On plans

I know I’ve written before about my love for office supply stores.  It’s not just that I love pens and paper and paperclips, although that is true.  It’s that I love the illusion of order that they sell.  I walk in and become convinced that if I had the right adorable filing system or the perfect calendar-planner I would be suddenly transformed into the fabulous-haired, non-stressed, world-changing human I have always been meant to be.  (No, I have no idea why office supplies would fix my hair, which has been impervious to the ministrations of professionals and is hopeless in my own, incompetent hands, but fantasies are weird like that.)  It is therefore not a surprise that my newsfeeds are full of alluring planners that offer me Success and Scientifically Proven Methods and systems Tested By Monks (or maybe it was chimpanzees?).  I see them and drool, metaphorically, over the lovely pristine pages and the beautiful bullet-point lists in tidy handwriting.  I envision myself, color-coded, on the ball, seamlessly transitioning from one task to another, not forgetting the milk or the workout or the dry cleaning or the handmade perfect gift for everyone’s birthdays.

Then I wake up.

I know about how to set goals and I can reel off lots of ways to structure those goals for success.  It isn’t about the planner or the pens or the sticky notes.

The uncomfortable truth of the matter is that someone else’s perfect system probably isn’t mine, or anyone else’s.  Setting the goals is the easy part.  Getting the work done is the challenge, and most of the getting-it-done is messy and can’t be bounded in a bullet list.

I’m not saying that having a fancy notebook is bad.  If it’s inspiring or useful, we should do it.  But maybe we’d do better to focus on the quality of the work we put in, not the quality of the planner we use.