Messy vs. Curated Planning 📙

0:00Hello and welcome to the Planner Pals Podcast, a podcast hosted by two true planner pals. My name is Mark and I go by Mark Your pages. And I'm Jess or Jessie Curran, and in this episode, we're looking at messy versus curated planning, considering what the pros and cons of each of these are, why neither of them is right or wrong. And we really wanna know where you guys fall on the messy curated spectrum. We're definitely gonna be sharing where we fall. But Mark, when it comes to this topic, why is it actually important to talk about?

0:28I think it's important because we're unveiling the reality of planning, you know, what you see online, which typically is going to be the best of the best versus maybe what your planner may look like. It's on a spectrum. Not everyone actually normally plans like that, but some people actually do. Like Jess and I fall on very opposite sides of the spectrum when we're talking about this topic is like, what do you mean? Of course my planner is messy.

0:53She's like, no, it needs to be perfection, but I think just really going through and normalizing and it's just key as we're talking about it because like we said, what you see online maybe looks a little bit different than what yours looks like, and that's totally OK. The biggest part, as we all know, is that your planner is for you. So it's really important to make sure that it's working for you. But also not saying that I can't be a little bit of both or meeting kind of in the middle, especially if you're a Perspicity biscuit about certain things like headers or the way they look or the way your boxes look and kind of falling inside of there. Yeah, and we definitely want to say from the get go, whether you're doing messy planning or curated planning does not mean that your planner isn't functional, right. We're not saying that either is going to be like better in terms of your productivity or in terms of getting things done or fulfilling really the purpose that you give for your planner. It's more so just thinking about the overall kind of final appearance of your planner, I suppose. And whether you learn more to

1:49the messy side, more to the curated side or very much smack bang in between. It can also differ from planet to planner, which I think is an important something to consider. Like some in your lineup might be quite curated, quite kind of, you know, aesthetic leaning, whereas other ones might be like complete scribbly messes and such. And I think it's kind of also nice to be able to have separate spaces for separate things because in a way they also fulfill different needs for you. Or at least that's what I find my planners do. Oh, completely.

2:17I mean, some of those planners are like, OK, I'm writing very nicely inside of this one. Like it's very intentional because it has that kind of space, like the one I use for all of my ink swatches. I'm very precise about how I'm writing. I take my time, I go very slow because I want it to look somewhat normalized, even though it's different colors. Whereas my day-to-day completely different story. But just why don't we, maybe we'll do something first is like really kind of define what we mean by messy versus something that's a little bit more curated. Because I think that could be a little confusing, right, depending on how you're thinking about. So why don't we go into how you define those for us because you're you're very good at defining things versus me. I'll ramble on for hours about what I think it is and then double check myself on if that's really how I feel. And repeat ourselves like 3 to 6 times in between there. But in terms of messy planning, we're thinking like fast, low friction planning.

3:07It's really get in, write your stuff down and get out with not necessarily a lot of concern as to how it looks. We're thinking kind of scribbling notes. It could be crossing things out. Really just the idea of taking your brain and putting it onto paper without too much consideration of the kind of, you know, structure of the layout or the sizing, spacing, those kind of things which are more so considerations that might come in with curated planning. So for curated planning, we're thinking it's very intentional about where information is stored, what information possibly is stored.

3:40It's visually placed in a way that is appealing after the fact. Typically it's a lot neater, doesn't necessarily have to have perfect handwriting or anything like that, but the placement of pieces within the planner has been done with a bit more intention I suppose then our messy planning kind of compatriots. And I think when we define those, those even sound like very opposite sides of a spectrum. It's like you're either one or the other. But I think the reality really falls that we probably fall somewhere in between there. And like you said, it might be depending on the type of journal that you're using.

4:12I know for me, it's very much about the time that I have to accomplish what I'm doing. So if I'm trying to write things down quickly because I'm in a meeting and I'm taking a handwritten notes, that's going to look a lot messier perhaps than a page that I'm setting up very intentionally. Like we talked about the perfect header, everything spaced out appropriately and trying to figure that out. So I think talking next about maybe where we fall on that spectrum might be a good kind of space.

