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 Jessica in and
I'm very excited to get into this episode because creativity
and planning is something that has always been part of my
planning system. Exactly.
It's a match made in heaven, a perfect pairing.
So today we're going to be exploring like our creative
journey, what it means to be creative through your planning
and everything that kind of goes around that.
I mean, everything that we can fit into a nicely packaged
episode that isn't 17 hours long.
But before we get into that, thank you so much for giving us
your ideas about where you get inspiration from our last
episode. It was really nice to hear about
the creators that you're following, the different spaces
and sources that you use, the ones that were the same as ours
and the ones that were a little bit different.
Yeah, the comments section definitely came through on this
one. I wrote down so many new
creators that I can't wait to check out.
We were talking about having other planners outside of bullet
journaling and how they're planning and what they're doing.
So I've got my list. I'm excited for my research as
we get into this week and specifically this topic because
I feel like there's a stigma around creative planning.
I don't know how it looks in other communities.
I guess I'll speak directly from like the bullet journal
community where the thought is, is that if you are creative
planning, you are not bullet journaling.
We've all been in those arguments on the online spaces
where people are like, you took too many colors on that page,
therefore you're not a bullet journaler.
And then having to somehow and some reason, I don't know why, I
feel as if we have to defend ourselves for how we like to
keep our planners. But today we're really going to
focus in on, well, what is creative planning and does it
have to strictly just be artsy or can you find ways to bring
creative planning into a functional space as well?
Yeah, I think that that's a very big point about it, right?
Because creative planning doesn't necessarily just have to
be decorating a page. There are other ways to be
creative. Like if the bar for creativity
is just decorating your page, then it's like, oh, sorry
authors, sorry people who write prose, sorry anybody who likes
to sculpt. Yeah, it's actually not
creativity. Creativity is just putting
pretty stickers into your notebook.
It blows my mind because especially as someone who is for
the most part been on the more minimalist side of this creative
bullet journaling space, because I have come to disown that I am
a creative bullet journaler. But you don't have to be this
maximalist creative planner to make that happen.
Just using different types of stickers or stamps or even using
washi tapes, but not kind of going overboard with it still
does make you a creative planner, but it doesn't mean
that you can't be functional as well.
That's a really big thing that I know for me personally that I've
focused on when I first started my bullet journal and even now I
always focus on that functionality first.
Last episode I was mentioning that when I haven't followed
that path and went like kind of too far on the pendulum and to
create, then I realize that I don't actually have enough space
for the things I need to do. So for me personally, I think
one of the biggest things that I like to play around with is the
general layouts of my pages. That to me is the most fun.
It's one of the reasons I also think that bullet journaling
works so well for me is there's a lot of creativity and
flexibility and where I put things on the page, the grids
that I use, and then also thinking about some of the
creative elements that I want to put into it.
But but really the layout is kind of the structure, the the
ground work of a bullet journal page, right?
You have to have a little bit of structure to it.
And I think that you could very much be creative and how you
even lay things out on your page before you even put down ink
onto your page or anything. Just pencil and paper and you
can have a lot of fun. Because creativity so often gets
kind of like used in substitute of decoration, it means that a
lot of us, I feel are kind of like just rolling off any other
form of creativity that can be in there.
Because like you said, the structure, the layout, like you
know, where you're placing your boxes, boxes you're using, all
of that kind of stuff is also creativity.
It's like if I try and design A weekly log that's going to suit
my needs and suit my lifestyle and whatnot, The sections that I
include in there, I'm having to do some creative thinking about
like, well, what do I need to plan for?
And how can I realize that in my journal?
Like do I need a weather tracker?
No, I don't leave the house. Do I need a water tracker?
Probably should include one. Do need to hydrate.
But the things that I need in there and the ways that I'm kind
of like problem solving those, the creativity I'm bringing to
that problem solving is going to be different compared to other
people's. What other types of creativity
have you seen in the Planisphere that aren't specifically
decorating the planner? So one of the big things I
talked about some of my favorite inspirational creators last week
is just using black pens, markers on a page.
And I think most people always think creativity equals color,
but I think it doesn't have to. And I really appreciate just the
monochromatic look of just white paper and a black pen.
And I think that you can do a lot there.
Something I've learned a lot from the community that I like
to replicate a lot has to do with like utilizing patterns and
shapes. I talked last week about really
loving hexagons. I don't know what it is about
that shape, just that just like makes me very excited.
It's like not as boring as a square or a circle, but it's
also like not some like crazy wild thing and it fits nicely
onto a page. It's very nice.
I like it a lot. So seeing other people utilize
shapes and patterns also is a way to express that.
And it doesn't have to be a lot. You can put like a small hexagon
and fill that with some line patterns and suddenly you've got
a little bit of visual interest on your page versus just, you
know, you writing in your handwriting.
Yeah, for sure. And I think about it in terms of
like with the hexagons in particular, I love a hexagon.
It's very what tessellatable shape.
You don't need any other shapes and can tessellate by itself.
Go go hexagons. So hard to draw though.
