Hello and welcome to the Planner Pals Podcast, a podcast hosted
by two true planner pals. My name is Mark and I go my Mark
Your pages. And I'm Jess or Jessica in and
in today's episode, we're gonna be looking at planner chaos
versus planner peace, whether you're kind of in one camp or
the other or maybe a little bit of a mixture of both.
I know that throughout our journeys, we have definitely
experienced both of those. But before we get into it, a big
thank you to everybody who left their thoughts feedback on last
episode. It was very nice to know that
we're not alone and jumping between different planner
systems and stuff, and in particular, it was great to read
that through that episode we've inspired a couple people to let
go of planners that just are not working for them.
It's really wonderful. It's it's nice to know that not
only are we getting from the community as we always talk
about, but I love when people are like, that was really good
advice. I did see some of those comments
too. They're like, I've been holding
on to this all year long, struggling through it.
Like you gave me that permission even though I didn't need it,
but it's what I needed to hear to know to move on.
And so that was absolutely amazing.
So yeah, thank you. Thank you Planner crew, you're
all of the best. You know, I like one in
particular being like, I've been holding on to this ugly journal
and just slogging through it because I feel like I'm going to
waste the pages and I feel like I can get rid of it.
And I'm like yes, down with the ugly planner.
Well, today's episode I'm excited for because this is
something that so many of us planners struggle with this look
for this thing that does exist. We know this Unicorn out there
of this planner piece, but so often we live in this space of
planner chaos, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
I'll tell you personally, just I, I kind of like a little bit
of planner chaos because it's what excites me the most about
this. But today we'll be talking about
what's the difference? What is planner peace?
What are we looking for? And Planner Chaos, is it really
something bad or like I said, is it actually kind of exciting?
Yeah, I think that you're very much right on that.
Planner chaos does not have to be a bad thing, and it's totally
OK to be in a bit of planner chaos.
I find that planet chaos is where innovation lives a lot of
the time. This is like the experimental
phase phase where we get to try different things out, figure out
what works for us. So I see it very much as like a
fundamental, instrumental, essential piece of the planner
journey. In terms of planner chaos, to
you, what does that look like in your planner systems?
So Planner cast to me, honestly, because I'm creating a lot of my
own pages myself, is just trying to find the right spreads.
That kind of work for me. I would say early on when I
first started, it was just trying to find the right
notebook, the right size, the right paper, all of that bit.
So as you're going through and you're using like a Lystrom 1917
and you're saying, OK, I got this because everyone else is
using this. And then you get and you're
like, I'm not loving it though. So let me try this other
notebook. OK, I got a five.
Well, now I want to try square or B5 or predated or not.
And you kind of just go through. I love what you said.
It's all about that experimentation and the chaos.
But I also really like the fact that chaos, to me also is just
experimenting with different type of materials and trying new
things in there with the goal of trying find just what works.
But as we'll talk about in this episode, personally, I think
that's kind of boring. But I also really like the idea
of just being OK with everything.
How about for yourself? Yeah, no, I would very much
agree with that. That idea of being able to try
out new things and such, whether it be the actual planner itself
and the structures and the layouts or just the materials
that we're using with it. In terms of planner chaos,
because you know, everything has two sides here.
There is also the not so great side of planner chaos, which is
where you don't know where you've stored information or you
don't know if you've stored it in a way that's really going to
click with your brain. Or maybe it's put down in a way
that you're just not really inclined to get back and check
in with it or anything like that.
Which can have some negative effects in terms of overall
productivity and organization and feeling like you're on top
of your stuff. That one is always the most
negative part. I think of planet chaos is just
feeling like I'm not in control of the stuff I in theory should
or at least want to be in control of.
Like not knowing when I need to be, places where I need to be,
who I need to check in with. If my planner system has a
little bit too much chaos, then often times I just fall off on
things that I would like to be a little bit more on top of.
Yeah, having things in too many places is a big deal.
I think about that for myself even now, experimenting with
having a pen and a ink journal. And then I have like an ink
Swatch book that I have. And then I have my bullet
journal. And then now even today I got to
pull out one of my old notebooks that we were talking about, that
book notes up from Anso Designs with the metal bindings in
there. And I got to pull that out today
because I'm going to be coaching field hockey now.
And so I use it as my like clipboard information thing.
But then even before that was like, OK, well, what am I taking
with me today? What does it go inside of here?
Wait a second, what am I doing over here?
When I started with my day, I'm like picked out a new fountain
pen to use for the week. I was like, OK, wait, where do
I, where do I put the thing? Do I put that over here?
Now? It's like having too much.
I love it because it's very exciting.
And I think I'm kind of getting to that more focused planner
piece of saying, OK, this journal is for this and here's
where it lives in my studio. This lives over here and this is
what this is for. And I think that even the
placement we talked about like trying to find the right tools
and and planners that work for us.
But I think even having like chaos in your space also is
something that can happen because you're storing things
away in different places. So I didn't really think about
it before we even started talking about this.
But I think planner piece can also just be like your your
space where you do your planning is a peaceful space as well.
No, I would agree with that. I think that anytime I set up my
journal for the next month or cycle or whatever, I I
definitely get some planner chaos going in my kind of work
area or off cuts and tape pieces.
