Hey there, and welcome to the Planner Pals Podcast, a podcast
hosted by two true planner pals. My name is Mark or mark your
pages. And I am Jess or Jessie, Karen.
And in today's episode, we're going to be having a look at the
opposite from last time's episode.
So rather than the trackers that we can't live without, the ones
that we set up time and time again because they work so well
for us, we're looking at the ones that definitely don't, the
ones that we have tried maybe a couple of times, but every
single time it flops. Yeah, and I'm glad to be back
home in my own space now. Thank you for everyone who put
up, especially you, Jess with that last setup because that
everything about that, it was like, let's try to make a remote
podcast from far away. No, let's not do that ever
again. So thanks everyone for listening
and also commenting on that one and and sharing what's worked
out well for you too. It's always so cool to hear some
different and cool. Yeah, I always appreciate when
you know, something that might be essential for us, somebody
turns around, goes like, yeah, no, I cannot use that layout at
all whatsoever. People who are saying like, Oh
yeah, my future log is my essential or my index is
essential. And then I turn around like, no,
no, no, no, no, no. So it's nice to get the kind of
like different perspective both from like us and then also from
our community as well. Absolutely.
I think the ones we're going to talk about today, all these
fails, I think everybody can relate to as well.
There's it's really hard just to pick out a few.
I think you know, what have I been bullet now for over 7 years
I guess now. So there's a.
There's a whole lot of fails. Yeah, Oh gosh, I think that if I
just took up like all of the layouts that have not worked
out, the ones that did not get executed the way that I had
hoped, I could probably fill like 3 full notebooks with them,
which is certainly saying something.
Especially when people feel like they have to approach their
journaling kind of like perfectly and every layout has
to be a winner and everything has to get completely used.
Otherwise, you're doing it wrong.
Certainly not the case. Failed layouts definitely
happen, even for people who have been doing this for quite a
while. Oh, yeah, no, no idea is a bad
idea until it just doesn't execute well.
I was actually thinking about maybe doing like a future video
on YouTube where I go back to like the really bad spreads and
things that didn't work out and be like, how would I approach
this today knowing what I know? So maybe we'll get some other
ideas from this too, and maybe others can definitely share the
ones that they've commonly failed on as well.
Yeah, I think that'd be actual really cool idea.
It's like, this didn't work for me before, but like, how would I
approach it differently? Because I've done that
previously with like recreating your first layout or setup or
whatever and, you know, just making it a little bit better or
whatnot. But to actually think about
tackling failed layouts and kind of going back and reworking
them, rejigging them with the kind of more context or what you
know, does or doesn't work with you could actually be really a
really good idea. I need to write this down.
I mean, we should we just totally brainstorm if we think
there's something you can do to make it better or even if
there's things that we've learned over time, like you
said, if you started this on like one of your first ones,
Honestly, most of mine I've just never done again or I do them
very sparingly because I just know it's not for me.
Is there anything that like in your list?
As we go through it, obviously you'll share more about it, but
are there ones on there where you're like, this just hasn't
worked for me for years, never going to do this.
When I was trying to brainstorm the list and go through like you
know, what kind of layouts who have I had that don't really
work? Are there any that like I tried
once and just kind of quit, but not really really a quitter when
it comes to that? I'm kind of maybe like a little
bit delulu, Like I just like trying and trying again.
It's like, Yep, still doesn't work.
I don't know why we put this in here for the fourth year in a
row. You usually have just kind of
like tried once, flop, doesn't try again.
Or is it more like I tried a couple of times and still isn't
working? I've tried a couple of times and
they just don't work. Like my very first one.
We can just kick into it if you're ready to go.
Is just any type of water tracker ever.
Like I know that people live and breathe and drink by H2O
trackers. It's one of the most common
things I feel like I saw when I started first bullet journaling.
But it is just something about it that I just, I'm, I'm not
drinking, I would need a certain size cup.
That's like Mark, this is an 8 oz cup.
And every time I drank that I would know that is 1 cup.
I just honestly just, I just don't like to do the math.
I think is really what it comes down to.
So I can't track properly because I don't know the proper
size of my cup honestly. Yeah.
I think that's also kind of a good point about it though.
Like, unless you're using a very kind of standardized vessel, I
suppose, for your water intake, how do you actually know how
much water you are in taking? Or are we only including water?
Are we including other beverages?
Because, you know, water in the form of water, as I call it,
isn't the only way to get water into your diet as well.
Like, you get it through food. You get it through coffee.
Yes, I know there's a diuretic effect in it.
Again, I don't drink coffee. I only take it in the form of
ice cream. But like, if you melt it, that's
practically water, right? Yeah, sure.
Absolutely. I mean, I think it's really
just, I don't like to do the math like this that I have here
is 18 oz, right. And so in my brain, I've always
been told what is it like you're supposed to drink what, 6-8
ounces glasses of water or 8 cups of water a day?
And that's what I think I get confused on what is the
measurement that we're really using?
And I think that's just kind of the big part about it.