I need a stencil anytime I try to draw one because otherwise it
ends up like a squashed gemstone diamond looking shape and it's
just not quite the vibe. 100%. Yeah, and I think also the fact
that having been a chemistry teacher and such, you know,
there's a lot of hexagons in that too.
So very much a love when you put over the what?
The little picture of the Redken bottle with the little
molecules. I'm just like so cute.
Look a little molecules, completely understand why you
use that as a design element. But thinking about hexagons in
particular, I know that one of the things that I've used in my
journal previously has been a hexagonal tracker.
So it's effectively just taking your regular, like vertical
column, one where each of the rows is a day of the week and
each of the columns is a habit, and then turning it into a
different shape. It's like the function is still
exactly the same. It's literally color in a little
box every time you did something for each day of the month, but
the shape of it is different. And that is a form of
creativity. It's like still the same thing,
just looks a little bit special. And last episode we did talk a
lot about problem solving in our bullet journal or our planners
as being a way to think about your creativity or like how
you're inspiring yourself to do more.
There was a creator years ago, and I forget his name because he
hasn't posted in a long time, but he had something called a
Hexadex. And if you're watching on
YouTube, I'll pop this up on the screen so you can see it.
But essentially it took two hexagons and stacked them on top
of each other, actually looked very similar to like that old
Stussy symbol from that you might have drawn back in the
day. But the way that you utilize
that and the way he utilized that was for time tracking
throughout the day. And so you would kind of use
each one of those points as hours throughout the day and
then fill them in with shapes and colors.
I adopted that. I've kind of morphed it a little
bit into something a little bit different for myself, but still
very much love to reference the Hexadex because from a
functionality standpoint, it works really nicely.
It does take a hot 2nd to fill up and and create because you do
have to kind of create those shapes consistently depending
how you use it. And I really, really love the
way that it looked. And something that I also used
to add into that too is just other elements to kind of build
off of that. So I would create different
patterns in there as I was time blocking.
So instead of just doing colors, I would also do shapes or
patterns. And he did a similar thing too.
And then I went even further with it for a while.
I was like big on water coloring inside of my bullet journal.
And so I would do like these watercolor drop shadows around
the hexadexes. And it just looked really,
really cool to me. It was still functional, still
functional for time tracking and time blocking, but like adding
the extra elements to it though, made it really just look
beautiful. I have some amazing collection
pages that I just, I will flip back through my bullet journal
and be like, remember when Mark, you were so much more creative
and you were just in this exploration phase of your bullet
journal and like you need to get back there.
But there's a lot of really cool things you can do to add on to a
functional piece utilizing those shapes or even different types
of graphs too. Like you said, a sleep tracker.
That's one thing I love is like infographic type.
So you use a bar graph or a pie chart or whatever you kind of
need and just explore with it. There's so many options to take
basic information and make it look really cool.
Yeah, I like your point about, you know, looking back on our
previous journals and I'm like, I used to be so creative and
such. And I was thinking about this
mindset that I've now found myself in in the late up to this
episode. And I'm just like, Jess, you
bloody hypocrite. Like you're out here preaching
the good word that creativity doesn't have to be decorative.
And then you're looking back at your old journals being like, I
used to be so decorative. I used to doodle in my journal.
I used to not use stickers. And now I'm a cheap sellout and
all I do is use tapes and stickers and all of this.
And I'm just like, I'm sorry, what?
It's like anytime we have that mindset of like, oh, you know,
you're allowed to be a learner. You're allowed to, you know,
take some time to struggle through things and your first
works going to suck. Not mine.
I have to be perfect from the get go.
It's very much one of those. It's like, Yep, I'm going to be,
you know, pour a lot of grace on everybody else.
Everybody else is allowed to take their time with things, but
I have to be 100 100% out the gate, otherwise I'm a failure.
We've all been there where you do you feel like that especially
when we're sharing stuff online, You know, a lot of people don't
like to share work in progress. They don't like to share
mistakes or anything like that because you do feel like you
have to be that inspiration for other people, right?
You want to show them the finished product so they can be
inspired by that finished product to do that.
But we talked about this last episode and it really got me
thinking a lot about how people like to digest information and
inspiration. And you talked about for you
personally, especially getting your inspiration from YouTube,
liking to watch that progress of things.
And I've taken it for myself to even to start to share more of
that. I feel like I've always done it
to a certain extent, but like finding the right way to do that
because I think the exploration of a lot of this is the fun
part. And if you are a perfectionist,
like you're saying for yourself even that you might not feel as
if you have the space to be able to explore with that because you
want it to be right up front. So I'm like, let me take the
bullet for the team. I'll go ahead and get messy and
crazy with it and show you what did or didn't work and fail with
it so that you can be successful.
This idea of like creativity does take time though.
