, the pens, all the things, the ideas.
And then I have to like, sit to the side or I can't get it to it
just yet. And instead of putting the
things away, they just sit here on my desk and all the time I'm
just like shuffling them around my desk.
It's happening right now in multiple spaces.
It's happening with some stamps that I just got.
And I was like, well, like, I can't put them away yet because
I want to make a video to do them.
So they're just out inside of the packaging.
I've like all of my inks from my ink vet calendars out too,
because I haven't put them into my catalog yet.
And, and I keep shuffling them all over it.
It was a mess today just getting this episode started.
Let me just tell you, I almost talked a lot of things over.
Oh dear, I completely understand that feeling like when you
especially when it comes to like the first initial setup of a
layout. Oftentimes I have all of this
kind of pre planning that I like to do to make it so that the
actual planning stage of putting things down on paper is as
smooth as possible. But I I've haven't necessarily
timed it for myself and I feel like I should but I swear that
the pre planning stages before I even put the plan into the
planner takes longer than the setup of the planning and
possibly even the doing of the stuff sometimes.
Yeah, it's like shopping your store, first of all, all making
sure you have all of the things that you need.
And I do that a lot too. I've been recently trying to be
good about not just doing everything here in my office, at
least with like the pre planning.
I'll take a pencil, my ruler, my notebook downstairs.
So while we're watching TV or something like that, I'll get it
started. But there have been plenty of
times, especially for my new bullet journal setup, I had that
thing penciled in pretty much like all in a night.
And then to actually like make the video record the whole thing
like that was a multi day process, which it felt like it
shouldn't have been exactly that.
But I was like, well, same deal. Like, well, which marker did I
use? Because sometimes I forget,
especially if I put it away, you know, and I can't have it be all
like messed up. It's just, it's one of those
things, yeah, where I'm like, OK, you're going to be really
good about this. And I'm like minimal supply when
I'm pre planning because I'm just sketching it in with a
pencil. Then then that next step before
like filming or doing it's, it is a hot mess.
So I would say like that's definitely my thing.
I get very like annoyed by it as well.
And there are times where I'm just like moving it so many
times where I'm just like, you're not doing this anymore.
And I like put it away. I'm like, screw that idea.
Like we're not making it happen. And it's just like a way for me
just to be like out of sight, out of mind, which then again,
like in the long run, it's just very counterproductive because I
basically have it ready to go. I just like, I can't get it
there yet. So it just, it causes a big
problem. But how about yourself?
Do you have anything where you're doing like a similar type
thing with your planner procrastination?
Yeah, I think another way that planning is a form of
procrastination shows up is the idea of the research stage.
I feel like the research stage is where all good goal plans
just go to die, honestly. Because this idea of like, oh, I
need to know the perfect timeline of events.
I know I need to know the like perfect sequence of things I
have have to do in order to get me from where I'm at, where I
want to be. So we kind of get stuck in this
idea of having to collect more and more information for
ourselves so that we know quote everything before we take the
first concrete action step. And I am very much the kind of
person who falls victim to this, especially when it comes to
things like organizing my office, right?
I notably recently have reorganized my office.
I managed to get past the planning procrastination stage
and actually do something like moving my desk.
But before that, the lead up to getting it to the actual like
moving things around stage was a whole bunch of humming and
eyeing like, OK, well what's my purpose here?
But what if I need a new desk? But what if I don't want these
desk organizers and I want these ones instead?
I need to know all of the possible options before I move
anything on the floor plan before I get started at all.
Even though you're sitting in a state of like, not really
enjoying where you're at or things aren't working for you or
whatnot, but you're kind of paralyzed that I dear of not
having enough information to make an action step forward.
That is one that always gets me. Yeah, I kind of have the
opposite to that one. So I always love talking about
the stuff with you because you are so like plannerly and like
your approach. If something doesn't work for
me, it could be like 5 minutes before my next work meeting and
I will rearrange my desk and move stuff around.
I actually just did it the other day.
Like I didn't like the way my monitors were set up and I was
like, well, I have have to move this and like, wasn't I have it
on like one of those it like lifts it above the desk.
So it's on like one of these movable arms and I like turn it
a certain way. And it wasn't like going the way
I wanted to. And when I look behind it, like
the arm, the back end of the arm is hitting the back of the wall.
So like it physically couldn't go anywhere.
So it's like literally a few minutes before a meeting, I'm
under my desk pulling it. Thank God it didn't collapse on
me or something to like move it away from the wall to get it to
where I needed it. And you know, my timer goes off
to tell me I need to get back to this meeting or whatever else.
And then like I'm just sitting there in the entire meeting.
I'm like, Mark, you're in chaos right now.
Like you literally have like wires hanging out over here.
Your desk is all like caddy cornered to the wall because I
pull it out so I can move this arm and it's like the worst time
ever. And then what's even worse
sometimes is like I can't get to putting things back in the order
right away. And so sometimes I'll leave my
office and it looks just like things loaded inside of yours,
all for good intention. But it's just one of those
things where I feel a little bit opposite, where like I don't
have a problem with starting an idea or a project like that.