And you know, XY is a bit of supply that is just scattered
amongst the space. And then of course I'm like,
Nope, I'm overwhelmed now. I'm going to make that a future
me problem to clean up. And then the planner chaos
continues. When you get back to my desk the
next day, I'm like, OK, yeah, we actually need to tidy things up
before we can do anything. That idea of what messy space,
messy mind kind of a thing, that is something I definitely fall
victim to. But I like your point about
thinking about what you need to collect together before you go
out somewhere. I think that travel with journal
and planner supplies is a really good indicator of whether we are
in plan a piece or plan A chaos. Plan a chaos.
I'm like, cool, so I need to take this journal, but also this
journal, but that notebook, but also that planner in these pens,
but those ones for this one. And then I need at least like,
you know, 6 rolls of tape or something like that because I've
made a system that maybe is a little bit too complex.
Thankfully I'm not really there at the moment.
I think I'm edging towards planter piece.
But what is planter piece for you?
I mean, I think planter piece is just everything falls into place
and it just clicks, right. It's just it's working for you.
You feel very confident in how you are going about your day in
your week and how you're setting things up.
What we just talking about, you know where your things are and
where those things go. And there's no extra second
guessing towards that. It's not that you're also moving
beyond the experimentation. I think that as creative people,
we're always experimenting and trying new things, but I think
it's also just the call it planner maturity in a way where
you say, OK, I have this notebook, this is for my bullet
journaling for work. I have this notebook, this is
for my daily home task that I have to do.
And you're not still trying to exactly figure out how you're
going to do that. And I think that it just starts
to feel much more natural for you and how you go about your
day today. I will also say planner piece
for some people. And what I thought it was, was
also just that journal that just works for you.
You're not second guessing and thinking about the next journal
that you don't even know that you need just yet because you
really love your function, your method, and what's happening
right now. How about for you?
Yeah, I think that that's a good point.
And you're that one thing that's going to, you know, change the
game for you and it's going to be the the be all and end all of
your system and stuff. And I think that when I first
got started, that was what I expected plan a piece to be.
It was going to be finding that perfect system, that one perfect
tool that was going to do all of the stuff.
But like we talked about in last episode, oftentimes it's not a
one done and done. Oftentimes there are going to be
parts of our planning and planner system and such that
don't fall within the scope of one specific tool, whether
that's using a digital planner and a like monthly calendar or
using a physical planner and then some kind of other digital
system. Or it could all be analog or it
could all be digital or something.
The actual kind of like setup of it might look a little different
depending on who you are. But for me, I think planner pace
at this point in time is knowing what goes where.
Like you mentioned, that's a big one.
And also just feeling confident that I have captured everything
I need to. It doesn't necessarily need to
be captured in exactly the same place or in exactly the same
way, but I know it is captured because brains are made for
having ideas, not for holding them.
If I try and rely on my actual organic brain to be able to hold
all of those things, it's not going to happen.
We're going to have a bad time. Future Jess is going to be a
stress mess. Jess, we don't want that for
her. We want it to be captured in
some other kind of system that's a little bit more reliable.
It's not going to forget and it's going to be easy to find
later. I've always been very envious of
people who can store everything inside their brain.
Like mine is creative Swiss cheese, you know, it's like it
does exactly what it needs to do.
But like anything that isn't hyper focused and adding any
type of excitement to my life just seeps kind of out of there
and then, you know, some things just kind of jet back in there.
But I, I feel you on that. It's one of those things where I
like that idea of it because it makes me kind of accept my brain
a lot more. When you just said that, I was
like, oh, yeah, I don't have to remember everything, but I have
always been just very envious of people who do.
My wife is one of those people. Like she knows everything that's
going on months in advance. I'll be like, So what are we
doing this weekend? She's like this, this and this
and then next week we're doing this.
And then we have these concerts to go to in October and then
we're doing. I was like, Oh my gosh, like, I
can't even think what's going to happen beyond today.
I'm just like, OK, your brain will do that for us.
Please forgive mine because it can't do that.
I need to write all this down. Please talk slowly.
Yeah, please let me like put this into some other system
that's just going to remember it for me.
And I think that there is very envious of people who can
remember that far in advance. But I'm also just like, how why
people who don't use calendars, I'm just like, how are you
functioning in the world? Like, I'm very impressed.
Please do tell me more. But I think that I just feel
personally more at peace when I know that that information is
captured somewhere else. I probably could force myself to
remember that kind of stuff, but I like to free up mental space
to do other things like remembering song lyrics and
other pointless things that I don't really need in the
day-to-day. But they still sneak in there
somehow. Yeah, so, well, just an idea is
we put together a little bit of like a prompts last survey.
It's like a 17 magazine, like who is your celebrity crush?
But this little survey is going to help you figure out exactly
where you are. Are you in planner peace or are
you in planner chaos? And we have to put this out
here. Neither is wrong.
And in case you're not sure where you fall, we're going to
go through three questions and you got to think about these and
then you're going to tell us where you are.
So just let's start with the very first question to figure
out if you are in planner peace or if you're in planner chaos.