I mean, I've always looked at it from a standpoint of actual
water, not kind of soda or coffee or anything else.
Like the water is the thing because I feel like that's
always the goal. The goal is always less soda,
more water because it's the healthier thing to do.
But I think the other thing about it too, and the reason I
don't ever come back to this as well as a few years ago, a
friend of mine told me that that water intake is supposed to be
based off of like a lot of other factors like your age and your
weight and like a bunch of other things.
So, you know, the 8 glasses of water a day is like a standard
thing, but I might actually need more or less.
And again, I'm just not going to do the research to figure it
out. I'll just drink water without
tracking it every single day and putting that in my bullet
journals, just taking up space. And I've definitely come across
and have a lot of different interesting ways that I've tried
to include it. And if you're watching this on
YouTube also, we'll put all of these up so you can and see what
they look like. Sorry for the podcast fans out
there that listen the true audio form, but I've done everything
from actual little water drops. I've done squares in my boxes
that I can fill in and color in as I go along.
I've tried a lot of different things and just honestly just
never keep up with it. Yeah.
Do you find that I mean for the ones that you've tried
previously, have you done both weekly and monthly or just
weekly just? Monthly I've only ever done
weekly. I keep see monthly for me like
that's just not I would not. I just you wouldn't fill it out.
No, that's fair. I find that tracking things on a
monthly basis can be kind of tricky.
Like anytime I have a month long tracker we get to the mid month
point and my motivation is just shot and then the rest of the
month is like obviously I died. Most of the time, Monday's
workout, Tuesdays, I'm all right, and by the time I get to
Wednesday, I'm like, who cares? Mark, you're drinking water.
Good for you. You know you made a good choice
today. You made a good choice today.
Always good. Yeah, a little Gold Star on that
one. I find that with water trackers,
because I have used them previously, I love the aesthetic
of them. I love the little water drop or
the little glass or like anything like that.
I think it's really cute to kind of fill in, but just like you
said, I'd get to about the midweek point and just be like,
yeah, flop. Also, I tend not to take my
water in the form of water and I don't really want to fill it in
with Coke 0 even though that's the most accurate as to what I
actually drank. I guess you'd have to find out
how much water is actually in a Coke 0.
Distill it down the whole science experiment.
I'm I'm for it. I'm I'm all about it.
I'm not going to go to the effort, but if I could be
bothered, I would be bothered. I mean, that's kind of goes
without saying. But I think that like you said
that point about just because you know, the, the kind of stock
standard, you know, universal truth is 8 standard glasses or
whatever. Yeah, completely differs from
person to person. I haven't done the research.
I am not a doctor, but you know, weight, age, like location that
you live in, like if you live in somewhere that's particular dry
or arid or like whatever, that's going to have an impact on it if
it's some of us as if it's winter.
I mean, if we were going with like the most accurate quote
quote way to track your hydration levels without risking
like TMI, too much information kind of here, but like probably
it would be AP tracker and you might want to color code it or
something. I'm not going to put that in my
platter. Like I don't need that
information. But for somebody who does, maybe
that's the way that they want to go about it.
What color would we color code the P tracker I wonder?
Hopefully only the good range of yellow colors and not into
anything is. Whoa, why is that a sunset
orange? I'm also thinking that like if
you drink black vodka, your pee straight goes green, like very
green. So maybe we need to put that in
there as well if you're a black vodka drinker.
But if you're not, then hopefully it's just in the range
of yellows. Wishing the best, we are not
doctors. Not doctors right?
There's no medical advice in this, only journaling advice.
Possibly If a water tracker isn't for you but you want to
track your hydration, maybe you need a pee tracker.
All right, Jess, So what is one of your most failed collection
pages? I think one that would
definitely have to be up there would be a routines tracker
because despite wanting to have really good routines and you're
completely habitualize my life in a way, I'm not very good at
it and thus I'm not very good at sticking with the tracker.
It's very much one of those kind of like cumulative causation
kind of things. I don't do the routine, so then
I don't want to go back to the tracker and then because I don't
go back to the tracker, it hasn't been filled in and then I
don't want to use the tracker because it's half empty and so
on and so forth. Very kind of cycle thing.
But the way that this kind of tracker would typically work,
the way that I've set it up previously is that I outline a
bunch of stuff that I want to do on say like a weekly or bi
weekly fortnightly kind of basis, maybe even a monthly
basis. I have a list of those running
down one side of the page and then along the top of the page
I'll have the week numbers. Normally I'd only set this one
up so it would be like half year based, possibly like quarterly
based so that I don't have to have like a absolutely jumbo
sized journal to fit like every week of the year across the top.
That'd be a little bit ridiculous.
But going in and filling that one in, I would just go and
check off for each of the rows and columns, like which ones did
I do on which week? In theory, it didn't actually do
that, didn't fill it in, and thus it was kind of useless.
I tried it a couple of times, but despite the good intentions,
could not get it to actually work.
What? Kind of routines are you putting
on there? I'm very curious about this,
yeah. So most of them would be around
kind of like life admin and journaling related processes.