It's knowing that I want to try to get it done because just the
fact of like leaving it there afterwards is going to like mess
me up. So it's always like, OK,
something I had to tell myself, it's like, OK, we're going to do
this right now. But reality, do we have time to
complete the thing that we're about to start?
Like my ADHD brain is usually like, of course, we have all the
time in the world, even though technically we don't have any of
that time in the world to get it done.
But that's kind of for me, at least with the office space too,
where it's like, I don't think I've planned very often.
I kind of like know in my mind what I want to make happen.
And then the only way I can kind of do it is just like to start
doing it. But I know that that's not the
right way to do it. It's like it messes you back, it
messes you up. What's that old saying Jess,
where it's like planning ahead kind of saves you money in the
end, right? So instead of just like go go,
go, go and fixing all the problems later, like knowing
that you pre planned ahead of time saves you in the long run.
I'm totally opposite. I'm like, do it now, see what
happens later. Bye.
I guess it really depends on the situation.
A lot of time, like when it comes to for instance pre
planning videos, the scripting stage or writing out bullet
points, talking points or whatever is so bloody boring
that I'm just like no bias towards action.
We're just going to film and we're just going to stuff up our
words multiple times and record the same clip 7 times over
because you didn't get the inflection quite right on that
final saying or whatever. So in those situations, yeah
I'll dive straight in. But when it comes to things like
re cabling my desk and every time I'd I walk into my office,
I'd see the noodle mess of cables be like, oh, I hate that
like it, it hurts my soul to look at this.
But I don't have the perfect plan for how I want to do the
cabling yet. And I don't know what cables I
need and I don't know whether I know if those cables are going
to be the right type of cables. Like what if there's like a
better Ethernet cable and turns out there was a better Ethernet
cable and I needed to know this information.
And those are the kind of things that reinforce this idea of
like, Oh no, procrastination as a form of planning is totally
valid. You should do this.
You need all the information because you get the wrong thing,
you'll stuff it up in some way. This kind of like fear of
messing up is holding me back from actually getting started
with stuff. Another version of kind of
procrastination is like from planning, I guess is this idea
of looking for perfection in the plan before you start, whether
that be just in general, like, you know, need to knowing
everything, the stuff you need to do and whatever.
But more so the idea of putting things into my journal and
getting a layout that is going to work quote perfectly so that
then I can take perfect action. That is one that really used to
trip me up quite a lot. And it was reinforced by any
time I wouldn't put the time, effort, energy to making the
quote perfect layout. And then I get to the end, the
layout would be fugly and I'd be like, well, I'm not going to use
that. Good job on wasting your time,
you sucker. So you kind of have this like
reinforcing cumulative causation narrative going where it's like,
OK, I didn't put the effort in. I made a plan.
The plan sucked, so I didn't do the thing.
So now in future I need to make sure I put in excessive amounts
of time and like over plan the thing, over engineer the thing
to the point of oblivion so that then in theory it'll work
perfectly. And it always, always sucks when
you do all that and it doesn't work anyway.
It is one of those things where I do wonder sometimes same deal,
if I'm penciling things and I'm like, how much of this is really
worth it though? Like should I just go in with a
pencil or should I just go with a pen?
You know, we're like, how do I want to approach this?
Because sometimes it does feel a little repetitive if you're
building out like a whole spread in pencil and then you're just
going to go back over it with a marker again.
And that's where I feel like a lot of the times where I'm in
that like creative space and and I'm like, OK, well, I'm doing
this ahead of time. Like, you know, always, you
know, what does that measure twice been cut once, right?
This idea of just like getting it right before you go into it.
But here's the fun thing that I do.
I don't pay attention all the time, but I'm then going over
with a pen. This just happened several
times. Instead of a new bullet journal
setup, I just did, I like set up this whole grid and did it.
And I was like, and I went too far on my line and now it's
passing, it's connecting where it's not supposed to, even
though I penciled it in. It was all perfect when you did
it. And I think at this point of my
life, I've just kind of accepted that that's going to happen.
So a lot of my videos now I'm like, and here's how you fix a
mistake instantly because I heard that so much before.
And even in that video, people are like, oh, you know, I really
want to get started with my bullet journal.
I really want to set it up, but like, I'm so nervous about
making a mistake. And it was great because I was
like, well, you know, just go to my video.
You'll see like I made multiple mistakes inside of mine.
Like you just fix it and you keep moving forward.
So it's just one of those deals sometimes where it is.
It's so funny how, like, when I get into a thing, I'm pretty
good about just getting it done right.
Or again, if it has to take multiple days and I kind of know
it. But for me, it is so much more
about like that upfront planning and kind of getting ready to do
it, which is weird. But like, I have to plan to
plan, you know? Like, yeah.
But well, what if that plan doesn't work out that you're not
doing what you're supposed to be doing?
Yeah. Having to plan the plan, I
always feel silly saying like, OK, here's like me pre planning
my planner so that I can plan my plan so that I can go do my
plans. I'm like, well, yeah, but that's
like how I do it. I guess you kind of touched on
this and I think that this is a good segue, but that idea of,
you know, the fear of messing up in particular when it comes to
planning of journal layouts or like in your planner and such,
trying to get its structures right so that then you can in
theory take perfect action moving forward.