And I think that that's possibly something that maybe holds
people back from exploring more of their creativity through
their planning. Because if you've got a life to
live, which all of us do and it's busy as heck, which all of
us can probably relate to that as well, like having to take the
time out of your planning process to just quote, be
creative. I can understand why that would
be something that people just don't want to or I'm not going
to say aren't willing to spend the time on because that's more
negative than I, I really mean. But because it does take time to
be creative. Whether that is actually like
the kind of decorative style of things or just the more kind of
generalistic style of like which parts of the layouts are we
going to incorporate? How are we going to incorporate
them? Are we going to use mini
calendars or are we going to use a vertical tracker or a
hexagonal tracker, all of that kind of stuff.
It can lead to a point of like not necessarily becoming kind of
like routinized with your planner setups and all of this
kind of thing. But that can be a very nice
point to kind of like just cut down on the amount of time,
effort and energy spent doing your planning.
So maybe previously we were more creative because we were still
kind of exploring that kind of stuff.
We were more willing to, you know, spend the time on those
things. And now as we've kind of found
our style, it's like that creativity aspect, or at least
that type of creativity has taken a backseat so that we can
just get on and get stuff done. Yeah, I definitely come across
that as I'm thinking week to week where I'm like, OK, do I
want to take out all the gear to do all of that?
Because like my form of creativity is stamps and it's
stickers and, and it's paint and it's like, you know, bringing
all these other elements in and none of it's easy.
Even with fountain pens and ink and stuff like that.
It's like, all right, take out the ink.
Then you have to fill up the converter.
You have to clean out the other one.
I'm just like, do I want to do that?
Or do I just want to just use the pen that I used last week?
Or do I just want to use, you know, one fine liner to just
make this page and then be done with it?
I, I think through that a lot. I feel like it has a lot to do
with the time that you have, but also the time that you want to
take. And the question I was going to
ask you just about about this is like, do you think that
creativity gets in the way of productivity though when you're
doing maybe too much or like where do you think that line is
of it affecting the actual productivity of the methods that
you're using? Yeah, that's a great question.
I think that it definitely can because they're not like, it's
not like you can have one and not the other, right?
That's not, that's not the business and do not believe in
that. And I know that you share that
mindset. So it's all good.
But I think that sometimes if we're kind of like trying to
create our planners or, you know, set up our planners and
journals and such in such a way that we're like trying to fit
some kind of like ideal in our mind of what it should quote,
quote should look like. It means that that kind of like
striving to make it look a certain way can get in the way
of the overall purpose for your journal or planner or whatnot.
So if we think about it in terms of like my everyday journal,
right, My everyday journal is the one that gets all of my task
lists, it gets my monthly log, it gets my habit trackers for
the month, all of that kind of stuff.
It is a space for me to get things done, which means that
in, in terms of doing creativity in there, in terms of like
decorative stuff, if I spend too much time in that, am I then
taking away from the time that I could be using to just get
things done? That's definitely a, an
argument, I suppose that the people who are like, you know,
out there thinking that creativity and productivity
can't exist in the same space are using like, oh, you spent
all of that time stickering that page or painting that picture.
Man, man, man, you could have gone and washed your windows.
I'm not going to wash my windows, Hector the Nah, I want
to go do something fun like put stickers in a book.
So can get in the way, but I don't think it has to, and thus
I don't think that the argument of, like you did, a creative
layout. Thus your journal isn't
productive. That is like a deeply flawed
argument in my eyes. Oh, absolutely.
And I think the other thing that people don't realize and you
just mentioned this is that we've been doing this for a
while. And I feel like this is anytime
you take on a hobby or any type of craft or anything that you do
over a long period of time, you find those tips and those tricks
and those hacks to kind of speed up that process and you also
just get better at it over time. Nothing I dislike more than when
someone comments on someone's page to be like, oh, that took
you hours to do? That was such a waste of time.
And I tell most people most of the times, like most of my
spreads for the entire week, the spread that I use for 5-6 days
out of the week took me 25 minutes.
So if you go ahead and figure that out, right, it's like one
thing, if I was spending two days working on my bullet
journal weekly to then only use it for a handful of days, right?
I feel like the similar a little bit, and I don't want to make
anyone mad about this, but the people who do true artwork for
like their monthly like setup, like page, not even like a
useful page. There's a handful of people over
time and then none of them are coming to the mind.
I can see all of them like in my brain, but like literally bodies
of art inside of a notebook, the most intricate line drawings and
like colors and all of this stuff.
And I see that and I'm just like, this needs to be it's like
a coffee table book. Like you said, like last week
about the the shares. It's just like you just want to
take every month and put that in a book.
But then I just come back to think about, but what is it
doing for them really? There's actually a creator with
love, Miss Jay. She's one of the creators.
I was thinking about her monthly pages are beautiful but I know a
lot of times she'll even post about it and say sorry that I'm
late on getting this out of the beginning of the month.
I'm still working on this, which makes me feel like she's working
for days, weeks maybe to create that page and its purpose is not
functionality really, right? It's a really a divider in her
notebook. I'm sure she feels good about
it. Like I hope she doesn't feel
stressed about it at all. But that is one of those things
though, where I could easily see someone say like, why did you
spend that much time for like one page in your journal?
Yeah, I think that one of the things that I I find around this
space is people have this tendency to be like, oh, you
wasted time on that. I'm like, I'm sorry, how what
gives you the right to dictate how I spend my time?