So things related to kind of like a weekly reset process,
like have you tidied up your office?
Have you gone and populated your calendar for the next week?
Have you filled in all of your yearly collections that you're
neglecting and that kind of stuff?
It would also have things related to household work
chores, which I'm notoriously bad at.
So again, don't do them. Don't fill it in.
Doesn't look nice because I haven't filled it in.
Don't use it I think. It's also the avoidance part of
it. It's just because you know that
you don't want to look at it, especially if you don't like to
do it. And it's just like that constant
reminder, at least with the chores and things like that.
The routines though, for some of the other pieces, I was really
interested last time when you were talking about the different
journals that you have and what you keep in there.
And I actually, she asked you like, how do you remind yourself
to go back and do that? I mean, I think that that's
probably a really good way to potentially do that.
But in my mind, when I think routines, I think about like my
morning routine. And we talked about this last
time where like for me personally, that executive
function part is OK in my brain. So I don't need to track whether
or not I've washed my face and brushed my teeth and flossed and
got dressed or those type of things.
Like that's just happens sometimes.
Honestly, it feels like Westworld in this house where
like every day I wait, wake up and it's the same exact thing
every day. I was just like, nothing's
changed. Somebody come and do something
interesting, you know, like it's just the same thing every single
day. So to track that for me
personally kind of feels like mundane.
But for those people who struggle with that part of it, I
can understand how that could potentially work.
Or again, some people maybe get a little dopamine hit, you know,
when they circle in that yes, they brush their teeth for the
day and they're everything's going great.
And then I'm all about that. I just think for me, I'd be in
the same boat where I'd be like, you know, stop filling that out
because I did it like I'm OK. Yeah.
I think that some of those routines and practices, they
kind of do happen a little bit on autopilot.
They're the ones that happen on a weekly basis because they
always happen at the same time. Like for instance, laundry day
is Thursday. That is the way it is.
That is the way it will be until Vogel says he wants Thursday,
which won't happen because he'll he's usually at work on
Thursday. So stuff like that, not so bad.
It's just the things like actually going in and like
cleaning the bathrooms and changing the sheets and all of
those kind of things that if I'm not mindful about them, they
will not happen. I have to actually actively
remind myself to do them. And I always felt kind of bad
going through and like flipping through my journal because, you
know, sharing them on the Internet and whatever.
And we get to that routines layout and it says like change
sheets hasn't happened for eight weeks.
And I'm like, I promise it has. I'm just not using the layout.
Oh my gosh. Like I'm not sitting there in
bed swimming in my own filth. I promise.
But like it. And you know, someone would call
you out on that one of your like hardcores that are like watching
every video where they're like, Oh my gosh, Justin not filling
her circle. That's disgusting.
Well. Yeah, like during lockdown and
stuff, because my trigger to brush my teeth was leaving the
house and I wasn't leaving the house.
There were a couple of days on my tracker that I hadn't filled
in that I brushed my teeth. And some person, I don't know,
somebody who is obviously having a hard time of it, was
commenting being like, oh, it's disgusting.
You like didn't brush your teeth every day and like,
congratulations on being perfect.
And it's like I, I'm very hopeful that one day the
routines tracker as I've set it up will work for me.
But like you kind of talked about at the start, I would like
to maybe go back to that layout and think about like, how could
I change this so that it actually does work for me?
Because I think that the information I'm capturing there
could be useful to like keep track of and have definitely.
I think especially with some of the more like administrative
ones that you talked about, I could definitely see setting a
reminder for that, whether you're doing that if you're
bullet journaling in a future log or I could see even like a
calendar page or something like that where you just go through
it. You know, I would probably use
like those dot markers maybe. And just like, you know, every
Thursday, I'm just dotting down and writing laundry just as a
reminder like this is happening, you know, make sure it gets
done. I could see that for things like
bills, for instance, or if you were doing something else where
like it's not an executive function of like a, a daily kind
of thing. You do whatever it might be.
But just, I don't know, the more administration iterative thing I
think is where I'm going with it.
Like that is a good reminder. And if I'm not doing it there, I
would also probably have it in my phone as well.
Just a reoccurring meeting every single week.
Like don't forget, just like what I do with trash and
recycling. Like I know that that happens on
Monday and Fridays and every other Tuesday, but I constantly,
well, I use my phone all the time.
I just set it up in there and it reminds me and I know because
otherwise it's just not happening.
Yeah. I think that maybe it's not
necessarily something that I need to put on a tracker per SE,
but some kind of reminder somewhere else could be useful
just to make sure that those things happen.
But that's one of mine. What is your next underused,
often failed layout that you put in your journal?
Or maybe not so much more this. Is one we talked about a little
bit last time we were joking about it.
So it was actually a little bit of a precursor for this
conversation. It's my cocky social media
trackers where I make my number too big.
So if you didn't check out the last episode, I talked about a
social media tracker, which I do love to use.
It's a very highly used tracker. However, one time I got too big
for my britches and I decided that I was going to start
tracking my followers by every 1000, which was a cocky
endeavor. And therefore I only ever filled
in one box and never filled in other boxes on that spread.