4:36And we're going to start with you, Jess. I'll give you 3 guesses as to where I fall. Yeah, I definitely consider myself to be more in the curated kind of space when it comes to my everyday journal, everyday planner in particular. I enjoy having it look nice. So I'm making sure to kind of pre plan what my layout structures are going to be before I get in and actually draw things in. I want to make sure that the boxes are appropriately sized so that everything fits nicely.

5:04Which does often tend to requiring a lot of pre planning before you plan the plans, which feels just like maybe a little bit of overkill. But it means that then the end product is something that is very nicely organized, easily structured. I can find everything I'm looking for and it looks good, which makes my brain happy because one of the things that I find for curated planning is that the curation part is just part of the joy of it. It's part of the enjoyability of the process, at least for me.

5:32Now we're going to get into a conversation about when things maybe go a little too far. That's not right now. That's a future topic point. But there are other spaces that I do messy planning, or at least what I would consider to be messy planning. I know that to the outside eye, it still probably looks fairly curated. It still probably looks fairly neat. But for me, anytime I feel like I'm using my natural handwriting, which I have very slowly kind of gravitated towards in my everyday planners and such, because I felt like my natural handwriting was not consistent enough, quote, quote wasn't consistent enough to put in my planner or you know, all the letter forms didn't have the same sizing and spacing and all of that kind of thing. It would add to that feeling of messiness. So I was kind of tending towards doing all caps writing because all caps I could find that it would be very consistent looking.

6:21Everything looked equally spaced. And then there was that kind of cheerleader effect with all of the letters. So the curated part there, yeah, was kind of shining through. Nowadays, though, I use my regular handwriting in all of my journals except my five year journal. And that's because it's a five year journal and I still want it to be matchy, matchy. And I've done three years so far of all caps. So I'm going to continue. I mean, I've been an all caps person ever since I started my bullet journal almost nine years ago. I think we may have talked about it on a previous episode, but if not, you know, when I started, I was very intentional about a handful of things.

6:50I was very intentional about thinking about grid spacing and layouts and how I wanted that to be structured. And my handwriting was one of the other really big things. And the third was experimenting and using different types of pens and tools and things like that. But the handwriting part was something I actually adopted from my dad because all my life growing up, he always wrote in all caps. And when you're in school and you're going through, that's never an option.

7:15You know, everything has to be grammatically correct and uppercase and lowercase and all these different things. And then suddenly, for whatever reason, when I started the Bullet Journal, I just made that decision to start doing that. And it's so because I have to really think about drawing or writing anything in lowercase. I was doing something with the Uniball the other day and I was writing Uniball, which their logo is all lowercase letters. And I was like you and, and like it was, I was like almost like forcing my hand to write these lowercase letters. It's just impossible for me sometimes. So it's just really funny how my handwriting is kind of changed in doing that.

7:54But I feel similar to you, not because it looks matchy, matchy your uniform. For me, it's just as like that's how I'm writing and it's odd for me to go and do something different. But I also really love the way like some people write in like the squares. So like say you have like a line grid square page. They write like each letter inside of each one of those squares. And I've always loved the way that it looked, but I could never accomplish that.

8:20And so I'm just like, well, all caps looks better in something like that too. I've seen some really beautiful lowercase letters in there too, like that. But it's just like you see those things and you're like, I'm going to try that. I'm going to try to do that. And then like, either you're really good at it or I feel like you're, you're really bad about it. But like adopting those things in your journal or making a decision, I think is an important part of it too.

8:42Because that really kind of hurts to guide the direction and, and can be curated without like overly curated to like a entity degree where like you forget for a second that you said you were going to do that and you're like, burn this to the ground. Yeah, definitely. I think that for me, when it came to writing in all caps in my journal, it was very much one of those as seen online type things. The main creators that I was seeing creating bullet journal layouts and such used all caps and there's. So when I got started, I'm like, OK, well this seems to be something that is common to this system, so I will do that too. And then because of that cheerleader effect and the letter forms looking nicer with just writing in all caps, I figured I'd just stick with it.

