Summary
Highlights
The speaker shares her personal planning journey, initially struggling with traditional, book-bound planners and digital tools due to their lack of customization and distracting nature. She found digital planning inefficient because phone distractions led to diverted attention. The core benefit of paper planning for her is reduced distractions and a more grounding experience.
While primarily a paper planner, she still leverages a few digital apps. Refocus helps block social media, Insight Timer assists with meditation, and the phone's Reminders app is used strictly for short-term tasks. The calendar app is reserved for long-term, far-in-advance events, and the Notes app is organized with folders for content planning and important life information.
The heart of her system is a leather portfolio that holds multiple journals, allowing her to carry them all in one organized place. She emphasizes its practical design for individuals who use several journals for different purposes.
This journal is a free-form space for brain dumping thoughts, feelings, and creative expressions like drawings and paintings. It serves as a vital tool for offloading mental clutter and self-expression, emphasizing its role as a 'best friend' for processing thoughts.
This journal is dedicated to compiling information, such as notes from books, movie reviews, quotes, new vocabulary, and research. An organized, color-coded index allows for easy reference, making it a valuable tool for continuous learning and knowledge retention. She highlights the Moleskin cashier notebook for this purpose.
Designed for capturing ideas, this journal (a soft-cover Moleskin) is essential for anyone with frequent thoughts and creative impulses. It's a space to analyze ideas, regardless of whether they are pursued. The speaker notes Moleskin's comfortable soft cover but criticizes its paper quality for ghosting, while recommending Midori for better paper.
A Midori B5 slim notebook serves as her list journal, where she records various lists, including current interests and hyperfixations. Its good paper quality (better than Moleskin for bleed-through) makes it suitable for this purpose. The leather portfolio, in general, is highly recommended for its ability to consolidate multiple notebooks, offering portability and organization.
Her main planner is an A6 binder, favored for its extreme customization compared to book-bound planners. She champions supporting small businesses on platforms like Etsy for quality, handmade items at better prices. The binder format allows her to rearrange sections and use various paper types, including grid paper, to suit her needs.
The planner features pockets for sticky notes, business cards, and charms. Inside, she includes Post-it tabs for annotating books, a cover page with personal touches, and monthly spreads. She plans monthly with habit trackers, painting trackers, and a reading log that ties into her commonplace book and list journal. Weekly overviews focus on goals, to-dos, reminders, and reflection, leading into daily planning.
Daily planning involves laying out the next day and reflecting on the current one. This consistent practice fosters a journaling habit and promotes self-awareness and gratitude. The planner is adorned with decorations, but its core function is practical planning. Future planning sections include monthly hearts lists (current favorites), gratitude sections, and self-care habit trackers.
The speaker concludes by highly recommending paper planning for its unique benefits, including a tangible sense of accomplishment and reduced distractions compared to digital methods. She stresses that a journal doesn't need to be aesthetically perfect or performative; its primary purpose is personal use and functionality. She encourages experimenting with paper planning and shares appreciation for the artistic elements she incorporates into her own journals.