All righty. So the first question is all
about stress from your system, and hopefully your system
doesn't stress you out too much. But the main question is, does
it stress you out? Like are you stressed about your
planner system? And if you are stressed about
it, there's probably an indication that maybe you're in
a bit more planner chaos than you are planner pace.
I personally find at the moment that I have a minimal amount of
stress. And that's the thing, you don't
have to be 1 or the other. This is a spectrum.
You can fall anywhere along this kind of like Rd. of stress.
I find that at the moment I'm kind of like an 8 out of 10 in
terms of like the piece to stress scale.
Like if one is stress and 10 is like absolute peace, I'm at an
8. What do you reckon?
I think for myself right now that I'm probably at like a six.
And the reason I say that is I still kind of get caught up on
my desk with too much. So I have my bullet journal open
all the time while I'm working and a lot of the times I have it
open and then I'm like working over top of it.
And I think it's that planner chaos, but also just like the
space chaos a little bit where the other day actually my bullet
journal, I was like, I don't know why, it's kind of weird,
but I was my palms were sweating while I was working the other
day and I was working and then I like move my hand away and I
look back and my ink on my page had like smeared and I was like,
but why is that happening? It was because like my planner
was like kind of like right in front of me while I was working
and typing. So it was almost like a, a wrist
rest for my typing, but I was like, well, that needed to move
over, but I was going to work, you know, on top of it.
And I think I also had like some other like pens and stuff out.
I probably had gotten some new inks or stationery was on the
desk too. So like there are times where
like, yes, the bullet journal planner itself is working for
me, but kind of what we talked about is like the space was
stressing me out. I feel it in my body and I
sometimes I'm just like Mark, stop, like let's clean this up
and let's clear the mind and get in there.
So like the notebooks and things that I'm using also, I would
say, I mean, why I'm out of 6 is because I am kind of doing that
thing right now where I'm in between specialty notebooks,
bullet journal. Good, it's fine.
I just finished my fountain pen Swatch little notebook.
And so now I have to set up another one.
And because of that, I have extra notebooks out as I'm
experimenting a little bit to see like what's going to work
out. And then the other day I was
like, oh, OK, Mark, don't forget you like to jot down your pen
and ink combinations. I'm like, crap, which, which
journal am I putting that in right now and where is it?
So I still have some cleaning to do.
I can only use the excuse of like, it's my new space and
everything's in a new space in my new office, but it's been a
few months now. It's just chaos.
I do also like the point though that there can be one part of
your planning system that you're you know at a six with and other
parts that you're at an 8 with or another part that you're at
A1 with or wherever else. I think that for me, if I take
like the kind of overall overarching kind of number, it's
an 8. But if I think about it in terms
of specific parts, I think my bullet journal currently is at
like a nine. And I think that the other main
places that I organize information, digital calendar,
that one's probably similarly at a nine.
I'm pretty happy with that. Thinking about my second brain
though, that one being a digital space, parts of that, because
it's a big one, parts of that are like at a 910 and I'm really
happy with. And other parts of that I'm
like, yeah, you're at A2. We need to, we need to shape up,
buddy. But because that's only a small
part of my overall system, holistically we're at an 8.
Yeah, there's something else I've been doing recently.
I was just telling my wife about this.
I've been trying to help myself out with my brain.
Right. So officially diagnosed with
ADHD, no longer pretty sure I know it's there.
So I've been trying to put more methods in place, especially
with like having to leave on time and like do certain things
where I've been putting it in my calendar usually 30 minutes
before I have to be to a place. So if I have to pick my daughter
up from practice at 4:15, I will set a calendar invite for 3:15
just to like give myself the mental time to like get going
and still be there on time. The problem is, is I haven't
perfected it yet because now I'm forgetting whether or not I need
to be there at the time that I'm starting the event or if it's
afterwards. So one thing I've been doing is
I've been putting it in there and then in parentheses pick up
at 4:30. But I haven't perfected that
because it's kind of new now. And so it's one of those things
too from a digital aspect where it is still chaotic.
It's that like a four for me, honestly, it's like it's getting
there. You know, the things are still
in my bullet journal, but I'm trying to incorporate these
other things to like help me out a little bit more to do that.
But I'm still working out the kinks.
So I'll still consider that chaos because I'm still like
texting her midday, Like, wait a second.
So I did put this in my calendar, but like I forget if I
said I had to be there at 4:15 or I set it for 4:15 to be there
by 4:30 or whatever the time difference is.
Got to work on that one. For the longest time for my
digital calendars, I have always had my color coding system for
one. But one color is specifically
dedicated to travel because otherwise, if I don't put travel
on my calendar, I will just forget the fact that I actually
have to get from like one physical space to another.
And that does actually take time.
So my default for any kind of travel block is like 30 minutes.
Oftentimes it'll only take 10 or whatever, but I've got it
scheduled in there that the event starts at 4:00.
So the travel block starts at 3:30.
So you have to make sure that you're like ready to go even if
it's not going going to take the full half hour.
Yeah. So if you're any of those spaces
on this spectrum, you can kind of gauge yourself from feeling
very stressed out by your system, regardless if it's just
one piece or multiple pieces, you know, we'll put that at A1.
