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.