What would you see as some of the other reasons why planning
is sometimes used as procrastination or we get into
that kind of mind space of having to plan and plan and plan
and never going any further with that?
Well, I think a lot of the times we get really excited about a
new idea. You know, I think for myself
personally, be like a new tracker that I want to use for
something. All intentions.
We're all been here of making it work, filling it out every day,
every week, whatever that might be.
And for me, I think a lot about like, OK, what does this look
like? Does everything fit?
Am I covering all the topics, all the things that I want to
track on here? But then when you actually get
into it, you just kind of you're not as motivated.
I mean, I think it's not like dopamine hit of like, yeah,
we're set up a thing, we're going to do a thing, we're going
to make a change. This could be amazing.
But then when you actually go in to do it, or even if you ever
get there, you know, you're like, well, I'm going to start
that on Monday. Like, oh, I didn't get to it
this week. I'm going to start that on
Monday. It's like a diet or a workout or
anything else like that. Like we're always going to find
like a better time to get it done.
I thought I've shared this in the past, but I had set up a
workout tracker years and years ago.
I think it actually was probably the last ones I did because I
was so mad. But it was like just very easy
workout tracker. It was a whole calendar.
And if I went and I worked out that day and was active, it got
filled in with the blue pen. And then if I went and didn't do
it, it got filled in with a red pen.
And by the end of the month, every single day was red.
Like but it was like sad that I had to keep doing it in red.
But like for me, it was almost like sticking it to myself.
I was like, you son of a bitch, you have to fill this in every
day because you didn't do what you said you were going to do.
You can't just blow this off like you did your workout.
And I'll feel bad every single Red Square that you have to fill
in. But it's like, yeah, I completed
it, but I actually didn't do anything that month active for
that tracker. But after that, that was really
something that made me feel like, OK, this was just
performative. Like I wasn't actually holding
myself accountable for this, You know, I didn't really follow
through on it. There was there was nothing
there that made me feel guilty other than myself of doing it.
But it was definitely one of those those things where I was
just like, so pumped up about it and then it got into it and I
was like, no. Yeah, I think it's that kind of
like the possibilities of it, right?
Like that kind of like almost wishful thinking in a way.
It's like, oh, you know, I'm going to set up all these
structures in my journal, which is going to kind of, you know,
be aligned with this ideal future version of myself who
does all of these things. And I'm going to come back and
fill it in and feel so accomplished and yadda, yadda.
And I swear that like half the time I spend more effort setting
those things up than actually just going and doing the thing.
But I don't want to do the thing because then I won't have
anywhere to record that I did the thing.
And then it's like, it doesn't count.
It's like, you know, oh, you're actually official until you make
it Facebook official. You know, like when people used
to say those things back when we used Facebook.
But I find that another kind of reason that I for me personally,
when it comes to that procrastin planning and using planning as a
form of procrastination is the fear of making a choice, which
sounds really silly, but it's like once I get started, that's
like committing to something that's saying, yeah, this is the
way I'm going with it. I have sent myself down the path
and where I very much saw this was in planning my wedding and
in particular picking color palettes because there are so
many gorgeous color palettes. And as somebody who pretty much
intends on getting married once and being done with it, you
know, assuming the Vogel feels the same type deal, but it means
that once you make that choice of saying this is the colour
palette, I'm going with all of those other possible options
like the beautiful burnt orange and teal, which was so gorgeous.
Definitely not what I went with, but like it would have been a
vibe or all of those beautiful ones with like the sage greens
and super soft pink, like, oh, that would have been so
gorgeous. But again, I'm only getting
married once. Got to make a choice, get in and
do it. I find that setting a date for
these kind of things certainly helps.
Like, yeah, if you're going to have your wedding on this day,
you really need to know X weeks ahead of time what your palette
is so you girls can get her dresses and your florist can
grow the flowers and all those kind of things.
But actually getting to the point of setting a date took
like 8 years. So yeah, big procrastination in
that front. I mean, I've actively been
trying to work against this for a long time.
Something else that I do, I'm sure maybe others do too, is
this thing that like you can't get started with a page because
you haven't like set it up and I'll do this.
It's something as simple as like a header.
I'll be like, oh, this needs to be a collection page.
And I'm like, oh, but I can't start the ideation on this until
I make the header and I want to do a cool lettering font or I'm
not at home. This happens a lot when I go
into the office and I don't take all my materials with me.
I'm like, oh, this needs to be a collection page, but I can't
actually like get started on this page just yet because I
haven't decided what the header is going to look like.
And all my materials are at home.
So I've even like taken to like a scrap piece of paper almost
and like worked in there, put it in my journal, came home was
like, OK, now we have to transfer.
And then I was like, this was the dumbest thing ever.
Like Mark, give yourself like 3 or 4 boxes from the top.
