Planner Peace: Highly Desired Yet So Elusive!

I’m so frustrated right now. What worked before for some reason isn’t anymore

I definitely agree that planner peace is an evolving situation. I have been digital planning since November last year in Goodnotes and added Notion to my system in May. Such a good combo for me and it works well with my brain and all the things I want to remember or keep track of. Thanks for a great video Annie x

Thank you for this video Planning Annie! I've been feeling lost with my planner system for months now. I think the problem was that I was watching several planning channels with different styles and was copying too many and had planners all over the place. I'm going back to what's worked for me since the start of Covid, an A5 Stalogy in a Moterm cover with a calendar TN insert from Creative Tidbits on Etsy. Still keeping a separate Kinbor for work, but will get a half year Stalogy for next year. I'm starting to feel better already 😌

We've recently moved, and it has thrown my planning system for a loop. I've just been trying different styles and realize I want a planner that holds everything. For now, it's in disc bound again and it's working. So, for now the bound books and rings, and spiral planners are put away. My TN is now just my journal because it feels nice at the end of a day. But my disc bound will lie flat and flip over like a spiral and I can add and take away like rings.

Thank you for this video. My planner peace changes with the seasons in my life. Sometimes I need A5 daily pages, sometimes A6 daily pages, but mostly I use A5 WO2P or WO4P. When I first discovered the planner/sticker community, I couldn’t get over why someone “needed” so many different planners. For me, I don’t use so many at one time, but I found I switch up sizes as my needs change, so I am one of those girls who has a variety of planners. I can bounce between personal, pocket, A6, and A5 planners, all ring-bound. I have printable inserts I purchased and some that I designed myself. When I’m feeling my current system isn’t working for me, I just think about I need in that moment and adjust course. THAT brings me planner peace.

Thanks for sharing! — I think planner peace isn’t so much finding an individual planner that you love but rather finding a planning system that works for you across sizes and being happy with what you use — also finding a way to tweak your system so that it works well in different sizes and planners.

I used to have an A5 vertical layout as a work planner — now I’m in B6 because I wanted the additional portability. Thinking about moving to Standard TN size next. Got bored with the Hobonichi Weeks layout that I used as my hobby planner/microjournal — the PTD Weeks gave me a challenge to tweak its layout in order to make it work for me, which was just the additional spice I needed to make things interesting again for me.

I’m very fortunate to be able to do this, but one of the best things for planner peace that I’ve found for myself is getting an iPad and Apple Pencil.

Planner paralysis used to spike my anxiety to the point of inaction. I’d spend DAYS drawing and redrawing bujo spreads, trying to get them meticulously right. An iPad, pencil, and going digital for awhile took away all that stress and anxiety and really gave me the freedom to play. What formats and styles did I like? What pages did I use on the days I felt most fulfilled and/or productive? And once I started getting into a flow of that, I could start to think about what things with digital weren’t working for me. The actually planning pages and reference pages weren’t working cause I was less likely to review them daily/weekly. Trackers were harder to keep up with when trying to look at multiple apps on one screen (I have a mini so screen space is limited) so I borrowed my daughters iPad Pro and tested that out for awhile and considered upgrading but then I lost portability. And! I realized I really do miss the tactile nature of paper and the implication of time passing as you work your way through the pages. All of these growing pains and explorations and self reflection and journaling have taken over a year and I’m still going! But it’s made me address the why’s of how I function versus the wants.

What a great video! I'm investigating in tracking tools as I need more consistency

I've always used a ringed, half sheet binder, which has really worked for me when l spent a lot of time at my desk. However, recently I've been moving around to different work stations. So I started wearing a very small, light weight, over the shoulder bag. It holds my phone, a hankie, and fingernail file. Things I don't want to walk across the room to get. The bag is really working for me. (I like the bag because I don't always wear pockets.) ... But my planner got left behind. Yes, everytime l took a break, I would review, but my biggest frustration was not having something to write on in the spur of the moment. Yes, there were stickies and backs of envelopes, but isn't that why we got planners? To get away from stickies? ... So I started popping today's and tomorrow's page out of my binder and into my bag. It's totally flexible how many pages l keep in my bag. At the end of the day, l make my notes, migrate tasks and pop the page back into the binder. Now l am in planner peace again... It wasn't changing my pages, it was about changing how l used my binder. I've thought about a traveler's notebook or a pocket planner, but l don't want the weight in my bag... Besides everything I need is right over there, on the other desk. (Why is everything we need always on the "other" desk?) Sending lots of love 💖 from sunny 🌞 Arizona 🌵😷.

very frustrated.

Man, love this video! #5 really hit home with me. I have found I like like changing my system by quarters. I can make every system work for me but I get bored. The switching quarterly helps me stay motivated. This is something I learned this year about myself.