9:22Mainly because my regular everyday handwriting, if I am not kind of like, consciously aware of what I'm doing, the italicization of it will change, and that lack of uniformity across a page will give me the heebie jeebies. It's not the kind of curation I like. If it's going to be italicized, cool. But it all has to be on the exact same angle of slant, otherwise I will get irked. Oh yeah, see, this is where I fall my complete opposite spectrum of you with those kind of things. I'm like, meh, it's whatever.

9:51I mean, I've taken it using like different type of letter forms. So even though I don't write in lower case letters, I have this font that I like to use. I call it Big Little. It's stupid because it's like it's uppercase bigger but still uppercase, but smaller than the other one and and then uppercase and you know, and kind of go in like that. And it kind of gives us really fun like visual effect of something being, you know, the start of a sentence or start of a header. But I still get to run in all caps, just in different sizes. And it's like a really fun way to kind of do it. It takes away for me, it also takes away the stress of having to have perfect letter form because the whole purpose of a font like that is to be fun and kind of exciting and a little bit different.

10:30I use it a lot when I'm doing like Halloween spreads because it has a little bit of like a spooky kind of feel to it, but it's just really fun and easy to do with something like that. So I find that over time with my letters, again, I'm not overly worried about every header looking the same. But I also personally feel like I let go a lot of that like curatedness when I started using fountain pens and different inks and different nib sizes because every single week look different. So no longer do I have probably maybe my first 3 or 4 bullet journals are all in just black ink, right? I may have experimented with some layouts or whatever, but that as I've gone on and used different pens every week is a different color, you know?

11:11So it's just like, OK, well, I don't have to worry about feeling overly worried about that feature anymore because I know that's how I'm going into it and I'm totally OK with it. It's definitely weird flipping through notebooks and being like all black, same fought. And then you get to the ones like all different sizes, all different colors. Look, Mark, what a little crazy over here. Oh dear. So I guess we could probably safely bet that you would consider yourself more in Camp Messy. Yeah, I think if you're looking at that scale where you have, you know, messy over here and you have, you know, completely curate on the other side, I'll say I'm messy leaning maybe because I do enjoy a curated page. I and I think when I set up my Ebola journal spreads for instance, for the week, it's very set up nicely. I'm measuring things.

11:57I have a straight edge ruler. You know, I'm using certain pieces. I want them to look nice. I think the only time where I start to get like a little OK with the messy is when I'm using stamps and those just innately, you know, you have wet ink and things can happen and you don't put them on straight. And at first that really bothered me a lot. But then I just started to just say, well, that's the personality of stamps. Sometimes it's perfect. Sometimes it's, you know, cock eyed one way, maybe got a fingerprint over here.

12:23So I think for me it's just been like slowly introducing myself into being OK with it, especially when I'm writing notes. You know, I use my bullet journal for work almost exclusively. So when I'm writing things and handwriting notes, I can't spend the time making sure every single letter is in line and perfect. If I write something wrong, I'm not grabbing the correction tape and going over it and then rewriting when it's dry, just crossing it and I keep going with it. I mean, how many times I spell things wrong and I'm like, oh, I'm missing AE and I like draw a little, a little E in between, like some of the letters.

12:56No one cares, no one's seen my nose. But like, to me, I know it should be there. I should learn how to sell, you know, basic words. But I think like those kind of things, just it'd be more of a functional, usable journal. I don't care really kind of what it looks like when I'm into it. And and to me personally, that just is more fun. I think it's just a really easy way to go about it. It worries less about again, the visualness of it. And I also think it just looks like a really well used journal page when you're done with it.

13:23It's just full of ink and everything else. Like I feel productive when I see pages like that. No, that's very fair. And I think it is also good to note that like, you know, just because you lean and can't messy or lean can't curate it or whatnot, does not mean that your journal is not functional, does not mean that your journal isn't working for you. But sometimes when we do see people who are, you know, primarily sharing one type or the other, it can lead us to question, am I actually doing this right? Like am I actually a real planner or have I gone astray somewhere?