You don't usually do like giant headers for these things and
just use it. Or sometimes I'll, I definitely
always have like a pencil and a pen and I'll just like pencil it
in kind of a little bit of where it is so that I can get started
in it. But that paralyzation or
whatever it is of just like making that decision or doing
that thing, but knowing that you have something else to do.
I mean, it's completely procrastinating like dark.
I mean, Mark, just get in there and start writing and and doing
what you need to do. It doesn't matter that there's
not a perfect header on that page right now that it that is
so minor compared to the work that's being done.
But there are so many times when I've certainly just put
something off because, like, I wasn't prepared or I didn't feel
like Paige was prepared to get started.
No, I completely understand that, especially for like our
decoration first planners or people who like to make the page
look nice and then populate it. I find this very much happens
anytime I'm using a setup that uses second line highlights and
I don't have my highlighting pen because I don't want to
highlight over the top of the text after the fact.
Because regardless of what the pen and paper combo says they're
going to do, it will smudge and it will bother me and then I
won't use the plan because it looks ugly.
So making sure that my layouts are set up in such a way that I
can just jot things down as I need them or going with a
decorative style that doesn't require that of me or something
like that. I'm very tempted for this year
to just like not do decorative planning.
I don't want to say it. And then like, you know,
completely 180, that'd be like, no, I'm going full maximalist.
I'm whipping out paints. I've decided I'm going to like
chisel my plans into rocks and make art out of it or something
Like, no, we're not doing that. But I kind of feel like I've
gotten to a point where I have started to notice that the
decorative elements are starting to hold me back from getting my
plans done. And I think it's in part it's
just like I like a cohesive theme.
I know I enjoy that throughout each of my months or cycles or
whatnot. But the time, effort, and energy
spent trying to figure out what the theme should be so that I
can make the plans look nice, so that then I can put the plans in
so that then I can do the things that I'm planning.
Like it feels like an unnecessary amount of time,
effort, energy spent on that thing.
So I'm toying with the idea of going more minimal this year.
I'm so excited for you for this more like minimalistic approach
because it's where I've kind of spent a little bit of my time
recently. I actually was just thinking
about like all of the pens and everything that I have behind
me, not the fountain pens, all the regular like crafting pens
and markers and all of that. I was like, you know, I'm really
not using them as much anymore. And I was actually thinking
about like maybe downsizing or kind of down emigrating a bit
from it because I've kind of got to the point where I'm a little
bit more OK with just kind of using what I have in the moment
to do it. Like I was thinking about this
when I was setting up my new bullet journal and I was
flipping through my current 1 and I was like, you know what
Mark? Like back in the day, I used to
use just one pen and like the ruler, right?
And like that's my old bullet journals.
Like the pen is exactly the same on every single page.
Black Uniball Signal DX .38mm like crisp, looking good,
looking great. And then like over the past few
years, I've been using more and more fountain pens.
Like every single week I try to use a different pen just because
I have that many and I want to make sure that I'm using them.
And so every week essentially is, you know, a new.
Weight of the nib, it's a bold, a medium extra fine, whatever.
It's another color and it's especially, you know, difficult
when I go back to like a collection that's already set
and I need to add notes to it because it's in a different
color it I don't remember what pen it was necessarily or when I
did it. And so like mentally though,
I've been slowly allowing myself to let go of that a little bit.
Like I said, I've been working on it, especially with like
those header setups like yes, I want to go home.
I want it to match like this year I'm actually just using
like this little like stencil ruler, right?
So all of my headers in my new notebook are using these letters
1st and then I'm being going back over top of them with the
gel pen. I like the way it looks, but I
don't know that I'm always going to have this little ruler with
me, right? So I feel like I'm almost
setting myself up a little bit for failure or to do exactly
what I just said that I don't want to do anymore, which is
like wait to get home or wait to start, whatever before I put in
this little header before I get started on the page.
So it's like I like the way it looks.
I think like aesthetically it's like where I want to be.
I'm OK with it, but it's a great example.
Like I'm almost procrast of planning in a way ahead of time
just because I know that there's going to be a potential issue.
So like getting myself past that I think is going to be huge for
me. Or just knowing like a lot of my
pages and my headers, I've been keeping them the same.
Like it's two or three boxes from the top right?
And I'll just use that visually and say that's where the header
goes. So I'm like, I know it's almost
like mentally penciling it in, knowing that I'll come back to
it and it hasn't been holding me up as much.
But I just kind of know now that I've said it out loud and I put
it into the universe, like there's going to be a time when
this ruler is not with me and I'm going to need to do
something. I'm going to be like, Nope,
can't sit on the page yet. Doesn't have the stencil header.
I find that that's kind of similar for my style because
I've been using a lot of preprinted in the sense of like
I have been typing them up and preprinting them myself and
cutting them out and sticking them in and such.
Mainly because I just, I like the decoration.
I like the lettering styles that I'm using.
I like to lean into a theme that way.
It's a lot of fun, but the time, effort and energies spent trying
to rack my brain, think of every single possible header that I
might need for the entire of a month, two weeks before that
month even starts, sometimes even 3 weeks before the month
starts depending on video release schedules and whatever
it's, it's getting to a point where I'm like, this is silly.