So something that I've done is I kind of scaled depending on how
growth is happening. You know, early on I was
tracking by every 25 new followers and then for while I
think I upped it to 100 and then I don't know, for whatever
reason, I went from 100 to 1000 and then I was like, Oh no,
let's dial it back. So I think now I do it by 100
because honestly, I don't know about you 100 new followers at
this point for me, doesn't happen.
I actually go down. I feel like more than I go up
nowadays, so it's one that I definitely love.
It's just that I have to watch my values so that it actually
can use it. It's not just sitting there
blank and sad, I think. That's a really good point
though, too, because like you said in the last episode, that
is one of your essential layouts.
It's one that you do like to use time and time again, but there's
a version of it that doesn't work, that cocky, maybe a little
bit ambitious kind of style, or maybe that gap is just a little
bit too big to really warrant having as many boxes on there as
you have. Yeah, it was.
Definitely a fun one too and I'm gonna go back to it.
I liked the design of it, it worked well for me and I feel
like it was a missed opportunity of a really great collection
page that would have looked very cool all the way filled out.
So maybe my next one after. If I ever fill out this new one,
I'll go back to it and reuse it just to bring it back to life.
It's always. Such a bummerized, like the ones
that you spend a lot of time, effort, energy setting up and
they look really good and you're like, oh, I'm feeling super
anxious to get into this. I'm going to use it up in all of
this. And then for whatever reason it
doesn't happen. It is always such a bummer when
the ones you've spent effort on and the ones that go unused.
I hate that. It does.
It feels like, yeah, a lot of effort that just went into
nothing. And you're just kind of like,
well, I'm never doing this again.
And then you get to your next tracker and you're like,
actually, no, this is super fun. I'm going to do something really
cool or crazy with it. Yeah.
I'm trying to think if there are any layouts that I've had like
that where like specifically, I remember spending a lot of time
and intention with it and it just didn't really pan out.
I'll have to go back through the archive.
Can't think of 1 right now. I'm sure there is one though.
Well, let's. Go into your next one.
What's another failed tracker or collection page?
It just hasn't quite cut the mustard for you.
It took me. Such a long time to learn to
stop setting this one up because there were just so many failed
attempts. And that was a weight tracker,
you know, trying to, you know, maintain a healthy way to get it
to a healthier spot, all of that kind of thing.
And you'd always start off with a lot of motivation, like, I'm
going to do this. I'm going to shed the weight,
rah, rah. And then the one week that it
goes up, you're like, yeah, stuff this, I'm out of here.
Table flip, Boo hiss. So many, so many failed attempts
at this one. I have given it up, at least for
now. I'll probably go back to it.
I can never learn my lesson, really.
But yeah, I had it in at least four of my previous journals.
One of them, I actually just ended up taping the pages
together because it was so demotivating.
Because one of the things that I used to do was like, OK, if the
goal to lose X amount of weight goes across this many weeks,
then this is the kind of like ideal trend line going from
higher weight to lower weight. And as soon as my line started
tending against the grain of that well off the Cliff of
motivation fire, I would like to possibly bring it back at some
stage. Again, may not be able to learn
my lesson, but I think that I just need to approach it
differently because I think that the ways that I've set it up
previously didn't really lean into realism.
Maybe it was just like way more kind of idealistic and
optimistic the way that I approached it.
And I do think that having the data could be beneficial, but
it's just not something that I'm able to work with right now at
the moment. Instead, I'm just tracking it
via an app on my phone because it's not like, so front and
center means that I don't necessarily kind of focus on the
number quite as much, I suppose. But I still have that data there
to, you know, take to the doctor and look at my progress and all
of that kind of stuff. I know exactly what you mean by
this. So I just started my workout
journal. I'm going to have a video coming
up for it shortly. And I know exactly what you
meant about that motivation. So it was like the very first
week. So, you know, I'll be super open
and transparent because that's just me.
So I started this off at £250, right?
And I was like, OK, Mark, like, this is the most ever weighed.
Like, OK, hell of a starting point.
And so I do my tracker at the beginning of every week because
that's when I have to do a check in with my coach, right?
And so the first week was 250, and then week two, I was down to
242. And I was like, hell yeah, holy
crap. Like, that's incredible.
I was like, I'm just going to keep losing this weight.
This is great. And then this week I did it and
it stayed at 2:42. And I was like, oh, I was like,
OK. I think a big thing for me
though, too is like mentally using this in conjunction with
other things, right? And I definitely can realize,
look, I was able to lose 8 lbs that I do that math correctly.
Yes, because I cut out, you know, all the extra soda, just
like not paying attention to what I was eating.
There's probably a lot of things.
It definitely wasn't just working out because it was a
week worth of working out. So it was whatever.
But going into this upcoming week and I just in my brain, I
thought, oh, well, you've been doing a really good job with
like cutting down your calories. You've been doing a great job
with your workouts. I just expected it, but then I
was just like, it's OK. And I think it's because right
now in my mind, I know that I'm also working out four days a
week. I know that I'm watching what
I'm eating. And I think there's, I don't
know, mentally for some reason right now, it makes sense and
it's I'm OK with it. But I know that if I get into
next week and it is that the same exact weight.