So I like to think of it more in terms of like I spent time on
that, like I made a kind of like specific choice to put my time,
effort, energy into that project.
And I also think about it in terms of these creators who are
doing these very beautiful, elaborate things and such.
One, maybe the purpose of it isn't actually like productivity
in the sense of what I consider productivity or like what I I
and maybe society deems productive.
But you know, if we think about it, that idea of like you can't
pull for a minute, maybe cup and all this and self-care is
important and all of that. I'm saying it with a tone, it is
actually important. But hear me out here.
It's like if we can't pull from an empty cup and if self-care is
important and we want to be our most productive selves, maybe
the way that they feel their well is doing this thing.
So it's like the effort and energy and time they've spent
into that is part of the process that they take to do their
self-care to feel more connected to their craft and all of this
kind of stuff. So it's like just because it
doesn't necessarily fit with what I would deem productive or
deem a productive way of spending my time, doesn't mean
it's not like productive and helping them for how they're
spending their time and being their most productive self and
taking care of themselves and that kind of self.
I also think about it in terms of like me, the novice, the one
who can't paint or watercolor or really draw.
I know I can kind of draw, but guys, it takes a hot minute.
I'm not a drawer as I have we're going to get to another point as
well because I was about to say I'm not an artist.
Oh my gosh, so many points in this video.
But by by coming at this kind of like inspiration pictures and
stuff that we see online and love Miss J.
Oh my God, gorgeous work. And I know how long that would
take me because I do not have the current skill set.
Like it's not within my wheelhouse to be able to do
that. So I look at this being like, Oh
my God, that would have taken like 3 weeks to draw with her.
It probably only takes like 2 weeks or maybe I saw whatnot.
I know, for instance, Isabel Hoops, she was one who used to
do a lot of kind of like very artistic styled stuff in her
journal. She's literally an art teacher.
Guys. Like, that is her.
That is her job. So the amount of time she's
going to spend doing that is going to be significantly less
than the amount of time it would take me to do the same thing.
So I think it's kind of hard to see these pictures online and
see these very inspiring, very artistic style layouts and such
and kind of come into this lens of like, Oh my God, that would
have taken such a long time to do.
And it's like, well, yeah, creativity takes time, takes
effort, but maybe not as much time and effort for them as it
would be for, like, me. Yeah, and thank you for
mentioning Isabel. She was the other one I was
thinking about. And I remember that because she
had been in a few of our chat groups too, years ago.
I think she actually illustrated a book, like her illustrations,
her drawings were so amazing. You hit it on point just which I
think is a really good counter to this and kind of sometimes
the effect that I think a lot of people feel when they see
amazing artwork like that. And you just said I'm not an
artist. And I think that's the same
comment we hear when people get into a journal and they think
that they have to be a certain way where they say, but I'm not
creative. I wanted to hear kind of your
point on that, on like how you feel because that is something
where you know me as a creative person.
Like everyone can be creative. I hear it all the time at work.
Like, Mark, you need to write on this board because you have
fancy handwriting. I'm not creative like that.
You are creative in other ways. It doesn't mean that you OK, so
you can't let her. That's a practice thing.
But I'm sure you're creative in other ways too.
Like what's your perspective on a comment?
If someone says, well I would like to do that but like, I'm
not creative. Oh.
I can't, I cannot, I cannot. Even when people say I'm not
creative, I hate how fixed of a mindset that is.
We have this like thing in my household at the moment where
anytime somebody speaks in like finite terms like that in a
negative way. Well, I don't know.
That sounds like a fixed mindset you got there.
I think you should put on your growth mindset.
I don't even know why it started, but it's like a thing
now. But when people say I'm not
creative, it it makes my soul hurt because I'm just like, just
because your version of. Creativity is not like my
version of creativity does not mean that you're not creative.
So for instance, my bestie, her name's Rachel, what a gem.
I mean, of course she's my bestie.
So I'm a little bit biased here. But in terms of your decorative
planning and such, the style of layouts that I do and not the
style of layout she does at all kind of a thing.
And every so often she says like, oh, you know, I do more in
my journal like that, but I'm not creative.
I'm like, I'm excuse me, fine lady, what are you talking
about? I have seen the way you put
together a theme party and it is literal goals kind of a thing.
It's like your creativity doesn't have to be in your
journal and in that way, like it doesn't have to be drawing, it
doesn't have to be stickers, it doesn't have to be washi tape,
it doesn't even have to be planner based kind of a thing.
Your creativity could be writing songs, music, sculpting,
painting that's not in a notebook.
It could be like planning parties and events and all of
this kind of thing. So I think that oftentimes
because we're thinking about creativity in the planning
space, we kind of almost put like blinders on to what
creativity can and should and is being or whatnot.
That was all bad English, but hopefully you get the point.
I think that it's just, it just hurts my, hurts my soul when
people say they're not creative because I'm like, no, you
probably are because you're a person and people are creative
by nature. That's like kind of our thing.