It's just a little bit silly. You know, spending all of that
time, effort, energy, planning that kind of stuff rather than
doing the stuff that I'm using my planner for.
And given that, I do like to think of my planner as a purpose
first space. My purpose is getting things
done. And whether that be getting
things done in terms of like work or personal or goals or
whatever else. So if that is the purpose, is my
planning actually aligned with that or am I aligning it with
something else and it's all good?
If for your journal or planner or whatever, the first purpose
is as a creativity tool. And if you are doing things that
are creative, then there and you are enjoying it and you are
having fun and you are join Ling, it's all good.
But I think right now I am trying to learn less into the
creative aspects of my planning and more into the planning
aspects of my planning. Like actually getting things in
there written up in such a way that I know exactly what I need
to do. I can take action on it.
And not having these pre planning stages hold me back
from doing that thing. I guess, you know, in thinking
about that, how is it that you would identify whether you were
procrasta planning or whether the effort you're putting in is
actually necessary for the stuff you're trying to get done?
Yeah, I think a lot of it is just self-awareness.
There's a lot of times where I'm working, I'm doing something and
I'll just say it to myself. I'll be like, Mark, you are
avoiding doing this task, like let's just get it done.
And sometimes just saying that out loud and like calling myself
out in the moment. So I feel like a lot of like the
traits of what that looks like for me is moving things around
the desk multiple times, whether it's my notebook or the
materials or whatever it might be.
If this is like I'm looking at it and it kind of gives me not
fun feeling, I'm just like dope and now you sit over here until
I need to work over here, then you're going to move back over
here. It's just like moving that
around. I'll essentially just get sick
of it. So I feel like any type of
motion that's like repetitive and you and you know why you're
doing it. I think it's probably very few
people that are completely unaware of it, but like that's
one of the first things that I find I'll figure out for myself.
The other is just, I don't know, it's probably a very similar
feeling, but just knowing that like in my mind, I have an idea
of what I want to have happen and I don't have the things that
I need to do that. So I have to almost talk myself
out of it. Like I was saying originally
when I started to use more fountain pens and things I like
always had like the same pen around because this is what my
headers were made with. So it was like, OK, no matter
where you are, like you have that pen, you can do that thing,
you're fine. But now, like I said before, I
don't always have that or I'm in the moment and I need to do it.
And so it's just, you know, one of those things where I'm like,
oh, not going to start. And I was like, Mark, just this
right in the header with the pen you already have.
You dial it up all you want now or later, but like just get in
there. So it is so much, it's just
self-awareness. I feel like we do it.
You just have to kind of like say, call yourself out on it.
That's what I do all the time, talking to myself probably more
often than I should. But most of the time it's like,
let's just get this thing done. Like let's stop procrastinating,
Let's stop doing that. And then my other side is like,
no, but it's more fun here thinking about the idea versus
doing it. No, very that.
I think that a lot of the time procrastination is just our
brain saving us from future pain.
It's like, Oh no, this is the fun, happy place where
everything is possible and we don't have to make hard
decisions and you don't have to do hard work.
But as soon as you actually get started on things like, no,
that's scary. I don't want to do that.
That sounds challenging. Let's go back to planning.
That was way more fun. Yeah, that's one of them.
I also feel like, and we've all done this too, you know, when
you're starting to like list out like your task list and you
don't like the way it looks, or I do this a lot too.
Sometimes I'm just like, oh, this is called daily logging,
but I'll do a bunch of tasks and you know, they're kind of
they're not done all in sequential order, right?
So they're all checked off. And so there's like open and
then done, done, open, open, done, done, done.
And then I'm like, well, I want to get rid of the ones that are
done. Like I'd well, now I want all of
my still to do's to be organized underneath each other.
And it feels repetitive sometimes to then like know,
write the next date and then relist all of them again,
because I can still see them. They're right next to where I'm
writing right now. But I just feel like sometimes
though, like that's needed to, to do that.
And so it kind of goes into the same effect, like if I'm not
working well inside of my planner or my journal to do
those tasks. Because in my mind, I'm like,
you have to rewrite this first and you don't have the materials
to do so. I think that that becomes
problematic. But like I also the same exact
time though look at it and say, well, we just talked about this.
But if this list looks really nice and it's really clean and
I'm really happy with the way that it looks, then I'm more
open to them taking on that task.
The problem is it just took me 15 minutes to rewrite this task
when I could have done the thing that was already on there using
that 15 minutes. You know, it's kind of like,
well, I'm hyping myself up. I'm prepping myself to do the
thing. And then it's like, yeah, but
you could just spend all that time just doing the thing and
then just crossing it off of the list that already exists.
Yeah. I guess it's kind of thinking
about like what's the ROI, what's the return on investment
of doing this planning kind of thing.
And I like to think about it in terms of if the return on
investment of doing the planning is going to be at least double
the effort I put in, then it's kind of worth it.
I mean, finding your happy places, it's completely up to
you or what not. But if I'm spending, you know,
let's let's go with a high estimate an hour.
