The Planner Radiating Potential, From Inside A Drawer
I've Become A Man Who Plans
So today, I bought a planner.
Not just any planner… no, no.
A nice one. Leather-effect cover, a little elastic strap, the kind of cream pages that make your handwriting look like it has a pension and firm opinions about wine.
£24. For paper.
I’ll be honest, the price was the appeal. A cheap planner is a notebook, but a £24 planner is a commitment.
I bought it because I’m going to become organised. Not slowly and not gradually. Immediately.
The moment it arrived I would transform fully, into a man who knows where his appointments are and possibly owns a small herb garden.
It arrived by special delivery on Tuesday.
I held it.
I admired the weight of it.
I opened it to the first pages and looked at all those clean little boxes, waiting patiently for the structured and frankly enviable life I was about to pour into them.
Then I reverently placed it in a drawer I’d prepared earlier awaiting its arrival.
Because I understand something about myself, and I’d rather I didn’t. But here we are: I don’t need to use the planner.
I need to own the planner.
Owning is the achievement. It’s not a tool, it’s a statement of intent, and I’ve made it, and now I can have a sit down.
A week passed and of course the boxes stayed empty. But the planner…. The planner sat there radiating potential, like a gym membership you can see from the sofa.
I told my wife I was “getting on top of things.”
She looked at the planner. She looked at me. She said nothing, which is somehow worse than anything she could have said.
So I came up with a very reasonable plan.
If I start feeling guilty about not using the planner, I would buy something to give the planner moral support.
Could be a special pen, or those little coloured tabs. Or maybe….. Yes definitely, a second, smaller planner, for planning what goes into the big planner.
Of course, the big planner hasn’t seen the light of day, but I’m now, by any measurable standards, a man who plans.
The infrastructure is in place, the pens are available and they all fit nicely into the drawer.
My transformation is complete.
I noticed an advert for a habit-tracking app. Apparently it syncs.
Hmmm… seems like I’m due an upgrade.
Planners, Journals, Pens. I feel your pain. Meanwhile, I'm staring at a shoebox FULL of the little 3"x4" notebooks that Mom and Dad kept for YEARS noting events of the day, weather, worries. I guess the habit skips a generation 🤷
I started using a planner during Covid-19. I didn’t use it to plan. After all, what was there to plan during the lockdown? I used it to record. I listed every store that I did venture into. I started to record household tasks I’d completed. I looked back rather than forward.
I still record those things and, along with those, I add the occasional doctor or dentist’s appointment and plans which aren’t spur of the moment.
I wrote the word “Helene” on the block marked September 27, 2024 — the day a hurricane slammed into my city. The words “sheets,” “trash,” and “recycling” are scattered throughout. Truthfully, my planner is and probably will continue to be a record rather than a plan.
Consider the truth that your planner doesn’t have to be one or the other (record or plan). It can be either or both. Then consider that the planner might prefer to not be in a drawer. After all, it knows its purpose. Open the drawer.