So maybe you just haven't found the style that resonates with
you or the way that you kind of express your creativity and it
might not be in a planning space.
What are your thoughts on that one?
I'm the same way. I don't like when someone says
I'm not creative. I just always say, but you are.
You just haven't found what you like to do just yet.
I think we're trying to mimic other people's styles and we
don't succeed. That's the immediate thing, that
fixed mindset. Well, I can't draw like Isabella
does. I'm not creative.
No, I'm not an illustrator. I can't draw a realistic
anything. There was someone else.
Oh gosh, years ago. I cannot think of her name, but
again, I can see all of her. She's still a lot with colored
pencils all the time and literal like photo realistic in her
journal. Right.
I could probably learn eventually how to do that, but
it just wasn't my style. It didn't really resonate with
me and I was totally OK with that.
But it's a mindset though. I have a design background.
So like I feel like from the very beginning, it's just beat
into you as you come up in the design space that like you have
to find your style, you have to learn the basics before you can
like really explore that. And I think the same thing
applies to journaling as well. When someone's like, I would
like to do that, but I'm not creative, then don't do that.
Start where you do feel comfortable if you even want to
be creative in your planner. I think that's the other thing
we have to like shop from the mountain tops is that you don't
have to do anything overly stylistic in there if you don't
want to. Some of my favorite graphic
design is just letter forms, honestly, and that is an art
within itself, proportions and size and shapes and all those
great things. So you just have to kind of
explore it. What you don't do well at, you
just don't touch anymore. I've stayed far away from
doodles or anything like cutesy or anything like that because I
just don't have that. I have to follow a tutorial.
And I was going to say that is kind of the next point here too,
is that if you don't know how to do that, there are a lot of
creators that do show you the way to do that.
And again, I'm doing so bad with like remembering these accounts,
but there was 1 specifically that I used to follow years ago.
And she used to do step by Like there's a lot of people out
there that will show you how to do that and take it step by
step. That personally helped me too.
I love you're like oh I don't doodle.
Like you literally hosted a doodle challenge.
Why are you guest lighting the plan about?
Because I'm not good at it. That's exactly why I would do
that. I was doing that with Nicole
from Plans of Blossom, who again, that account does show
you step by step how to doodle. Don't want to forget about her
at all there. But like, I just was never good
at it. So it was a way to challenge
myself to do that. And let me just tell you how
often I did have to find inspiration from the Internet to
be able to draw some of those characters, because this brain
just doesn't work that way for any type of art.
No, I think that's also a good point.
It's just like, you know, we say, oh, I'm not an artist.
I can't draw a rah rah. I'm like, who gives a shit?
Just do it badly. Like you don't actually have to
do things to the level that you're seeing online.
Like, OK, there are obviously accounts out there who are
showing their like, you know, messy work kind of thing.
And I'm talking, I'm talking messy.
I'm not talking a work in progress and to be messy.
All right, One account in particular that OK, now as I've
said that now I feel like I'm throwing this person under the
bus I'm not It works actually really great.
So let's just like cut that and pretend that we're not just
cutting things. But still.
So the account that I'm thinking of, they were called last week
in doodles or maybe that's what this series was called.
But it's like they were just doing daily practice of their
doodle work and you can kind of scroll back through their feed.
They have had so many weeks of doodles, but it's like comparing
their initial work to what they're doing now.
Like it's still kind of like, you know, messy in the sense of
like, it's not like, you know, photo realistic art kind of a
thing, but we're allowed to have different styles.
It's it still looks good. All right, Like otherwise I
wouldn't bring them up. It still looks good.
But if you scroll back to the start of their feed and see like
how their style has developed over time and such, just like,
you know, doing their reps doing this every week during their
three to five doodles a week or whatever it is that they've got
like you get better at things. That's just the way that things
work. I think I liked your point
before that you had about when you've been doing this for a
while and when you've kind of found your style, you found the
layouts that work for you and such and you kind of put that
creative energy and upfront you get faster with things.
You also can find that happens in a very short span of time as
well. For instance, I recently put
together a giveaway journal where I kind of like set up all
of the layouts in the journal and gave it away to somebody
like some mystery person effectively.
And even just looking at the weekly layouts that I was doing
in that journal because I'd use the same style of weekly for
each of the months. So it's like February's weeks,
all the same layout. March is weeks, different
layout, but all the same ones. And just timing myself for
seeing how long it took to set each of those up.
The first one, like, you know, 20 minutes, The second one took
18 minutes, and then we got down to like 13 minutes by the last
one. Just like by doing the same
style each week, you do get faster with these kind of
things. And the same idea for these
doodles that this guy's doing, he's probably getting faster and
he's been getting better at them.
So you're allowed to be a learner.
You're allowed to take time to get into it.
You can just start and just do it badly because you'll learn
along the way. One of the best things that I
used to do, I used to make it more public, I haven't done it
in a while, is that after every week, I would kind of look over
my spread and talk about what I liked and what I didn't like
about it. What worked, It didn't work.
It was a really great way to self edit.