If I'm spending an hour setting up a layout, am I going to get
at least two hours of productivity or like purpose out
of this thing? You know, obviously very much
depends on what kind of layout you're making.
You know, if I'm going to the effort to set up a planning
layout of like planning out my entire quarter in terms of goal
action steps and stuff, that's a quarter worth of work that I am
planning out for myself. That is going to be a big return
on investment. If I'm planning out, like, I
don't know, spending an hour doing a workout plan and I never
end up doing that workout. I, I wasted an hour.
I, I, you know, I don't want to say wasted, but like, I kind of
wasted an hour. You know, you put all of that
energy into just making the plan and then never got to the point
where you're like, oh, the plan isn't good enough.
I don't know if this is going to work, yada, yada type thing.
And thus never took action. It was a waste of time.
And it's hard. You can't necessarily get that
back either. I feel like so much of this is
just learning though from your mistakes.
You know, if you're going to go and set that all up and do all
of that, like you said, what's that ROI?
Like I did all of these things, great, I fill it out or
whatever. But then again, what am I doing
with that information after it's done?
We've talked about that a lot with like that performative
planning part. It's like, okay, I set up this
tracker, I'm going to do all of this, you know, are you actually
going to make a change? Like if say you set up like a
sleep tracker for yourself and at the end of your month your
data is showing like, yeah, you're not going to bed early,
you're getting uneasy sleep and it's not well for you.
Like, yeah, but is that all day? I know.
But you know, even before you get started, it's almost like a
promise to yourself, you know, like, are we just trying to see
if we're paying attention to it or whatever?
Or is it strictly just performative to take a picture
for Instagram or make this on YouTube content?
Or if this data comes back and shows me one way or the other,
will I actually take action like the same way you would do if you
went to a doctor? It's like, hey, you maybe have
some elevated cholesterol and like, OK, you're going to follow
this diet and you're going to exercise two to three times a
week. And when you come back to me in
six weeks, we'll check again. And so I feel like, you know, in
that promise to both your physician and yourself, you're
like, OK, if I don't do those things, then I'm going to have
to start taking, you know, daily pill for cholesterol or whatever
it is. Or if I do make those changes,
then that's a positive life change and I won't have to then
take that medicine. This is a very personal story
I'm sharing with you right now because it's exactly what
happened to me. But that's an example where I
was like, you are going to do this because at the end of the
day, you're going to have to make a decision on what's
happening here. Now, I didn't set up a tracker
for it or do any of that. I just knew I don't want to have
to take a medicine every single day for something like this that
that I can solve for. But if I did set up a tracker
for it, who the hell knows if I would have actually used it or
not. But the idea is I did what I had
to do and after that time, the decision was made.
Nope, you're good. You made the positive
improvements for yourself to do that.
And if it would have gone the other way, then I would have had
to make that other decision. So I think that maybe that's a
part of it as well of like maybe I'm not ready to make that
decision. And so the idea of spending time
and thinking about the layout and what I would want to do is a
really great, you know, procrastination strategy to not
have to start to do the thing that eventually you'd have to
make a decision on. So it could be a part of it.
Again, like I said, I'm just an area I'm very much trying to
work on for myself because I know that it's problematic and
it's just like the same thing as anything.
I'm aware of it, you know, So that's why I like to call myself
out often because I'm just like, you know what you're doing right
now, Mark? Like fix it, do the right thing.
Yeah, I think that another tool that I kind of used to determine
whether I am planning in the form of procrastination, like if
I'm using that as a tool to avoid taking action, is just
checking in with myself is like, do I know my next concrete step?
Because if I know my next concrete step, it's just like,
cool, go do that. Like, like stop planning, you
know, the next thing you need to do, go do that thing.
So if we're thinking about it in terms of like, I don't know, a
health and fitness goal or whatever, and like, you know,
maybe you want to start an exercise program or something
like that, okay, what is your next concrete step?
Maybe your next concrete step is I do not have shoes that I can
do this in. I need to go and acquire shoes.
So it's like, okay, cool. You need to figure out where
you're going to get them when you're going to get them.
Looking on your calendar now you're planning is actually
going to be a lot more helpful, not just making the layout look
nice or, you know, getting stuck in that research stage.
Because that's another question I asked myself.
Like, am I using research as an avoidance tactic?
Like am I using this to stop myself from having to actually
do anything? Because getting stuck in the
research stage, as I said, that is where all good goals go to
die, I swear. Yeah, it's definitely one of
those things where you are thinking through it and you're
like, OK, what is the thing here that I'm doing?
You know, like you said, like the why, why am I doing this?
Am I ready to go? Am I ready to do a thing?
There's just so much that goes into it, you know, and I think
that's a really big part. I do also though, think to say
like almost like the opposite. Like I guess this is the the
Gray area between this topic is like there is planning for the
thing though that is really important that you should do.
You know, I think about that every week when I set up my
weekly and I kind of go through my calendars and I write things
down. And sometimes I would ask myself
and be like, is this really worth it?
Like just get it and start doing the things that you want to do.
Like why do you have to sit down and do it?