Like that's too much of A plateau this early on, you know
what I'm saying? I know exactly what you're
saying and I think it's hard because we're rational people.
Like we know that it's not just going to tend downwards like
some days if you're doing a daily weigh in, which probably
you're not, you're doing weekly, but you know, some days, some
weeks it's going to go up, some days, some weeks it's going to
be the same and someday some weeks it's going to go down,
which, you know, depending on your goal, one of those is good,
but you know that it's not going to be consistent the whole way
through yet. As soon as you get that data
point that goes against what you want, it still feels like a kick
in the teeth. Oh it.
Totally does. And I'm looking at all of this
and there's a lot of data that I'm going through to like
calories, steps, workout time, all of these these things.
I think also to my mind, I was like, Mark, you're also building
muscle and muscle weighs more than fat.
That's why it's not changing. I don't know if that's true.
After three weeks of doing this workout, I don't think I'm like
doing anything crazy, but I know exactly what you mean.
But I think it has to be a mindset.
But one thing I do like about these two, and these actually
probably could go for every single one of the trackers that
we talk about. These can be like point in time
trackers of something that you want to pay attention to, right?
Like if you're really concerned about how much water your drink
gain throughout the week and you want to do that for a week just
to track it, I think that's totally cool.
And then drop it and never use it again, right?
Or if you want to do something like a weight tracker because
it's something that you're thinking of or maybe do for a
few weeks, I think there's like really fun ways to add it into
your weekly as something to do. I think it's just when you do it
every week or you set up a monthly one or a yearly or
whatever, it just feels very overwhelming.
I kind of like to pick and choose my trackers off of a
little shelf in my brain where I'm like, oh, this week I want
to pay attention to to the songs I listen to the most or I want
to pay attention to, you know, how many new followers I have.
But do it in small chunks so that maybe it's a safety
mechanism. I don't see it do this too much,
like go up and down too much. It's like, oh, there's only a
positive line, you know, up or down, whatever you're trying to
track. I just don't want to see the
long term because that means I have to be accountable and you
know, little. I don't want to do that I think.
That's also a good point. Like if you want to incorporate
these kind of trackers into your layouts or logs or whatnot, and
you're not too sure if they're going to work out for you, do
what we call an ooch, right? Like a little small, kind of
like test run type deal. So rather than setting it up for
the month, set it up for the week.
Rather than setting it up for 1/2 year, set it up for a month,
see if it works for you. And then if it does, maybe we
can incorporate it into those kind of like start of journal
setups once you kind of get a feel for it.
Because every time I would do the weight tracker, I suppose it
would be on like 1/2 year annual kind of basis.
Maybe if I try and do it just across like a four week period,
maybe I'll have a little bit more motivation to get it done.
I guess it really kind of came back to the range of data I
wanted to collect there. Like I wanted to see it over a
longer period of time. That's why I would set it up for
a longer period of time. But if I'm making those smaller
ones, who's not to say that I can't just go back at the end of
the journal and like make a layout at the end to kind of
pull all that data together if I actually bullet to collect it.
Yeah. And.
You've mentioned it before making sure that this is actual
important data and useful data that you're doing, not just
performative. It's probably the other part of
this too, right? If you're just doing a water
tracker or a weight tracker for the standpoint of having an
aesthetic looking weekly, you have no skin in the game really,
right? You're just like, oh, I'm going
to go ahead and fill this out and it looks very cool or
whatever else. But if you're not really using
it or using it, like you said, taking this data to your doctor
or using it for a specific workout plan or whatever that
might be, you also just don't really have anything really to
do with it. So it's easier, I think, to just
forget about it and not use it anymore because it didn't really
matter at the end of the day. Perhaps, Yeah.
I think it's also thinking about like the metric versus the goal.
So it's like, if the thing that we're actually recording and
keeping track of and all of that is the weight, yeah, then that
in turn kind of becomes the goal, even though it might not
necessarily be the goal. Like the goal could be to, I
don't know, have more energy and just like, you know, eat a wider
range of nutritious foods and all of that kind of stuff.
And it's like if you're not keeping track of those things,
but you're keeping track of weight instead, then you just
kind of slip into a point where the weight becomes the main
focus rather than the other things that you're trying to do.
I really like that, Jess. That's actually a really
fantastic point because I mean, even from my own perspective,
like even though that for this week has plateaued, I feel
completely different. Like I feel better about it.
And that's such a good thing to think about.
I think a lot of like coaches, and I've heard it before in like
the health profession too, especially around weight is like
not paying attention to the number, but paying attention to
your body. Like as you are doing those
things like you just mentioned, how do you feel that number,
while to a certain extent might be a goal that you're trying to
hit, but it's really about how your body feels instead.
But it's kind of hard to track that though.
But unless you have like happiness tracker, energy
tracker, I mean, you could do more with it perhaps.