If I look way back into the beginnings of my bullet
journaling, I had a lot of spreads that had a lot of things
going on. It'd be like weekly overviews
and there would be all the trackers and all the things.
And then I would get to the end of the week and I'd be like, I
don't really want to use that tracker.
I'll try it one more time and see.
And after like two weeks of not using it, like it's a waste of
space, like put something else there.
I would also take a look and say like, well, what worked and
didn't work with the grids and the layouts even of the page,
like not give myself enough space for tasks and notes, but
gave too much space to like the daily overviews.
And I would just take a moment and look through it and really
kind of critique myself in a way to then take a look at next week
and then make it better. So I would even say for those
who are just getting started or not even incorporating a lot of
other elements in there, that is also creativity and just
thinking about how things are laid out and how they could work
better. It's an art.
It is definitely a skill. It's like people who like
decorate your home and talk about the way things are facing
and what colors and patterns go together, right?
That is a skill that is a trained thing.
You can learn that you also have that interest in it as well.
But just taking that time and really thinking through it, I
think also can make you a better person and how you're planning
and utilizing your spaces. And again, effectively you're
being creative, just not with like a super ultra visual way
necessarily. Yeah, I think that this is going
to be the hill that I die on in terms of creativity.
Like it doesn't have to be decorative.
And I like that the examples you gave them were all very much
like functional things, but you're bringing your kind of
like creative license to it. You're bringing your creative
skill set to it by thinking about like, how can I tweak it?
How can I change it? How can I make this work better
for me? Because that's very much
something that I'm pretty much constantly looking for in my
journal. The constant question is like,
how can we do this better so that it like fits the purpose
better, not so that it kind of like meets somebody's bar or
expectation for what a decorative journal should look
like. I'm very curious as we think
about our own creative journals and creative journeys, really
more than all journeys in journals is really how it's
been. How's yours change If you look
back from like your very first one, your very first pages like
bullet journal number one, to where you are now.
We have several bullet journals in a year now, very different
I'm sure, maybe the one you started, but how have you
evolved or how have you changed from the very beginning to now?
One of the things that really stands out is where certain
people or certain creators or accounts had been inspiring my
journal. So you look back on the first
one, it's like, oh look, it's her Barry from New Zealand kind
of a thing. Like she, she was the the top
dog in the community and thus we were all copying her.
But that's all good. It's like, you know, copying is
how we figure out what does and doesn't work for us, provided
you, you know, apply that kind of critical lens to it.
So that was kind of where I started with things using.
It's also interesting to think about like the supplies I was
using. So like you know, using colored
pencils in there because that's literally all I had.
And then a week later I decided that I was going to stick with
bullet journaling for a good while, so I bought Tombos.
So they arrived like 2 weeks later and then it's like, oh,
got my first Tombos using those in the journal.
Oh look, can't blend colors because it bleeds through on the
Lt. 1917. So it's also interesting, I
guess, to see how my creative style changed or developed with
the materials I was using, Not just like, you know, the pens
and, and anything like that, but also the journal itself.
It's like, cool, can't do a lot in this one in terms of laying
down a bunch of inks because it'll bleed through and that
will give me the heebie jeebies. But then when we get into the
thicker paper notebooks and seeing how that kind of like
opened up the doors, I suppose in terms of what I felt I could
do in my journal, that's the kind of thing you can do
beautiful work in thin paper notebooks.
I know there are people out there doing it.
I'm pretty sure her name's Dutch Dots.
She does really gorgeous watercolor work in an Lt. 1917
because obviously the wrinkled paper and any kind of bleed
through or whatnot that she's experiencing doesn't bother her.
It bothers me by going to those thicker paper notebooks and
getting kind of more into like doodling in a more kind of like
traditionally arty sense quote, quotes everywhere, mad quotation
marks, traditionally arty. And then eventually it just got
to a point where I couldn't be bothered anymore.
Like the idea of having to doodle in my journal was the
most unappealing thing I could think of.
Not necessarily. Like I still do an occasional
doodle in there or whatnot, but nowadays my creative style in
there in terms of decoration is much more akin to tapes,
stickers, starting to get more into collaging.
It's not a comfort space for me. But even like we said before,
even just in a very small span of time, going from my kind of
like first reading journal collage to where I'm sitting
now, which is only like 8 collage pieces or whatnot,
definite improvement. I'm feeling very good about it.
What about you, once yours kind of adapted?
I mean, if I think all the way back, I mean, I started my
bullet journal journey with one notebook and one pen, just a
waterproof thing was a Micron pen, one of those type of fine
liner pens. And that is really all I used
for a good bit because I was figuring out how I was bullet
journaling, what it really meant, how I was going to do it,
how it worked inside of my life and being a creative person.
Again, with that design background, always being
artistic and using different mediums, I started to experiment
a little bit more. I probably did the same thing as
you. I saw everyone using Tombos and
I thought, well, of course I need brush pads.
But then I realized like I don't do like brush lettering with
Tombos. So then I started to find
different ways to use them. So just doing colored drop
shadows or you know, filling around some of the fonts I was
doing or things like that. I think one of the coolest
things I ever learned with Tombos is because they're water
based is that you can basically watercolor with them.