But I found for myself that that long term effect outweighs the
other. By doing that and sitting down
and looking through all the things and writing them down, I
do feel more prepared to take on the week.
I'm and more or less prone to miss things because I've almost
kind of written it twice in a way it's digitally in one spot,
but writing it down on my calendar for me personally helps
me. I know in previous episodes we
talked about like repetition kind of being the anti direction
of like being productive. But for me that repetition
writing, rewriting helps me out a lot.
But I look at it the same way, you know, planning out your
spread before you actually go in there, I think is smart.
But it's like, but how much time are you spending on that?
And like something I've done is I might not draw in every single
line or write down every single number, but like write down the
important ones. And then that way I feel less
like I'm wasting space doing it twice.
But at least I know that I'm somewhat prepared to go into it
when I am ready to kind of put the pen to paper versus the
pencil. No, very fair.
I guess it's almost like that idea of over planning as a form
of procrastination. Like you know, once you get to
your MVP, you're like minimum viable plan or whatnot.
Then everything extra that you do on top of that that just
holds you back from taking the action you need to.
That's probably where the issue is because I am very much like,
I don't know afoot in both problems because I initially
when it comes to feeling busy or feeling like I've got a lot to
do or whatnot, I have this little voice in the back of my
head. It's rebel brain just being
like, no, you're not allowed to plan because you know what you
need to do. Just go do the thing.
But if I spent the 5 or 10 minutes planning out the work
that I had to do for the day or week, then I'm going to be so
much more effective during that day or week.
Like the ROI on that is huge compared to the 5-10 minutes it
took to just write down what I needed to get done.
But because I'm so like, I've no worried about the idea year of
using planning as a form of procrastination and not getting
this stuff done. It's like, Nope, you can't
possibly write down a plan. Do not even think about picking
up a pen and writing out what you need to do because in theory
you know what you need to do. So just go do the thing.
No, it's, it's a hard thing to do sometimes to like kick
yourself in the butt to do it. But like, I mean, we've both
kind of said it now. I think that awareness is really
important. You mentioned something earlier
and I think this might be a good way to like transition into like
we've talked about like when you know it's not helpful, but like
when do you know that it actually is helping you?
Like I kind of give that example of like I know that by working
on like a Sunday ahead of my week and kind of filling in my
pre week that that's helpful for you.
Do you have anything for yourself where you're like the
opposite, where Rebel Brain is like, we're doing this thing
because we know that it's helping us, Jess.
Yeah, I think that definitely when it comes to goal action
plans, that is a type of planning that I know is always
going to have pay off, mainly because I'm not so much planning
in terms of, you know, pre planning a structure or a layout
or whatever. I use the same layout and
structure for every single one of them because I know that
works, which means that all of the effort that I'm putting into
that, all of the stuff that I'm writing down there, I know it's
going to have pay off. So that's one that I'm always
willing to spend the time on because I know the time is being
spent. Well when it comes to designing
new layouts and such that there's like a kind of threshold
like there is up until a point it's good, good planning.
And then after that it's like, OK, now you're over planning and
it's kind of pointless. But when it comes to setting up
new layouts or new structures in my my journal that to tackle a
particular project or pain point or anything like that, there is
going to be a certain amount of time I need to do the pre
planning stages to make sure that that layout has the best
chance of being successful for me or actually helping me to do
the things that I want to do. So usually that's kind of
thinking about, OK, well, what's the purpose?
Purpose first kind of a thing. What do I want it to do for me?
What do I want to help with? What do I want to get out of
this type of a thing? Once I know that, once I'm clear
on that, what structures are going to most easily help me do
that thing? What structures should I avoid
because of my kind of previous tendencies that I have shown,
like not setting up monthly trackers because you're not
going to go back and fill them in.
Maybe putting it on a weekly structure or something because
that's more aligned with how I like to plan or whatnot.
So the effort spent in that kind of pre planning stage, I would
consider to just be planning, not over planning.
I think the over planning comes in where it's like, oh, but
where should I put this sticker? I'm not coming for your
stickers, I'm not coming for your decoration.
It's just how I kind of see myself as over planning and
using that as a procrastination tool.
No, I mean, it absolutely is. I mean, that's just an excuse
that we give ourselves. Like, well, I can't start this
spread because what if I want to write or what if I do write
there? But that's where I wanted to put
that sticker or put that stamp or wherever.
And I feel like that's where that pre planning can be
helpful. Again, you're not planning to
procrastinate of getting started, but like thinking ahead
that step and actually being thoughtful about it is much more
helpful because if you do it the other way, like we kind of were
just kind of going and talking about, it's like, well, if I'm
not doing those things and I just go right in, but then I do
want to add that later and it doesn't fit, then I'm just mad
at myself. It's not, you know, itching the
itch or scratching the itch. You know, that's in my brain of
like, we want to make how to make that happen.
So I think that is kind of an important part.