And then if you're just feeling really good about all of your
different systems working together as like a 10, so like
scale yourself inside of there. I personally think that you're
in like a six and a 7. Like you said, you're definitely
planner piece leaning. I guess it's like the moon phase
is over here. You're like you're a waning
planner. Sorry you're I don't know plan.
A phase is the perfect way to describe that.
I love it. I know nothing about moon
phases, but that's my new moon cycle.
You can figure out where you are on that spectrum.
The next thing that we're going to talk about as a part of this
survey is definitely something you can gauge pretty easily,
which is are you actually reaching for your journal or
your methods or are you avoiding them?
So something we actually talked about last episode as well was
this idea that if you're not interested or excited about the
things that you're using, one of the biggest ways to like red
flag that is that you are actively avoiding opening
grabbing for going near any of those elements specifically in
this place, your planner, mostly because it is stressing you out.
It's causing some type of anxiety.
You really don't want to do it. And so that's an easy way just
to be able to kind of gauge where you are.
I don't know if we give this one a number gauge like two, I reach
for it, but I think it's more just this idea that am I going
for it or am I not going for it to really understand, you know,
it's stressing me out. It's definitely chaos or Oh
yeah, let me open up my journal, put this in here because I know
exactly where it needs to go. I guess you could kind of gauge
this in terms of like the consistency of use and
consistency, remember, does not mean every single day because
some parts of our planning system do not need to be touched
every single day. I don't need to go look over my
Swatch book every single day. I only need it when I need to
select my next pen type of a thing.
So in terms of whatever, you know, frequency of use you have
given to your planner or whatever is kind of like ideal
for you. Are you meeting that schedule
for yourself? Are you checking in with a daily
if it's a daily kind of touch, Are you checking in with a
weekly if it's one that you need to do weekly setups in or
anything like that? I find that for most of mine at
the moment, I'm pretty good with checking in with them, except
the one that's in chaos, because that's the one that's stressing
me out because, yeah, I haven't figured out the system perfectly
yet. And that's kind of what's
keeping me from getting in there more consistently.
I guess the bullet journal though, or whatever it's called
nowadays, Big shrug. And that one I do still pick up
every day. But then again, I call that my
everyday journal, so I would hope that I was touching it
every day. I think for myself when it comes
to this one, I'm definitely more in that planner peace space.
I use my bullet journal every single day.
Well mostly Monday through Friday and weekends unless I'm
planning for the upcoming week. And I loved what you said there.
Consistency does not always mean every single day and that's a
really good point. Mean at least in my case, I
consistently use my bullet journal for work Monday through
Friday. I'm not really working or doing
a lot of it over the weekend. I'm still consistent.
I would definitely say with my other things, I mean my soon to
be ink Swatch notebook, I'm consistent from a standpoint of
I know what it will be and how I'm going to use it.
And when I get new inks, I'll be putting things in there.
I've been very good about that. And even with my pen and ink
log, right, like every time I have a new pen and ink
combination, I've been jotting that down in there and just
keeping a record of it for myself.
So like those are kind of like the three main things in my life
right now that like feel good and that I know like when I'm
gonna grab it. Now, a little bit of that, like
not 100%. It's just like where did I put
that? But I'm getting better about.
Placement, I think that's a really big part of making sure
that you're in planner piece versus like you said, planner
chaos. If you're just not like, I don't
want to do that no more. And I think, you know, this can
also be a very good question to, you know, reflect on to see if
there are any planners. You've just decided to DNF.
You know, you said you were just taking a little break, but
you've actually decided not to go back to it.
You just haven't admitted that to yourself.
For me, that was my reading journal.
That has been my long term collections journal.
I've recently decided that that is one that has fallen under
that did not finish kind of category.
I don't think there are any others in particular that are
super at risk. OK, story time.
I tried to go back through my planners from the lineup that I
set for myself at the start of 2025 because I was like, Oh my
gosh, I feel like I started this year with so many planners and
journals and whatever in my lineup.
And now I feel like I'm not using any of them.
Which, you know, again, comes back to that idea that you don't
have to use everything every single day.
Doesn't mean it's not actually party a lineup.
But I'd ended up doing a recount.
It was still just as many as I thought because I don't touch
them every day. I kind of forgot that they
existed almost. It's like, yeah, the Swatch
journal doesn't need to be touched every day.
The health journal, as long as you're filling in that you have
done your exercise, that's all it really needs at the moment.
The long term collections journal request kind of part J,
you are actually deceased now we're going to let you go and
it's going to be all right. The reading journal as soon as I
stopped doing videos for it I'm like Nah.
So I guess in part you know you can get rid of planner chaos by
just scrapping the planner entirely.
There is no chaos if the planner doesn't exist.
Very true. I mean, yeah, if it's burned
into a crisp Outback in the fire pit, I mean, what?
What journal Can you imagine doing that I can't.
On that note, I will have to say I did just recycle some, like
older ones. I'm currently decluttering my
own stash and going through it. And I was like, pat it in my
hand and I was just like, this is from like a conference, you
know, it's nothing special at all.
But like, my brain is like, Mark, you could use this for
real quick little waste or whatever.