13:51Am I doing something wrong because of that? And I think that social media in particular has a big role in this. You know, the idea that the things that do get widely shared or often kind of like put right in front of our face, are those things that possibly just look a little more curated. You know, they have that kind of visual appeal to them, especially if we're thinking places like, you know, Pinterest and Instagram and such. Those places are very kind of aesthetic first as opposed to I want to say like value first because I think there is value in aesthetics. You know, I said it kind of like adds to the joy of planning or whatnot.

14:26But if we're thinking about like form and function, yadda yadda. I think that the form part of that comes first on those platforms, which if those are the places you're getting your main source of inspiration for your planner, then oftentimes if yours does not look like that, it can not necessarily like fully consciously, but maybe subconsciously you're like, my planner doesn't look like that. I don't think my planner is like a real planner or it's not really planning because it doesn't look or like fit the mold of what these other things that I'm saying online are kind of presenting.

14:58Oh, 100%. Actually one of the first times early, early on in my bullet journaling career on Instagram, supermassive black ink was a page I love so much. I don't know that she post as much anymore, but she used to and you know, you would see these awesome pages that she would do and she only uses black ink. That's it. And I was like, oh, like she was actually I think the first person when I bullet was starting a bullet journal that I was like, oh, I'm going to only use black ink. Like if she can make her pages look that awesome only in black ink, I can too.

15:32Like she was a huge inspiration early on. And I remember like found her for a super long time and I remember one time she was showing her other pages. So what she was showing on her feed was, you know, perfect black ink lettering all nights and all of that. And she flipped to a different page, and that's where she was working, like actually working. And it looked nothing like that. It was just like a everyday journal with someone writing down their notes and task and stuff.

15:56And that moment for me was like, oh, OK, and this is well before I fully understood like the social media of bullet journaling and or the bullet journaling of social media, whichever way that is where, yes, what you're presenting looks beautiful and perfect. It is art, right? You're, you're going to show and always put your best foot forward. But the reality of what that looked like was just like, oh, good, I'm not, I'm not wrong in what I'm doing. I was like, she's just showing her best work on her pages. But when she's actually working in it, she's a human being. And like that was, I was like, I was like, oh, it's OK now. I was like, that permission almost. I had to see that to be like, yes, I don't have to be perfect in this journal for it to be a journal. I think that, you know, one of the things that gets me about this kind of point of conversation in particular is the idea of like, Oh well, the plans you see online are fake or something or the planning that people is doing online, you know, presenting that's like overly curated or very visually appealing or whatever.

16:54That's not their real plans. And I mean, in her case, she had functional pages that she was working in that did look a little bit different. But I do also feel that for a lot of the people who are presenting their planner online, given the time it takes to make that they're not spending more time setting up another one. I'm certainly not. So my curated pages or whatever, those are my planning pages. That is where I am doing my planning. It's just that I'm also quite mindful as I'm going through to make it look nice. One, because sharing on the Internet, but also 2 for own personal journaling fulfillment and enjoyment and such. So it's one of those things that like, yes, some of the planning that we're seeing online or the planner layouts or whatnot, those ones that do have a lot of visual appeal, some of them don't represent the real life for those people. Them also made in the kind of like aspirational planning kind of space.

17:45Whereas for some people, sure, it may look nice and have visual appeal and whatever, but they're still actively using it. That is still how they're getting things done. It's just that that visual appeal aspect is something that adds some kind kind of like purpose fulfillment for them in their planner, whether that be joy or the fact that if they like the way it looks, they're actually going to use it or like whatever it is. For me, it's very much the idea of if I like the way it looks, I will actually come back to and use it, whereas if I don't like the way it looks, I will not come back to and use it. It's definitely interesting when you do sit back and take a look at it.

18:15I was trying to think there was like probably over the past several years. And if you remember the names of these, Jess, tell me or maybe you'd even see it. I don't remember. Or again, Planner Pals, if you remember seeing these people, but they used to do like these full spreads for like their monthly overviews and they truly were art like the most beautiful line detail coloring all these pieces. But it took them weeks to be able to make that one page. And there's like two people that I there's again, it's like in my mind, there is one I remember.