And there's a lot of journals that have those icons in it and
how you're feeling and things like that.
But maybe something different to add if you have tried it before.
Here we go. Like brainstorming, Like, how do
we make this better? It's like, yeah, you could track
your weight for all of these weeks, but maybe you also track,
like, how are you feeling? How much energy do you have?
So even if the number does go up a little bit or down or
plateaus, you know that your body feels better about it.
I mean, that's a good positive spin you could put in your brain
a little bit. Yeah, I.
Mean it's the same idea with the water tracker, right?
The goal isn't necessarily get your 8 cups.
The goal is to be hydrated. So while getting the cups is how
you get to hydration, get the hydration.
It's a location, it's a destination now.
But once you get to hydration, did you actually need to take 8
cups to get there? Like there are other ways to
also get your hydration in. So just tracking the 8 cups of
water and then beating yourself up when you only got to seven.
But like your pay was crystal clear.
Like, come on. The goal is to take your color
tracker from a very dark orange yellow to a very pale yellow
almost clear. That's the goal we're looking
for. All righty.
Mark #3 what is your most least used layout?
All right. So this is my favorite ever of
all time because it's so iconic. So a few years ago I decided
that I was going to start running.
It was over the summer. I was here by myself at that
point. My girls and my wife were on
vacation at a beach house, and I still had to be in the office
every day. I don't have to do that anymore.
So that's why I don't worry about this running tracker
anymore. No, it's because every day I was
going to fill it out. I was like, OK, Mark, you're
going to run. You're going to exercise every
day. And I had two pens.
I had a red pen and a blue pen, and I put my little key.
Blue meant that I've worked out that day and I ran.
Red meant that I didn't. And for the first week, I filled
every single one in red. I was like, OK, next week,
everyone in red for the entire month that I tracked this
running tracker, Jess. It is a completely red calendar.
And This is why I've a very picky runner.
I only run when it's a comfortable temperature for me.
So it can't be too hot or too cold.
I don't run if it is raining, misting any type of weather that
I don't find to be optimal running weather.
And it also turns out that where I live in the summer, you know,
it's not that optimal temperature that I prefer, which
is in the low 70s. So So yeah, it just didn't
happen for me. But you know, looking back on
this thing now, though, like while running was something that
I did do a good amount for whatever reason, before I
started this damn tracker, it's just didn't workout.
And there's been a number of workout trackers that I've used
and they're very simple. It's just like a little weight
and the days of the week and I fill it in.
If I did it and I just never ever used them or I would fake
it in there to be like, oh gosh, I can't post a picture of this
and only have only did not have many of them filled in.
Like guess you walked around your porch once.
But it's so interesting now thinking about that versus I
have an entire notebook dedicated to it.
But I think it just has to go with it's all about the mindset.
You know, it's just one of those things where I probably ran a
few times one month and said, Hey, let's make a tracker.
Let's go ahead and track this because like you're going to do
it, you know, and see how that goes and then never doing it.
So never use that one again, ever.
I. Feel like this is the equivalent
of setting up a crocheting tracker because you want to get
into crocheting and then you try and realize you hate it.
It was inspirational, that's what it was, sure.
Aspirational rather than realistic.
I can completely understand that because I have previously used
step trackers, which I do tend to get more than one step a day.
So there's usually data to put on there.
But yeah, thank you. I'm a St. but in terms of the
scale that I would set up for that, because I'd always do it
as a little bar graph. Oh no, never get to the highest
number. So I kind of got to the point,
like, first of all, why are we putting in any of this?
Because it's very much demotivating.
And secondly, why are you setting it up so that the bar is
as long as it is when you know you're going to be kicking down
around the low thousands? I've done the same exact thing.
I, because of this plan that I'm doing that I have to track my
steps. I think the first week they put
like 8000 steps was my goal. And that entire week I never hit
it. And I was just like, I, I work
remote like I sit at my desk most days, but I'm working out
for 3045 minutes, you know, every other day, whatever.
They're like, OK, Mark, like just, you know, try to try to
improve it a little bit. And then when I went to the the
next week, I noticed it was like one day was like,
congratulations, you hit your goal.
And I was like, awesome. And it was like 7500.
Like they lowered the the goal for me to be able to hit it.
I appreciated that, honestly. But now it's just one of those
things where I don't put down a tracker in a graph point for
exactly the point you just mentioned.
I just write down what the number is at the end of the day.
And then I look at it and review it and I'm like, yeah, Mark, you
could do a little bit better. But I think it's the same thing
that the social media tracker, right?
It's just like, oh, yeah, like this is going to go really well.
Like this is, I'm going to do this and you're like 20,000
steps is the highest point you can get a day.
And like, maybe marathon runners or other people, if you go to
Disney, you're getting 20,000 steps.
But I think the average Joe maybe is getting 8000 or so.
Like I would Max it at 10, I feel like.
And I'd be really happy if I got to like 5.
Yeah. Well, we're halfway through the
day, like it's about 1:30 when we're recording this.
My time not marks time. I have got 900 steps today, so.
