Are you frustrated with your planner? Don’t miss these six signs that will help you quickly determine if you bought the wrong planner!
Are you frustrated with planning? You bought a planner to help you get control of your life. Yet no matter how hard you tried you just couldn’t seem to make your planner work.
You feel like a failure every time you look at your planner now sitting unused on the bookshelf collecting dust.
I’ve been there. I was new manager, with no real training, thrown into this job where I honestly felt like I was drowning. In the struggle, I bought a planner that was going to help me stay on top of all of these new responsibilities. Until it didn’t.
I honestly couldn’t understand why I couldn’t make it work. The planner layout was the same one I had used for years in my personal life with great success. Yet no matter how many times I tried to pick that planner up and make it work, it never did.
After a full year of frustration I finally asked myself why it wasn’t working. As I spent time answering this question, I realized that I bought the wrong planner.
The problem wasn’t that I hadn’t been consistent, or that I just wasn’t meant to use a planner. The problem was that the planner layout just did not work for what I needed it to do.
6 Signs You Bought the Wrong Planner
You Still Feel Overwhelmed
Life can feel overwhelming a lot. That is probably one of the reasons you bought a planner to begin with. You wanted a tool to help you keep track of everything.
If you are using your planner, and life still feels constantly overwhelming, it might not be the right planner for you.
The right planner will help you reduce your overwhelm with life. It should free up some mental space and help give you some peace of mind.
You’re Not Sure Where to Write Things
There is so much to keep track of in our day to day living. Your planner should have a place for those things that you need to stay on top of.
The point of your planner is to help you reduce overwhelm. You shouldn’t have to mentally keep track of things because there isn’t a good place to write them in your planner.
Here is a list of some of the popular things people track in their planners:
- Meal Planning
- Finances
- Cleaning Schedule
- Fitness
- Grocery Lists
- Project Lists
This was one of my biggest struggles that lead me to realize I had the wrong planner. I always have really long weekly to-do lists. There just wasn’t a good place to write them.
The right planner should have a place for you to track those things that are most important to you.
There is Not Enough Space for Everything You Need to Track
Because we have so much going on, our planners hold a lot of information. In some planners there just isn’t enough room to write down everything you need to track.
This was a struggle for me when I first became a manager. I had been using one planner for my personal life and for work. With my new responsibilities, there just wasn’t enough room for everything. The solution for me was to purchase a second planner just for work.
Other solutions would be to buy a bigger planner, or find a layout that works better for you.
The right planner should have enough space to hold everything that you need to track.
You are Constantly Transferring Things
If you are constantly rewriting the same things in your planner over and over then you might have the wrong planner.
My to do-list at work runs better as a weekly to-do list. I need the flexibility of a weekly to-do list instead of smaller daily to-do lists. When I used a planner that was suited to daily to-do lists, I had to transfer several things every day.
It felt so frustrating, because every day as I transferred items I felt like a failure. The problem wasn’t that I wasn’t getting things done, it was that I had the wrong planner layout.
The right planner will have the a layout that fits the rhythm of your life so you don’t have to constantly transfer things all the time.
If you’ve been struggling to make your planner work, now might be the time to be honest with yourself and admit you bought the wrong planner.
It can be hard to get to this point because you might have used the same planner or brand for years. You might also be struggling with the thought of wasting money.
Don’t stay stuck in feelings of failure and overwhelm because you bought the wrong planner. Take the time to do your research and find the right planner for you. You are worth it!