18:50There was Isabel Hoops. She was, she's an art teacher, so the work she was doing was just crazy awesome. And then there was Love with Miss Jay or Love by Love with Miss Jay. Gosh, her work was gorgeous. It was in a corettable like it truly was and then I remember one time she had it like half done and it was like middle of the month. She was like still working on my monthly overview and I was like, girl, don't even call it a monthly overview anymore. This is straight up art.

19:20Like you don't need to worry about. Isabella is a whole other level. I mean, Oh my gosh, hers. I swear. Like I don't even have words like she would draw like horses for April and you were like, I'm sorry, is that a photograph? She's like, no, I didn't color pencil. Like damn, that is awesome. But like this things like that though, where you have to look at it from that perspective though and appreciate it for what it is, because at no point ever was I going to ever draw anything that looked like that. It inspired me to look into it more or to think about it or whatever, but I knew this that was not happening over here. So I just looked at it and said I appreciate the art of it. I appreciate the time.

20:01I appreciate them sharing it and going through with it. For me, it never made me mad or feel like I wasn't doing anything the right way. I will say there are some stamping artists like that, that used to like stamp out whole pages and I'm like, well, that looks perfect. Why can't I get mine to look like that? You know, you're just like it's stamping. You have to practice it, you know, but. I think that's a really big thing too. But I know there's people who hated on those people that were like, oh, like, this is ridiculous.

20:26That's a waste of time. Why would you ever do that? And I was like, chill out, my friend, appreciate this artwork. Like that's what it is. I think that the thing that always got me about those this is a waste of time comments. I'm like bra, pot, kettle black. Like it was a waste of time to write this comment. Go touch some grass. Do something with your life. Well, it is. It's just like for anyone to look at anybody of work and say that. Now I would say that if they were spending more time designing those pages and completely flopping on their work and their life and their other things that they had to accomplish because they were more focused on that, then yes. Like if you're, if the point of doing that was to make a functional page that you were using and again, helping you improve kind of your day today and you were failing at that, absolutely.

21:13That is not a productive spread that you made for yourself. I definitely was guilty of that early on. I remember one time somebody had posted, it was like something with like clouds and they had like really cool drop shadows and something. And I was like, oh, I'm going to do something like that too. And then I went to go like right in the cloud and I was like, there's only like I can fit 3 words inside of this. I was so focused on like how this cloud looked, I was not even thinking about how will I write inside of this cloud. Yeah, definitely.

21:43And I think that's one of the things that I've had to learn over time with, you know, sourcing inspiration online, whatnot, is that some layouts look absolutely gorgeous and they would not work for me at all. And being able to figure that out for yourself, it does kind of come with, you know, reps time in the game type of a thing. Like I know that horizontal layouts, while they look cool, aren't going to work for me because I love a long ass checklist.

22:07It needs to be like a full length of the page for just one day of the week kind of a thing because your girl got stuff to write down. But in looking at those layouts and looking at the kind of, you know, functional stuff that they have in there, all the structures or whatnot, just because it doesn't match the style of planning I need for myself doesn't mean that it is not functional for that person. Even if it is curated or even if it is messy kind of a thing.

22:30I think that one of the things that we've kind of edged into and touched on is this idea of, well, if you've got camp messy and camp curated, what happens if you go to the extremes of those? What happens if you kind of take it too far in either direction? Because I think that both of them do have their kind of innate pros, but if you get a little bit too aggressively into either side, you can kind of run into some decent cons. So I'm gonna let you start.

22:56What do you think the cons of curated planning are? Well, I talked about this. I did a previous episode. I think if you are so focused on how it looks, then you don't actually write down the things that you need to. And I was very guilty of this before. I was talking about like headers, for instance, for pages where I'm like, well, hold on, I had this theme that I was going for with this certain lettering and I don't have that pen with me right now. So I wouldn't write it like that's pointless. That doesn't make any sense.

23:21So, you know, big part of that is just going in and like getting it done or you have to be so like on point that like that pen or that marker or whatever tools you're using are always with you. So I think for, for from my perspective, that is kind of it. I think if it's holding you up from writing things down and kind of getting into it, it can cause more of a mess. You know, if you're like, oh, well, I can't write this in my notebook, so I'm going to write on the scrap piece of paper and then you lose said scrap of paper because it's not attached inside of your notebook.