But that's it. I work from home so I don't have
to commute to anywhere. I work at a desk so there's not
a lot of walking around. I got 917 steps from walking
back and forth to the printer today.
So yeah, believes a bit to be desired.
And especially when you're setting up a tracker where it's
like up to 10K steps and then you're barely breaking 1000 each
day, it's super demotivating. So yeah, no, I.
Don't even know. You should talk to somebody and
be like, for someone who's remote, completely stationary
and sedentary, what is a good goal for me?
Be like, Jess, please just stand up every 30 minutes.
Like, that's good enough for us. Yeah.
Please stand up. Yeah, kind of roll.
Around on your chair a little bit.
Do you know, just do this? Yeah.
Chair yoga. I know chair yoga's a thing.
I have not investigated it, but I do also recognize that getting
1000 steps only actually takes 10 minutes.
But it's this like mental block. I feel like that just feels like
too much effort. I'm like, you could just do laps
in your kitchen for 10 minutes. Not going to though.
That's what people. People are like, oh, walk up and
down your steps 30 times. I'm like, there's nothing fun
about doing that at all. It's different.
When I was at work and I would go into the office, we had a
pond that had like, I think it was like 1/4 of a mile around
it. It felt like 2 miles long, but
it was only 1/4 of a mile. But that would be something that
I would try to do often. But it was fun.
It was like you were walking around with somebody.
You were talking about work and you were, you know, avoiding the
geese and looking at the deer that were in the woods or
whatever. And you just did that a few
times and I was like, oh, look at me go.
But there's nothing really fun to do.
And I need extra entertainment while I'm doing an activity to
really get me motivated about it.
So yeah, I get you on that. No one's doing those things.
I'm not doing those things. Let's say no one.
There are people who are very good people.
That's not me. Let us.
Know who are you? Why are you doing this now?
I'm kidding, but yeah, I'm exactly the same.
I need some kind of entertainment or something to,
like, distract me from the fact that I'm working out.
That's why I couldn't do yoga. I tried yoga.
I set up a kind of like workout tracker of some description
where I would colour in each box with what type of workout I'd
done or like, what type of exercise I partook in.
And there was one day that I did yoga and I thought to myself,
yeah, never again. Because this was so flipping
boring. Because you have to focus on
what they're talking about. You have to listen to the
instructions, otherwise you're gonna stretch wrong and like,
break your back or something. I don't know.
Whereas I I would rather just be able to walk on the elliptical
and watch Gossip Girl. That sounds way more appealing,
yeah. Or just sit on the couch and
watch Gossip Girl also. An option.
I like that one too. I also just love how many of our
most failed layouts are like health and exercise.
Really. Oh no.
Hey. I'm trying to be better about
it, but I also have to worry about my heart health and not
have a heart attack in my mid 40s.
So, you know, I just needed a little kick in the ass.
Yeah, no. I've set up a health journal as
well. I don't think that mine is quite
the same as yours. It doesn't really have like
trackers kind of in it, but it does have more like health
related research notes and things like that, which I have
been enjoying. All right.
Jess, what is your number one worst use?
Never used, never doing ever again Collection page.
This one was hard because when I was trying to think about the
layouts, so many different ones came to mind, but they all came
back to the fact that whenever I set them up, I didn't go in with
a clear intention. I didn't kind of, you know,
section things out properly and give things like appropriate
headers and stuff like that. One example, for instance, is
that at the start of this year I set up a 5 by 5 bingo board, but
never specified what was going to go on the bingo board, so it
didn't be used. Eventually I decided, oh, I'm
going to record like my dates out with Vogel, but that, yeah,
it didn't really work. We took more than two dates, but
I think I only filled 2IN. But if I don't go into a layout
knowing very specifically what it's going to be used for and
actually scaffolding it out properly so that it can fit that
use, it does not get used. Another example would be like a
page that I set up, my started journal set up to say like, oh,
this is what we're going to do in reset week.
Like this is going to be the page that's dedicated to
planning out reset week and planning out your next journal
setup or whatever. But I never went and actually
put things in for like, you know, capturing specific types
of information or any kind of scaffolding.
It was literally a blank page with a title and thus did not
get used. You make.
A really good point. I think this is probably the
moral of the entire episode is that these have to have an
actual intention. I think most of them have an
intention, but it has to be something that you kind of want
to do, right? To like actually want to follow
through on it, have some type of motivation.
Yeah, I definitely can understand what you're saying
here, but I don't even know how you could create a spread or an
idea without an idea. I don't even know.
I don't know how that works. I'm.
Obviously a wizard because I've managed it multiple times.
You're like. Here's a bingo cardboard I'm
thinking of. I say you're like, oh, for the
dates I'm like, oh, are you like pre filling like different
places you want to go or you just adding them on?
It's it's a bake your own bingo board, but you can never win.
I know, right? See, that would have been smart.
I ended up really just using it as a place to kind of capture
information rather than like a kind of challenge, I suppose.
And I never went and actually decided how I wanted to use it
because one idea was, oh, I'm going to use this to capture
like the top 25 things from my 101 things list.
