What I Learned from My Planner This Year
Like many women, I often think that a new planner means a new me, a new opportunity for maximum productivity. But this year I approached my planner as just one tool that I could use to get done what needed to be done but also to live a life honoring my values, energy, and season.
Reviewing your planner is like reading your own year-in-review; it shows what mattered, what slipped, and what rhythms actually worked. For me, it also showed what I need and don’t need in my paper planner.
A friend and I designed our own planner for the first time, and looking at a few months of use helped us to determine the features we use and want more of, along with what we thought we wanted and didn’t actually use. Even if you don’t design your own planner, flipping through to see what features you used consistently can help you pick out your next planner, format your next bullet journal, or scrap a paper planner altogether and go electronic.
What My Planner Told Me
Live in my season. Even the most perfectly designed systems can fall by the wayside during busy seasons. A look at my paper planner from May to July shows that I barely even used it. And that’s ok! I uploaded the baseball calendar from the team app to my iPhone calendar and that was how I knew what was going on in the summer, and it worked pretty well. I feel no guilt about not using those pages, because the systems I had in place during that time worked.
Color coding has a time and place. I started the year using all the colors from our large family wall calendar and electronic calendar in my own personal planner, but that got too visually overwhelming, so partway through the year I simplified my paper planner down to two colors–teal for life and pink for work. I still got the benefits of knowing what’s what at a glance, but was less overwhelmed.
Note pages matter to me. As I said above, perusing a used planner can be a great way to review the year, and the things that I found most interesting as I flipped through mine were not the scheduled appointments. The note pages and lists in the margins show what was really going on in my life, or what was important at the time, and that reflection is valuable.
What I’ll Carry into 2026
Now that I’ve leaned into compassionate time management, I don’t think I’ll ever turn back to thinking my planner will solve every problem in my life. I hope to keep these lessons in mind as I move through 2026.
Margin is good for me. Scheduling within an inch of my life has never led me to a season of thriving, so I plan to keep white space in my schedule and work on saying no to things that don’t fit into my season.
My planner is not a moral issue. Using or not using my planner “well” doesn’t make me a better or worse person. It is a tool, I don’t want it to turn me into one.
I’m choosing vibrant colors. After years of loyalty to my beloved Frixion erasable pens, I think I’m switching to these ParKoo erasable pens. The tips are not as fine, but I’m willing to give that up for how bright and vibrant the colors are. This matters to me for now.
Your Turn to Reflect
I encourage you, sometime between now and buying a new planner, to look through your planner and notice patterns—gratitude, overwhelm, recurring wins. If you’re not a paper planner user, take a few minutes to think about what worked and didn’t work in the way you planned and managed your time this year.
I hope to see you there! Click the image for tickets and more details!
You’re Invited
If you’d like to really set aside time to look back, reset, and start fresh in 2026, join us for the Good Help Organizing Planning Party on January 17! Tickets are on sale now.
Our focus for the event is Tools, Mindset, and Permission to Plan Your Way!
This casual and fun workshop morning will not include a prescriptive formula to turn you into a productivity robot. But it will include discussion of different systems of planning, some topics to help focus your mindset on what really matters to you, and permission to be the boss of your planner.