So being able to take those markers and like use like a
piece of plastic and then adding some water to it.
I think it was the first time that I water colored in my
journal because I was like, well, if I can draw with these
markers, I feel like I can add a little bit more liquidy stuff to
it. Maybe we'll see, but over time
it was just finding new ways to do that.
I think from a creativity standpoint, not necessarily a
material standpoint, I was all about collection pages because I
feel like that's all we saw online.
So like one of my very first like themed collection pages was
like all the upcoming movies and TV shows for the a year.
So it was just like each month it was like what movies are
coming out with TV shows are on that I'm interested in.
It ended up being a very helpful spread in the long run.
But I spent hours working on that because not only did it
have to be like popcorn TV movie themed, then I had to do all the
research as well to figure out like how it got filled up.
I spent a lot of time exploring layouts and thinking about how
it was organizing my information on the page.
And there is definitely some wins and some losses when it
came to that. And then I honestly feel like
anytime I tried to add doodles in there, it always went the
opposite way. I think episodes ago I shared
about the fails where I tried to draw the cacti spread and they
ended up looking like penises instead of cactuses.
That's a good example where I was like, Mark, stay away from
that doodling style. That is not you.
And then over time, I started to uncover something that I think
really made a really big difference to me, which was
utilizing doodles and utilizing creativity, but incorporating
that into the functionality of my page.
I just created one for myself this week where I used stickers
inside of there. I'm not like a big sticker
person necessarily because I don't just kind of put them
Willy nilly, but I use them with my headers.
So it'll be like the sticker or whatever.
And then I'll write Monday next to it.
And then the box where I write all my information or when I
write tasks or notes and including it there.
If you've seen any of my bullet journal setups or reels, you'll
see that's how I utilize stamps and stickers.
And that creativity in there is like, I want to include it, but
I don't want it to take away from the functionality of my
page. And so over time, as I've edited
them down more and more, what's working, what's not working,
what do I need? They definitely have changed.
I just the other day I was looking through an old journal
and I was just trying to get inspired by something.
I wasn't really feeling it in my new one.
And I was just looking through the page and I was like, Mark,
did you even have a job? Because now I fill my pages with
so many notes and tasks throughout the week at that
point in my life. And that's also I love looking
back on journals. I could fit, you know, my task
for the week inside of like a 20 by like 8 box like rectangle.
I couldn't do that now if I tried to.
It's just so funny how even like time has changed the needs of
the journals as well for me. So I think I've just really
become comfortable with it. I found a love for stamps and
things like that, which also had a lot of fun but functionality
into it because you can buy functional stamps to include and
it looks nice. So I think really just kind of
refining my style over time. But honestly, sometimes I look
back at that one pen and think, wow, Mark, you did a lot with
one pen, so anyone can do a lot with one pen.
Well, yeah, I liked your point about, you know, creativity
doesn't have to involve color. It can just be black and white
and such. And you look at some of the work
that people do in just black and white and it is wow, just wow.
It's absolutely amazing. And I know, I know it must take
them a hot minute. It would certainly take me a hot
minute. Like being able to even just
like the really graphic kind of graphic, not in the sense of
gore, right, Graphic in terms of like circles and lines and
stuff. Just, you know, keeping it on
that point, but like the precision that comes with those
styles of minimalistic designs. I'm just like, as soon as you
smear a line, Oh my gosh, like, you know, the ink catches under
the ruler ruined type of a thing.
But I like your point also about the creativity.
Again, we're going to keep coming back to it because it's
important. All right?
We don't want to define creativity just as decorating
the creativity that comes in presenting information in
different ways because that's something that's always been of
interest to me. That's always something that I'm
kind of on the lookout for in my journals.
Like how can I either rotate a table or take something that was
tabulated and turned into more of a Kanban wild board style or
something like that. Like whatever way is going to
fit better with my brain. I also I'm just gonna like go
through all of your points now it seems this is what I'm doing.
I'd like to point about like how do I fit all of this information
for the week into this tiny box? I have exactly the same thing
because I looked through my old journals.
I'm just like how did I manage to fit one week on one spread?
Like was nothing going on? Was I just sitting there
twiddling my thumbs? Nowadays I use at least a spread
and a half if not 2 full spreads for my daily locking for each
week. It's mind blowing.
I think one of the biggest things I learned too is thinking
back to one of the guys early guys that I followed, Pacific
Notation. His name is Dan.
He used to do a lot of great work, which is black and white
lettering. I used to think that he just
used like he could figure out letters and numbers on his own.
And then one day I realized he was using black numbered
stickers in his journal and it completely blew me away and was
like, you know, smoke was gone. I saw through the behind scenes
of the magic trick and I was like, holy crap, all this time
I'm like looking up to you is this amazing precision hand
letter and you're using stickers.
And then I went out and I bought those damn stickers and I felt
just as amazing. I think that one of the biggest
things for me too is realizing that you don't have to just use
your own hands to create things. You talked about stencils
earlier. Give me a letter stencil any day
of the week because those help you figure it out.
