How to Stick to a Planner

I've never been a naturally tidy person. My brain desperately wants to be, though, which is its own particular hell. It's like being a type A brain stuck in a type B body: my brain wants everything a certain way, and my body goes, no, this is what we're doing.

So it’s no surprise that my whole life I have loved planners. The stationery haul at the start of the school year. New notebooks, new contact paper, new me. I loved the idea of being organised… but I'd write beautifully in it for about half a day and then it was over.

I could never stick to one. For twenty years I thought that meant something was wrong with me. It's taken me until now to work out what was actually going on.

These are the five things that finally made a planner stick for me:

1. BE MESSY IN IT

It is genuinely ironic to be too scared to write in the very thing that exists to help you with the mess.

Plans change. That's not a failure of planning, that's what plans are. There's white-out tape. There's pencil. Use them.

Think about a journal. If you saw mine you couldn't read a word of it, and that's exactly right, because the point of a journal is to get things out of your head. A planner is the same, except it holds the what and the how. What are you doing, and how is it actually going to happen.

That makes mess. A kid needs picking up. Someone cancels. You don't feel like drinks anymore, which, let's be honest, happens a lot. Life is messy, and your planner is there to hold that mess for you.

2. don't wait until monday

Your planner has Monday to Sunday printed in it, and somewhere along the way we all decided that meant you're only allowed to begin on a Monday.

It's Wednesday and you haven't written anything this week? Start on Wednesday. Blank days aren't evidence of anything, and I use mine for brain dumping.

I'll tell you something. Some weeks, I don't write in my planner at all. Sometimes I’m busy elsewhere. That's allowed.

Here's the bit that actually matters: if you're always waiting for a Monday or a January, the motivation you're feeling right now, which is the hardest part to come by, won't survive the wait. Use it when it hits.

3. STACK YOUR HABITS

There's a lot of research behind this one and it's the tip that changed things most for me.

You take a habit you already have, and you stack the new one onto it. Brush your teeth, put a podcast on. That's habit stacking.

Mine is breakfast. I make my breakfast, I sit down with my planner open, and I plan while I eat. It had a side effect I didn't expect, which is that it made me more intentional about eating too.

Do I get milk on it sometimes? Yes. It's fine.

Yours might be the ten minutes after school drop-off, sitting in the car. You know that thing where you just want to sit in your car for a bit before going home? That's a planning slot.

And two check-ins a day. Morning and evening, two minutes each. Things change across a day, and the evening check is what stops tomorrow starting from scratch.

4. out of sight, out of mind.

Your planner should live open.

Not closed on the desk. A closed planner may as well be invisible. I promise you'll barely look at it. Mine's open in my office if I'm working, open on the kitchen bench if I'm moving around the house. Families do the same with a family planner on the fridge or wall.

A planner you can't see isn't a planner.

5. HALVE YOUR LIST.

We underestimate the big tasks and overestimate the small ones. That's very much me.

This is why every planner I make has space for your daily top three and quick three.

Your top three are the things that genuinely have to happen today, where there's a real consequence if they don't. Groceries. That email. A project due date. The washing. Whatever it is for you.

Your quick three are under fifteen minutes each, and they only happen after the top three are done.

That's the whole day. Three important things and three quick ones that will make you feel better if they’re done. If you finish and want to do more, brilliant. But that's the day.

THE REAL REASON YOU STOPPED.

I want you to think about why you actually stopped, the last time.

Most people say they forgot. I don't buy it. I think most of us avoid it, and we avoid it out of shame, because the lists were too long and there were too many priorities and every untouched page became evidence.

That's what it turns into: proof that you're not enough. That you're failing.

And we end up avoiding the exact tool that was supposed to help.

So please, be gentle with yourself. You can't get everything done. Nobody can. Stop treating it as a to-do list and start treating it as a this would be nice list. It would be nice to get these done. I'm only human.

Most of my quick three get bumped to tomorrow. That's fine. That's the system working.

WHAT IT'S ACTUALLY FOR...

Here's the thing I most want you to take out of this.

I'm not big on planning so you can cram more in and be more productive. I'm big on it because it gives you time back... for fun, for play, for sitting on the floor with a new puppy.

It's so you have more time to live.

Your planner is there for the mess, the coffee stains, the chaos and the changed plans. It's okay not to tick everything off.

Now pick up that planner and start finding the routine that works for you.

LOVE, STEPH.