And I was just like, it's crappy paper.
Like it's probably cost less than a dollar.
And I just threw it in the recycling bin.
And I felt so much better about it.
There's so much guilt beforehand, but I just threw it
in a box and I was like, you were going to the recycling and
I was just felt really good about it.
So you're right. Yeah.
If it's not there, you can't be stressed about it.
It's always the decision making process that's the most painful
part. As soon as you make the
decision, it's like relief, peace, kind of a thing.
All right, so we've gone through the 1st 2.
So just what is the third item in our Little 17 Magazine survey
to see whether you're in Planner chaos or planner peace?
So this one's a little bit tricky because it very much
depends on the purpose that you've assigned to your planners
and journals. But do you feel that the purpose
has been fulfilled? Has the system that you have
developed or that you're trying to use, is it actually doing
what you want it to do for you? So for some of us, that's going
to be like memory keeping. That could be productivity
organization. Are you showing up to the events
that you're supposed to be showing up to at the time you're
supposed to be showing up to them?
Being able to kind of see in your kind of real world
experience outside of your planners is the stuff that I'm
hoping to get out of these actually happening for me in
terms of my, you know, regular everyday journal or whatnot,
that's all about getting tasks done.
So it's like, am I getting my tasks done?
Sure, I'm writing them down, but am I actually following through
and doing them? Because if I'm not, then it
means that that system isn't working anymore.
If it's in terms of events and appointments, am I showing up to
the places I need to be at the times I'm supposed to be there?
If I'm not, that means that something in my calendar is not
working for me. Do I feel like I have captured
my memories for the day and I feel good about having those
things recorded somewhere? If not, that means that my five
year journal isn't working for me.
What would that be for you? Every time you've mentioned this
five year journal, that was actually one that I just
recycled. So I had someone had gifted me a
five year journal and I was like, oh, this is so great.
And I opened it up and I was, I filled out four days maybe one
year and then I think I did 2 consecutive days the following
year. And then I haven't used it
since. And I really was bad about it
because I again, I was like, oh, this is good paper.
Then I thought about like deconstructing it and I was
like, Mark, just no, like you have plenty of notebooks, just
just recycle it. It'll be OK.
I think for myself, I've really come to a spot where I really
do, you know, enjoy the pieces that I'm using and for the most
part, and I think a lot of it is me almost getting there.
So writing things down and I know you have, I actually talked
about this recently. You know, we had a previous
episode where we talked about like, you don't like repetition
as a way to work. And I'm all about repetition
where I'm like, write it in the journal, write it in the
calendar, write it over here, write it over there.
Tell somebody, have someone call you, set an alarm for it.
Like I'm all about making sure that I'm getting to where I need
to be to, to make that happen. I'm trying to figure out the
right ways to do it. I'm even trying to find like
ways to automate that more, you know, even something just like
sending myself a calendar invite and putting on my work calendar,
but then also just emailing myself that.
So it just shows up on my personal calendar versus
entering it twice. Small little process, things
like that I feel like I'm getting better at.
So I think on that one of like pure chaos and 10 being
beautiful, amazing purity and peace.
I think on this one, I'm again probably at like a 6A7.
I would say it's like I know what I have to do.
It's just trying to perfect and tweak it a little bit to make it
work even better for myself. And I feel really good about it.
I think at this point I've gone through the experimentation
phase of a lot of this of like, how does this work?
Where do I put it? And I just know like it has to
go in the journal, it has to go in my calendar, personal as well
as work, because I'm always looking at my work calendar.
But then all my devices and things are connected to like my
watch and my phone and even in my car, it always brings up my
personal calendars in there and it's helpful to see them there
too. So I'm getting there with those
things. Then go give myself A7.
I know exactly what I'm doing. I'm just trying to make it a
little bit better. I think this is another one
where like different parts of your system might be working
better in terms of fulfilling the purpose that you've given
them versus others. Because I know like the everyday
journal, that's doing great, probably a nine.
I always, I never give myself A10 on anything.
There's always room for improvement.
I'm always a very harsh marker. That's the teacher in you.
Very much that for my long term collections journal, the one
that I effectively decided to DNF, that got to a point where
the purpose that I'd given it, it was not being filled.
It was just not an effective system for what I needed it to
do because that was essentially going to be a reference book.
In fact, I've had what 4 iterations of that reference
book. Now the reason that I have for
those that I started in LT1917, but then once I moved into a
different type of paper and I'm like, well, you are also a
Swatch book and I want to Swatch my pens on something that has
the same type of paper. So you're no longer fulfilling
the purpose. Let's move into something else.
So I got that into a scribbles that matter because that's what
I was using. And then I stopped using
scribbles that matter journals and I moved into an Archer and
olive. So I'm like, cool, we need to
remake it and put it in an Archer olive.
And then eventually I sprinted it out.
So it's like, OK, we don't just have long term collections that
also has swatches. We have a separate Swatch book
and a long term collections book.
So we have the reference material and then the pen
related reference material separate to that.
Because in terms of filling that purpose and filling the need and
such, that just made more sense. But now I'm at a point where the
reference materials I was storing in there, that is not
the place I go to look for them. So that's a big one.