I mean, the other way to go with that is to say like, well, I'm
just going to make my life a lot easier and I'm going to simplify
it. Or something that I'll do
sometimes is I'll just create like a bounding box for myself
and be like, OK, this is the space where you're going to
write this. So like in that example, if
you're like, not sure where you want to put that sticker or do
whatever with it, I'll just like block out a part of my page
while I'm going to write. And that way it's like, OK,
well, all the space around it is for whatever creativity in this
that you want to do later. It's like, yes, I want to add a
drop shadow to that, but I don't have my marker on me right now.
So it's like let's bound this and like visually or sometimes
it came with pencils. It's going to mark it out and
move on so that we can come back to this later.
Sometimes I do come back to it later, sometimes I don't come
back to it later. But the idea is that I didn't
hold myself up or stop myself for continuing my work.
I am in a way really kind of pre planning that page for that
material or that thing before I actually hit it.
You know, I don't know, maybe everyone's a bit different too.
But like I for the most part, typically know like the general
sizes of a lot of the stationary items that I have stamps and
stuff like that where a lot of times I give myself more space
than I actually need. And sometimes it looks weird,
but I'll kind of say like, oh, I know the stamp that I want to
use here and it's, you know, no bigger than this.
So I'm just going to leave that space there for myself.
And at least again, I'm not stopping myself from doing
anything. It's just like, keep it along,
you'll come back if you do it. If not, no loss, no foul.
Yeah, no, I think that another way that I try and avoid the
over planning procrastination through planning type deal is
giving myself a time restriction on the amount of time I give
myself for the planning stage. Because especially, especially
research, especially research as a form of planning.
Like if that is left just unchecked and Oh yeah, you can
use as much time as you need, then I will just need all the
time. All the time is what I need.
And again, This is why why we waited so long to get married is
just couldn't make a choice because she didn't give herself
any deadlines type of a deal. But even if it's just, you know,
planning in the sense of setting up for your week or pre planning
your week or whatnot to kind of avoid over engineering
everything and planning down to the minute details because.
Secondary thought on this one. I'll get to it in a second.
But if you just give yourself a set amount of time, that's a
reasonable amount of time for yourself, something that is
going to be sufficient to get the stuff in that you need to or
whatnot. Then oftentimes you are going to
be more focused in how you use that time because you've given
yourself a restriction and you'll get to the end of it
feeling more satisfied. Otherwise you get into this kind
of point of like hyper fixating on every single tiny my new
detail and like, oh, but what if I like, you know, moved this up
slightly? Or what if I had to reposition
this over here and you're repositioning all this stuff on
the page and not actually getting any of the stuff that
you want to done. The secondary thought though,
with that idea of over planning things down to the my new
details and whatever else is that oftentimes if we try and
plan out the entire journey or the entire road map of if we
think about in terms of like a goal or project, oftentimes one,
you don't know what you don't know.
So there's a good likelihood that you're going to get
started, learn more information about what actually needs to be
done and the plan is just going to change from that.
Or two, our predictions of what's going to happen in the
future, like we don't have crystal balls.
Typically speaking, what we plan for or think is going to happen
or the timeline of events that we think we're going to be able
to follow through on doesn't actually align with reality.
So you spend all this time, effort, energy putting into the
perfect plan, really scaffolding out every single minute detail
of what has to happen. And then once you get started,
either you learn more and that plan doesn't work or things just
change and that plan doesn't work and you don't want to put
that effort and energy in and then have it wasted.
Whereas if you had of just made, I know, a very small concrete
plan of the next couple of steps you need to do and then gotten
underway with those, you'd have more insight, you'd know better
about what needs to be done and then you can plan the next few
steps. Do those and then plan the next
ones and kind of just go around that cycle.
A more kind of iterative building of a plan rather than
trying to over plan at the start.
Procrastinate getting started and then when you finally get
started it's like cool and this doesn't even work.
I think that's a really good point, Jess.
So I think this is the perfect time to ask the planner pals
about their opinions on this one.
And it can go two way planner pals.
This can either be examples like we've talked about today of like
things that you do that again for the awareness standpoint
that you know is, you know, planning for productivity, but
like with the thoughts of procrastination in there.
And I would also love to know like what you say to yourself to
get yourself out of that space. So if you are there with us, you
are aware of it or you catch yourself doing it, you know,
what do you do to kind of get yourself out of there and
motivate yourself? We would love to hear from you.
You can, of course, drop a comment inside of the video if
you're watching over on YouTube, you can always e-mail
usplannerpalspodcast@gmail.com. And over on social media too.
We love to chat with you over there.
I love when the planner pals hit us up in all those spaces
because it's just like a constant conversation and I know
that they're listening, they're watching and we're talking about
these things and it's just super fun and I absolutely love it so
much because we all do it. I think that's what we really
come to understand. Like, it might look a little bit
different for everybody, but we're all there with you.
You're not alone. Yeah, definitely.
I would love to hear about, like, how you know that you're
procrastinating through planning, how you get yourself
out of it. I'm gonna, like, steal all your
tactics, especially because, as I said, I've got a foot in both
problems. I don't know.
You're not allowed to plan 'cause you're gonna
procrastinate or know the plan isn't perfect and we need to
continue with the research stage.
Very eager to hear your thoughts, Planner fouls.
But as always, thanks for watching.