Back during my Trapper Keeper days, I got in huge trouble for not doing my math homework. My parents decided that my organizational skills needed improvement and they needed a way to monitor my work. As a result, I was given a General Electric day planner to more accurately record and report on my homework assignments. I don’t think General Electric had a stationery division; it was just embossed with my Dad’s work logo. Every day, I would write down any homework assignments and my parents would check that they were complete. I got my third grade progress back on track and for several years, the General Electric day planner was standard issue at the start of each school year.
As an adult, I’ve tried different methods of record keeping, appointment tracking, and task management. Back in the nineties, I had the faux leather bound, seven hole punched, week-at-glance calendar and refilled it annually. It had an address book section in the back to keep contacts’ names and phone numbers. When the world turned digital, I tried to keep tasks managed in Evernote, Slack, Todosit, and the like. While sending everything to the cloud is efficient, I still have a tendency for paper and pen solutions. I attempted to convert my whole work life to an iPad, but always felt compelled to physically write things down and create a hard copy. During this time, I remember showing a downtown high rise and some super smug agent claimed while boastfully waving his tablet that “he’d been paperless for two years.” The deal didn’t come together, but I wish it had so I could have corresponded with this digital snob by snail mail.
Every year, I have this soul-searching internal conversation around planning effectively and increasing organization. My problem is I have commitment issues when it comes to planners. I always start out strong recording goals and tasks daily. As time goes on, that commitment slides to a couple days a week. A little more than halfway through the planner, I’ve given up and vacated the remaining pages. Anyone reading one of my older planners like a novel would be incredibly disappointed. “Wait! How does this end? Nothing happens past July!”
At the beginning of 2020, I ordered a ninety day planner from Project Evo that was personalized for my brain type. I went online and answered questions about my thought process and decision making preferences. Based on my responses, I was sent the “Alchemist” version of their planner. They also have versions for personality types labeled “Explorer,” “Architect,” and “Oracle.” Based on the names of the personality types, Project Evo must be marketing heavily to the Dungeons & Dragons crowd. When my Alchemist planner arrived with its fancy box, textured cover, and rose gold page edges, it was impressive. I immediately sensed I had gained a +2 modifier to my intelligence/ability score.
For a couple of months, I was very dedicated to spending a portion of each morning with my little blue book. Every day there was an opportunity to record:
Today I’m grateful for…
Today I will share my discoveries by…
Wellness activity for today…
Fun activity for today…
Notes & Ideas…
Most Important (tasks & subtasks)…
Biggest takeaway from today…
There were also monthly and weekly planning sections that were organized in a manner that apparently appealed to an Alchemist such as myself. At the bottom of each daily page is a QR code to login to their app and score organizational points. It was a worthy activity; I’m a big believer in gratitude practice and I’m self-aware as an alchemist I need to share discoveries, which ultimately is a fancy of saying I need people to listen to me. Looking through some of my “Biggest takeaway” there’s some nice memories like Chase’s Cub Scout Arrow of Light ceremony and a-ha moments about dealing with the stress of losing one’s keys.
There’s a large gap in entries in the Alchemist planner starting on March 19, 2020, which just so happens to coincide with California’s Stay-at-Home order. Stuck at home, there was little motivation for daily planning as we tried to fill the hours with increased family togetherness at home. So once again, my best laid plans for planning fell down. If there was ever a time to throw plans out the window, it would have been 2020.
For anyone who knows me, I’m not an unplanned person. Ask my wife how much research is involved in selecting a hotel room or the time we had car packing practice for a camping trip. When I prepare a day of showing homes to prospective buyers our movements are coordinated with military precision. In prepping for one especially big Thanksgiving, I calendared the oven down the minute. I don’t think an outsider would look at my life as haphazard or disorganized; I just don’t have my methodology regularly documented.
That’s what it boils down to: I’m good at planning, I’m just bad with planners. I think ultimately my personality rebels against the confines of the routine. (Something the Project Evo planner designed for my brain type didn’t fix.) So I can host a Thanksgiving dinner for twenty-five, manage multiple clients simultaneously, or run a great baseball practice–just don’t look for the plans for all three to be written down in the same vessel. You’ll probably find the skeleton of baseball practice written on the back of the envelope and Thanksgiving plans in the Thanksgiving folder. Coincidentally, the Thanksgiving folder is a manila folder that was used to keep track of houses shown to Marine clients over a decade ago. Back in 2008, writing in pen on the inside of a file folder was the pinnacle of real estate organization.
Perhaps there’s more systems in place than I realize. The agent-end of Compass is the hub of my business. I’m very dedicated to Google Calendar. I have multiple steno and legal pads containing info that gets digitized when time allows. I’m by no means “paperless” and don’t have any inclination to become so. Still, I’m meeting deadlines and showing up for appointments just as efficiently during my General Electric planner days.
Much like my third grade experience, Ryan’s grades recently suffered and Jenni and I had to have the similar organizational talk with him that my parents had with me. I no longer have a connection at General Electric, so we had to purchase a day planner elsewhere. It was very lightly used by our seventh grader, yet his grades improved significantly. Does this suggest that organization is a state of mind? Is it just enough to be aware of commitments without writing them down? Or is blank planner actually working? (You know, like buying an expensive snow plow generally results in a mild winter.) Either way, it doesn’t matter to me that I dropped $15 at Staples for something Ryan used to record one or two days of homework. Perhaps by acquiring a physical planner you’re creating a mindset that you are “someone who plans.” What does or does not get written down is immaterial; the mere presence is indicative of the intention to organize. With that in mind, I’m going to keep acquiring planners even if I’m not the best at filling them up with a year’s worth of content. Well…at least that’s what I plan to do.