So then that means that I never check in with those reference
materials, which means that they're not getting used in the
way that I wanted them to. So that system isn't working
anymore. Where are we going to put that
information instead? That's going in my second brain
and Notion. Yay, Notion.
My, my most recent love. I guess I was going to say my
first love because no, that's not true.
Excel is my first love. I do love Excel.
I was telling you, last time I, I accidentally turned on ESPN 5,
I think, and there was a Microsoft Excel championship
going on. If people were formulating
things and doing stuff in pivot tables, I just, I didn't know
what, I've never seen anything like it because it was well
beyond my mental capacity. And that first person I thought
of was you. I was like, you know what, who
would love this, Jess? Yeah, I'm like not into sports,
but into like competitive, excelling.
Yeah, I could get behind that. It's.
Funny when you talk about your second brain.
I haven't looked into it very much but I'm very interested in
like googles new things called notebook LM.
It's just like AI notebook where people are like putting a lot of
their information. And I get you to be very careful
about what you're putting into it because it's doing all this
really cool stuff. I know I've been seeing it a lot
for college students and high school when you're doing like
research papers and things like that and you like dump all this
information into it. And then I something I saw just
as the features like you can take that and then turn that
into a podcast for yourself to listen back to, to help you
understand better. And it just got me thinking
like, what if I turned that into like my, my digital brain in
some way? It'd be funny to be like
notebook LM, create a podcast after the last week and like,
have it like aggregate all of the things I'm throwing in there
and like feed it to me as a podcast.
I'm, I'm slightly interested in it.
I just don't know how I would start it.
But it's one of those things every time you mention your,
your brain, I'm like, I'm going to try that.
Notion is great. Don't get me wrong.
I'm a big air table fan personally for things, but this
notebook LM was something I was been interested in mostly for
this reason. But I feel like that's just
allowing Google even more information.
I'm sure they already have on me.
I'm just, you know, being funny about giving them anymore.
No, that's very fair. I, I do think of my second brain
as kind of like a PKM, like personal knowledge management
kind of system because it's essentially just what I'm hoping
it to be. What I'm slowly building it to
being is that kind of like one stop shop, full resource for
like all of my life lists and stuff that I need.
So I've got all of my templates and stuff in there for content
creation. So when I put out a post for the
memberships, for instance, rather than having to write it
from scratch, I've already written out the general template
for myself. I can go use that.
I use it for my content calendar because you can open it up in
different views and you can have it in like a calendar layout so
you can see the schedule or in a Kanban born.
So you can see like where we're at in terms of different stages
of editing or whatever, you can list it by channel.
So I've got things for like a podcast versus my newsletter
versus my main channel versus the vlog channel versus
Instagram, yadda, yadda. And I think that just being able
to have all of that in there in those different views and not
having to repeat the information for myself, that fills the
purpose. I love it.
I'm hoping that eventually I'll get it to a point where it is
the one stop shop. I want it to be where I have
everything captured very well because there are certainly
parts of that there are a little bit more chaos than and they are
peace at the moment. So I'm thinking in particular
the section that needs some more work is the Notes space, because
Notes is just like a swamp right now.
The organization in there is not as good as it could be, which
means finding things is a little bit more difficult.
And if we're thinking about that idea of filling the purpose I'm
giving for it, I want that information to be very easily
accessible. And right now it's it's
technically accessible because there aren't so many notes in
there. But then I'm also not putting as
many notes in there as I could be because I'm worried about not
being able to find them again. So a little bit more work to do
in that space, but otherwise I'm feeling pretty good about it.
I think for anyone who's finished our survey, even though
this was not a quick survey that you know, listen to all the
rambling that happened along with it.
If you find that yourself in the waning towards the planner chaos
still, but you want to try to get yourself out of that, there
are a few tips I think that we could give you to help do that.
I'll say First off, one of the biggest things that you can do,
and I really love this when you mentioned it at the very
beginning of this was instead of thinking about as planner chaos,
think about as planner curiosity and like allow yourself to
experiment. But I would say do it with a
goal in mind. I think if you let yourself just
freethink too much on that, you'll never get out of that
spin of like, what's next? What's happening?
What else could I be doing but go into it or even where you are
now, Set yourself a goal. What is it that you're there to
accomplish during this curiosity and exploration?
And then at some point, you do have to make your decision.
So give yourself a deadline to try to work towards it.
The light deadline is a personal deadline, whatever, but I think
that's just a nice and easy way to just know that you do have a
direction that you're trying to go with it, and it kind of helps
to reframe your mind a little bit.
Yeah, I think that the idea of having the gold sets you down a
path of actually being able to pay attention to what is or
isn't working for fulfilling that, reaching the goal, that
type of a thing. And the way that we actually do
that is through reflection. Yeah, The Dirty word that nobody
likes except for me because I'm like all about it.
But if we do reflection with intention, it can be less of a
time waster and more purposeful. And that's what we want.
I don't want to waste your time, right?
That is not the the kind of end game that we have here.
But if you go into thinking about your planning system,
really analyzing what's working, what's not working and taking
that information and making a plan for moving forward rather
than just sitting there being like, well, this sucks.
