How much structure do you plan into your daily life? If you have a daily planner, how do you really feel about it? Sometimes it seems like we got so obsessed about things like time management and being the best we can be that we forget to just be people. Hopefully, that's not a normal experience for you.
Researching this post led us to an entertaining 2016 article published on the Odyssey website. Entitled 'An Ode to My Planner', the article was the author's attempt to describe her relationship with her daily planner in a creative way. She did a nice job.
Perhaps the biggest take-away is the realization of how much so many of us rely on our daily planners. Without them we would be lost. But is that healthy? Who knows? Quite frankly, most of us probably don't care. As long as our lives are organized and we can keep up, whatever works is good.
A Love-Hate Relationship
Some folks have a love-hate relationship with their daily planners. They have a good idea of how they want to use a planner to organize and get things done, but no matter how hard they try, the planner they use just doesn't match the way they think. For the record, this is one of the reasons we developed the Next Level Daily Planner.
We designed our planner to be flexible enough for you to use it in whatever way works for you. For example, there are no dates in our planner. Instead, you get six monthly planning pages and 90 daily planning pages. You organize your plans based on the way you think.
You're My Best Friend
Maybe a love-hate relationship would not accurately describe how you feel about your daily planner. Rather, you would say that your planner is your best friend. Good for you! We all need at least one friend we can count on to keep us on track.
A good friend is there to listen to all your rantings and ravings. A friend doesn't offer solutions unless you ask. Instead, a sounding board and listening ear is all that's necessary. That kind of friend can be invaluable when it seems like life is too chaotic to manage.
If your planner is your best friend, it probably bears the telltale signs: coffee stains, lots and lots of notes, a few doodles here and there, and plenty of checkmarks indicating you've completed your tasks.
A Long-Lost Family Member
The other side of that coin is a daily planner that is more like a long-lost family member. Maybe your daily planner is like the crazy uncle no one in your family has talked to in years. You aren't even sure where it is right now. If you ever do find it, you're not sure you want a relationship with it again.
Or maybe your daily planner isn't necessarily lost, but your relationship with it is on-again and off-again. It is a tenuous relationship, at best. It's not that you don't appreciate its ability to help you organize. You just aren't a daily planner type of person. You would rather fly by the seat of your pants. You don't want to be held back by a relationship you don't value.
Regardless of how you feel about your daily planner, how you organize your life is up to you. We offer the Next Level Daily Planner for people who want the benefit of a daily planner without having to use it in a way that doesn't work for them. We hope you will check it out.