And I'm going to put that in there.
But I didn't do it because I never actually set it up with
that in mind. Oh it.
Makes total sense. You create a page with nothing
that you know you want to do with it, but nothing happens to
it. Yeah, look.
At this beautiful layout with two columns for something.
I'll come up with the idea later, but.
See, The thing is the number of times I do that, though, the
number of times I scaffold out a page like Oh yeah, this is like
the general idea. Like in general it's going to be
a reflection space, but I don't specify what I I'm reflecting
on, so then I don't reflect on anything I think.
That's really the the big thing about all of these is that you
have to know exactly what you're trying to do with it and you
have to think about it. I've been recently with some of
my bullet journal setup videos been thinking about getting back
into the plan with me is but taking your advice and coupling
them together instead. It's just one offs, but I always
plan out my pages regardless of if I'm recording it or not, just
because I can't go into a page without an idea of what I'm
doing. One, because I'll make a huge
mistake with a pen or a marker or miscount or do whatever.
Hell, I I do that even when I pencil in my pages.
But a lot of the times I just think about it, especially with
trackers when we talked about what's the number, what's the
increments that we're doing with that, I have to do the math
before I start doing anything or else it's just going to become a
mass. And especially with like any
type of data visualization, like I love data vis.
I think it's amazing as a designer, spent plenty of time
visualizing data. But that's one of the reasons I
love bullet journaling so much and tracking some things.
It's just as it is fun to visualize that.
But you do have to think about what does that look like?
You know, if it's something that is manageable.
Am I doing it in the 10's? The hundreds, the thousands,
whatever that might be. Being realistic about it,
pushing yourself, especially if it is something that you can
actually control. That's a big thing that I've
learned as well, especially with like the Instagram trackers, is
that I can't fully control how many new followers I get.
I can do everything that Instagram gods are asking of me
and that doesn't guarantee it. Versus something like a weight
tracker or an exercise tracker or something like that.
Like I can control how many reps I do with how much weight if I
wanted to push. Myself on it, I'm not tracking
anything like that right now, but I think that makes a really
big difference in it as well. But that's just a part of
planning. So no wonder the not knowing
what you're doing with the page because it doesn't have a label
that it workout because yeah, your brains like I'm not
connecting. This does not compute.
Does not compute. Yeah.
And I try and avoid it, but yet it still seems to creep back
into my setups one way or another.
Usually it's because I need like a page filler.
Usually it's just like, oh, I need to set something up here
and I have a vague enough idea about what I want to do with it
that I set it up in a certain structure, but I don't fully
flesh out the idea. So I don't go in and like, label
things appropriately and that kind of stuff.
So it's very much what you said is like putting in the
forethought, making sure that you kind of know the intentions
for a page, knowing how it's going to be used, what kind of
data it's going to be capturing or information or whatnot.
You know, picking your axes labels appropriately so that you
don't have a scale that doesn't make sense for the stuff that
you're going to be capturing there and stuff that you're
going to be capturing in a way that isn't demotivating.
Like all of these kind of little pieces that you can think about
before you put pen to paper, which can be very useful.
And sometimes we don't put in that forethought and we end up
setting up things that they're just not really going to work
for the way that we like to plan.
Womp. Womp.
And you just you said that as a fail, you go ahead and reflect
on it and you never do it again. Put it to.
Bed. But we'd love to know though,
what kind of layouts, trackers, logs, whatever else.
What kind of things have you been setting up in your journals
and planners? Maybe a couple of times, maybe
only once and it just doesn't work out.
You could be like us setting it up a couple of times and
realizing maybe we need to put this one to bed or it could have
been like a one and done. Set it up once, absolutely never
again. Let us know either in the
comments or you can e-mail us at plan from palspodcast@gmail.com.
Absolutely. Well, our next episode, Jess,
we're going to do a really fun one.
I've been looking forward to this one probably since we
started because we were planning on all these cool ideas.
We're going to do a community Q&A episode, so we have to rely
on you, our planner pals, to come up with questions that
you're curious about. They could be about planning.
They could be about previous episodes or things that we've
talked about. They could be completely off the
wall. Random questions.
Let us know. We're going to go pile all of
those and we have a fantastic episode of answering those.
There are a few ways that you can get in touch with us to ask
these questions. You could e-mail us Planner Pals
podcast@gmail.com. You could also drop a comment in
this video or on the podcast as well after you leave your other
one about your most failed ones. We'll filter them out, don't
worry. Or if you want, we are also
going to put Q&A's up on our social medias as well.
So you can check that out at Planner Pals Podcast on
Instagram. We'll also put them in the
community feed for you as well. Just ask the question, we'll
collect them and then we'll answer them in our next episode,
which I'm very much looking forward to I'm.
Interested to see what people want to know either about like,
you know, differences and points of view between us about things
or about like the planet community in general.
It's always like a very big can of worms that you can open with
these kind of things. So I'm trusting you, planet
pals, don't lead us astray on this one.
But for today, thank you for watching.