You, you draw it in pencil and then you draw over top of with
the marker and then it looks like you've got perfectly done
letters and numbers and everything else, right?
Like get me a stencil. And I've been using a lot of
like distress oxide ink, right? And like using those stencils in
my journal. Like that's a great way to make
things look amazing and creative without having to hand paint and
do anything like that. Like it's all about finding
different ways I think also to explore and do that and like
demystifying what you're seeing online.
Yes, there are some pieces that we talked about where it's true
skill in artistry and other people just find like a really
good hack to figure that out, like lettering.
I even know those existed for a journal and they look so cool.
And then I was like, Yep. Or just the way he was using
washy tape even to create his straight lines.
Like for a long time I thought he was just hand drawing those.
Or even with like a ruler. Like son of a bitch is using
black washi tape and his stuff looks cool.
Just check out Pacific Notation if you don't already follow him.
I don't think he posted anymore. I haven't seen him post in in
years honestly. But take a scroll back, you'll
see exactly what I mean and you now you'll know that most of the
stuff it's a sticker. I love that.
Like when you have those moments though, it's like what I found
out that one of the creators that I watch on YouTube only
wears glasses so they look smarter.
Like they used to wear it because they needed it, but then
they got laser eye surgery and now they just wear it because
it's like, now I feel more credible kind of thing.
And I'm like, that's totally fair.
Because I, I, I don't know why subconsciously I treat you as
more credible because you're wearing glasses, but it's that
kind of thing, right? Like just because you're using
tools that make things faster or, you know, mean that you
don't have to do everything by hand, doesn't mean you're like
cheating, right? You're not cheating if you're
using stickers or stamps or stencils or whatnot to do that
kind of creative element in your journal.
You're just making the most of the resources available to you.
I totally understand the feeling though, because sometimes, you
know, see something online. It's like, you know this little.
Thumbnail on YouTube like, oh wow, that's beautiful.
I want to go see how they created that.
They slap a sticker down on the page.
I'm like betrayal, but I'm like, but now I could also do the same
thing and it wouldn't take me very much effort.
The world of big fat stickers has really opened my mind.
Archer and Olive, I think did this with a lot of theirs for
like some of their past sticker packs that they had, or even the
ones you get inside of the subscription boxes.
I'm always like, gosh, this is like this monster sticker that's
like half the page. Like what would I even use that
for? And I was like, it's a monthly
page. You slap that in the center of
your page and you're right March underneath of it and there you
go. You don't write much.
You stencil much or you type it
out on a computer and you print it out and cut it down and stick
it in. Exactly however you want to go
about it, but it's exactly it like finding ways to kind of get
over that and still be creative. It doesn't matter at the end of
the day. I know I sound very like
accusatory, like Dan use the sticker, a stencil, but he just
figured it out before I did and he did a really great job at it.
It's not hate, it's love, but it's just, you know, there's
nothing wrong with that and that could lead us on a whole other
conversation. I feel like Jess around like
computer generated and AI and like how we're utilizing that
for things too. But we are not touching that
with a 200,000 foot pole today. We're strictly sticking to
creativity in your bullet journal.
Now, I think that we've touched on some pretty good points
though. I mean your creativity and
productivity, not opposites. You can have both.
You can also have only one. And I guess technically you
could have neither, didn't really touch on that.
But I suppose that thing, if you have neither, do you just have
nothing? I feel like that's probably what
you would have. I mean, it's hard to say because
someone would say like you're ultra minimalist and you're
like, I literally just write the day of the week of my task and
notes. Like I don't do anything else.
But then I'm like, what pattern are you using?
What inks are you using? You're creative and how you're
expressing it. I mean, I can make anything
creative. Yeah, other things like, you
know, your hand lettering is your own personal style of
thought, isn't it? But I really, I enjoyed this
topic and I'd really be eager to hear what you have to say.
Planner Pals, So in terms of creativity in your planning
system, in your journal or whatnot, what does creativity in
that space look like and mean for you?
Is it kind of like strictly in the decorative kind of space?
Or are you thinking more creativity as also being the
kind of structures and layout estimates that you're using?
Let us know either in the comments or you can e-mail us at
plannerpalspodcast@gmail.com or over on Instagram Planner Pals
Podcast. It is going to be great in the
comments. I love reading through the
comments on YouTube videos. I know that's a very weird thing
to hear people say, but it is a story, story.
It is sharing and it's inspiration.
I learned so much from the Planner Palace that are sharing
with us as well. Next episode, Jess, I know that
people are going to love this topic because I feel like
anytime we talk about things like leaning towards the
negative space, people are like, give me it all.
We are going to talk about our Planner X.
What are those things that give you the just hibbie jibbies and
just make you want to throw whatever you have in your hands
away? Specifically when it comes to
planners, bullet journals and all the icky things that are
evolved with it. That is definitely a topic I'm
looking forward to because I just love to complain.
Obviously, I'm looking forward to hearing what yours are and
also what the Planner pals have for theirs.
But today, Planner Pals, thank you for watching.