Guess that's it for me. Like, no, there are ways forward
here. We can problem solve.
Just get really granular with it though.
So instead of just saying like, this sucks, it's this sucks
because, right, Like, why does it suck?
Why isn't it working? And thus, what can we do that
maybe remedies that or mitigates it in some way.
So for instance, for me, in terms of that long term
collections journal, the thing that was holding me back from
using that was the fact that it was a physical system.
I wasn't checking in with it. It wasn't easily searchable.
The information that I wanted to have in there there would have
just been better in a digital system.
So I put it in a digital system, right?
There are ways forward as long as you actually take the time to
reflect on it and figure out what's not working along with
what is. Because we want to keep the good
parts too. And then thinking about what you
could do differently that'll mitigate it or make it better.
Yeah. And I think that also thinking
about this as a journey versus a destination is really important
to, you know, this idea of that experimentation and trying and
doing that. We talk about planner peace.
I think a lot of us in the planner community, we joke about
it, right? Like we'll never find planner
peace or oh, we can only find planner peace.
But I honestly feel like you don't know when you make it
there just yet because like you said, you're never going to give
yourself A10 rating on this scale, which would mean that you
have hit euphoria of planner peace.
Like you don't need to change anything.
There's always opportunity. So I think that if you just
understand that, I realize that and say, OK, I'm going to work
towards making this system better for myself so that I
enjoy it, I'm using it. I know where the things are
going to go. But I know that if it doesn't
work out, that I could be flexible on what might need to
happen next or what might need to change and more of the
tweaking. Like I personally wish I was
tweaking at the 8:00 and 9:00 scale for myself versus tweaking
down at the 6-7 space because I feel like it still feels a
little chaotic and I'd rather just be like slightly fine
tuning as things change. But I know for myself that like,
I have something that I'm working towards, I'll probably
change my mind later on down the road.
I know me. But at least I know that I'm
aiming towards making this kind of my day-to-day a lot better.
Or again, week to week or however you're experiencing your
journals and your planners and your overall space.
And that makes me feel OK. And I know that it's like
obtainable as well versus this perfect Nirvana of planner
piece. And I think that, you know, in
aiming for a planner piece or kind of tending towards it,
maybe that's not the end goal that we actually want as well.
You mentioned it very much at the start, and it's something
that I very much vibe with. The idea of Planet Piece just
sounds freaking boring. Like if you get to a point where
nothing's evolving and nothing's changing anymore, things will
start to feel stale. I've found that that's very much
been the kind of thing that has helped me back from using the
same types of layouts time and time again.
It's like, oh look, she's setting up another weekly
dashboard that's exactly the same as the last weekly
dashboard. And that was something I very
much valued with the way I approached my planner system
when I first got into bullet journaling and such.
Every week was different until such a point where it's like,
OK, I feel like I'm running out of ideas and I just need
something that's going to help me organize my life a little bit
better. But being able to have that
flexibility and change things up so that then you don't get that
stale kind of boredom feeling in your system, that's something I
value. I'm right there.
Like I said, that's definitely where I like to play.
I also think because my brain needs the chaos because that's
what kind of feeds that dopamine.
And I think for me honestly, with the chaos at least of like
not sticking down to like one type of like, I think way back
when I first started bullet journaling and I was looking
online and I was being inspired by a lot of people.
Something that always was very exciting to me were people who
only worked with black ink. And they would create beautiful
art and they would create beautiful layouts and spreads
and all these different things. And they would only ever use a
black pen. And in my earliest bullet
journals, I did exactly that. I only used a black pen.
This is also before I discovered fountain pens of my love for ink
and all of those things, right? But like this idea that I was
like, oh, that is it, finding a notebook that you really like
and one pen that you really like and that's all that you need.
But the exciting part for me of planning, especially now is
finding cool stamps that I find to be really cool or stickers
that are really neat to work with or distress oxide and using
those with stencils in your notebook, right?
The problem that I have is that I collect all of that and then I
have a stationary store, you know, in my office, which is
great, but it does keep me excited.
It keeps me moving. I mean, it keeps me wanting to
continue to use my journal, which is a really big important
thing to me that I'm always using it because it's also so
helpful for me too. But it also brings me a lot of
joy. So I don't, you know, even
though I have all of the things and it could seem a little
chaotic. I mean, when I flip through this
notebook that I've just gone through, it's like almost like
the phases of Mark's life. It's like the beginning of the
year he was into this and then, you know, a few months ago he
was into this and now I'm really big into stickers for whatever
reason. I just, I have a lot of them in
my life right now and they're really cool and I'm excited
about them and I'm OK with that. I know I'll get back to the
stamps eventually because I also just got brand new ones from
Archer and all of that came in today that I need to absolutely
start using immediately. But it's just kind of going
through that insane. Like this is really exciting for
me. And, and I'm going to continue
to use my journal because I enjoy what I'm putting into it
both from a efficiency, productivity, you know, brain
space, but also from a creative space too.
That makes me really happy. To think of it as like little
pockets of peace along our planner journeys kind of thing.
And I think that given the fact that life is always changing, we
are always changing and thus our planner system realistically
should change with us trying to think about planner peace is
this one final destination like that is not final destination.
Like a log through your window type final destination.
I haven't even seen the movies. I can't even make the
references. It's a good reference.
Because that feels a bit final. But yeah, we don't want planner
peace, I guess, to be that final thing that we reach towards and
we get there and then that's it forever, right?
We're thinking like, you know, the good place from the good
place or something. Things get boring, things get
stale. And then eventually when life
changes, if we think of it as note, that is my planner piece,
that is the final part. That is where I'm supposed to be
forever. You're going to get to a point
where it just feels like planet chaos anyways because you're
trying to like jam it into a life that doesn't fit it
anymore. We don't want that.
We want things to be changing and evolving and such as we
change and evolve so that then they can serve us as well as
they possibly can. I love your use of The Good
Place as an example there, because right, Is this a
spoiler? I feel like it's been out for a
while, Like you've seen the ending, right?
Just want to make sure we're all there.
But in case you have it like, I don't know, skip forward a
little bit. Wait a little warning.
Spoiler warning, the good place is actually the bad place.
And like I love the fact that you just connected that because
you're absolutely right. It's like I'm going to get to
planner peace, but then I'm going to create planner chaos so
that I can get excited again to then figure out how I'm going to
work towards it is this beautiful vicious cycle that we
put ourselves in. But it is just, it's so fun and
it's such a fun exploration and finding ways that work.
It's like honing in on the things.
I mean, I can say right now for sure, like the bullet journal
method for me is the planner peace from a standpoint point of
the methodology that I use to do things right.
I'm not still out there looking at like all these different type
of notebooks and ideas and methods.
That is my way to move forward. So like from that standpoint, I
can say I've found that I've, I experimented, I tried.
This is the one thing that is stuck with me the most and that
I will continue to use. And then my evolution of the
method itself is kind of my visual expression inside of my
DIY notebook. Like we said, it's you don't
know what to call it nowadays because some people will call
what we do not bullet journaling and some people will.
But this idea of like how I choose to then express kind of
my excitement in there utilizing that method underneath is really
good. I think where I start to pull
out some of that chaotic stuff is the stuff that is outside of
that zone where it's not a bullet journal method and
utilizing that for something. It's this free flowing idea.
Oh, a gaming journal inside of a pocket notebook.
Good idea. Oh, but I also have this ring
binder that I can take things out of and replace them with.
That's exciting too. Crap.
I have two gaming journals. Which one am I using now?
I don't know, throw them both away and use something
different. That's kind of the space where
I'm just like, I could do so much better.
And, and honestly, a lot of these episodes are like therapy
for me because it does make me take a step back and really
think about it because I don't know that I've actually ever
given myself a goal from a planner perspective to say,
like, I want to get to this place because it's just I have a
bullet journal that always has worked.
But like all the other things for me though, I'm just so
scatterbrained where I'm like, oh, give me journal, try this
over here, then forget about it forever.
Like, oh, new egg Swatch journal, What kind of paper?
What notebook am I using? But I'm not actually moving
forward and saying, here are the things that I want to accomplish
with this journal. So I'm going to take that back
for myself even and reflect on this and we'll check back in
later on to see if I've come close to the good place.
I do love the idea of the cyclic nature of it though.
Like, yeah, we start in the chaos, figuring things out.
We find something that works. Eventually it doesn't work
anymore or it gets boring or whatnot, and we go back to the
chaos as we try something new. But I think that that cycle has
a lot of value in it. And I think that by going
through it time and time again, you kind of just get to a point
where you're not really aiming for one or the other.
You're just, I'm a planner experimenter now.
Like I'm going to come at this with a lens of science or
whatever. I'm going to figure out what
works me and then keep on trialing until I find things
that are like perfect for the moment and then when the moment
changes, we move on to something else and that's OK.
I would love to know though, Planner Powers, what do you
think? Are you in planner peace or
planner chaos right now? Is there certain parts of your
system that are kind of leaning towards one or the other?
Or is everything very 5050 balanced?
Let us know either in the comments here on YouTube or you
can let us know at plannerpowerspodcast@gmail.com
if you want to e-mail us or you can let us know on Instagram at
Planner Powers Podcast. I'm so excited to hear from you
all because I feel like I said, we, we are all searching for in
theory, but I don't know that we actually want to get there
because it's not super exciting. But I think this is a great
little dovetail into our next episode where we're going to
talk about the evolution of our planning styles and how we
started and how we've kind of migrated and evolved over time
to get to the point where we are now, which I I personally am
still trying to find myself. I feel like in this beautiful
space, but I definitely started in a much different place when I
first got started. So it's gonna be a fantastic
episode. And I'm really looking forward
to hearing about yours too, just because I remember like finding
little, not even little. You were doing fantastic when I
first discovered you on the Internet and like what you were
doing then versus where you are now.
I feel like it's night and day, but in the most positive way.
So I'm excited to talk to you about that.
I'm. Very much excited for that
conversation because I think there's a lot to be learnt from
thinking about the journeys of others and how that kind of like
mirrors our own journeys with planners or how we can kind of
take the learnings from those and apply it to our own system.
It's going to be a good one. But for today, Planner pals,
thanks for watching.