23:54Well, that's completely defeated the purpose of what this planner is for or that type of planner, if it's one that you're writing in often, like you said, if you have an intentional planner that is there to to help you, you know, be intentional to help you focus on a skill to do something like that, that's a different story. You know, I can't really think of any other negative other than really just kind of it holding you back from doing things. I don't know if you have any examples as a curated planet yourself where you've had a little bit of a can't move forward moment.

24:26Yeah. No, I think that you've kind of hit the nail on the head with most of it there. It's that idea of just like fueling perfectionism, I feel like is a big one. It's like if you turn your planner into such a curated space where if things don't look a certain way or you don't have the right pain or something like that, you can kind of just build this almost avoidance for being able to use your planner or your journal or whatnot. Because if you can't do it right, you're not going to do it at all, which is definitely a problem area.

24:54I also kind of find that sometimes, depending on the kind of layouts you're going with, and if you haven't very intentionally picked your layouts or you know, if you're making it yourself, drawing them up in a way that is going to match your planning style because you've just done it for an overall visual. Then sometimes you can have like missing details. You might not be able to Add all of the things in that you need to. You might not be able to, I don't know, just jot down a quick note or something that's going to be important for future you to remember. But you tell yourself, I'll just remember it because there's nowhere in your kind of very laid out structured setup for those kind of like quick drop note type things. The stuff that you can't necessarily predict if you are or aren't going to need it.

25:37You can also get into the realm of like performative planning in a way, if you're very, very caught up on that idea of the curation of the information and you know, making look visually appealing or whatnot. Are we doing this in such a way that it is going to fulfill the purpose we've given for the planner or are we just doing it because because it looks good or the kind of like visual aspect of it is appealing in some way? That's probably what kind of worries me the most.

26:01What I get worried about in terms of my personal curated planning is the kind of time taken to pre plan a structure before I put it into my planner to then write down my plans to then go and execute on the plans to get the plans done. That's the part that worries me the most. I had an instance the other week where somebody was sharing some information with me and I was like, oh, I need someone to put this, but there's nowhere on my current weekly to put it.

26:27And it didn't occur to me that I could just, you know, whip out Notion or whatever and jot it down into my notesbook over there. At the time, I wasn't at a computer or whatnot, but I kind of had this panic moment like, Oh my gosh, I feel like I need to write this in my planner, but I don't have anywhere in my planner to write this. So then I can't write it in my planner. So do I just remember the plans? Because I'm not going to remember the plans, but I don't have anywhere in my planner for it. Spiral, spiral, spiral.

26:48Yeah, it didn't work out well for me. So we've talked about the negatives of curated I shared, but I think it would be so Jess, as a non messy planner, what do you think are the big negatives for that type of approach? I think that in thinking about the negatives of messy planning is mainly kind of like Jess. What are your personal reasons for not messy planning? And for one, it's just mainly the idea of being able to reference things later. When it comes to messy planning, I find that when I start to lane messy, I usually get too messy, and then trying to find information after the fact becomes very difficult for me.

27:23Either that or because I'm just jotting things down very fast and very scribbly or whatnot, I often won't be as intentional about what information gets added there. Which means that then really key important things can get lost in a swamp of everything else. Because it was also quick and easy to write down. Like yes, frictionless writing things down quick, love that. But then actually being able to go and use that information after the fact becomes kind of difficult. I also find that with the messy planning, because there is such a joy and a kind of appreciation of things that are visually appealing, I will come back to things if they are visually appealing.

28:00If it's scribbly and messy, I feel it's very disposable and thus I won't come back to it and actually reference the stuff I've written down. So it might give me kind of instant relief about being able to get things out of my head and onto paper or whatnot, which could be a benefit. But in the long run, actually using the information coming back to it and such I won't be inclined to do because I won't want to work in the system when it looks too chaotic or not laid out in a way that kind of works later for future Jess's brain.

28:30Interesting. Yeah. So I would say like my resolution for that in my case, because I've kind of been a little all over the place, is utilizing my index pretty hardcore with those special ideas. Because a while back I always thought like entry into my index had to be an entire page of content. And what I've realized over time, especially with the way that I plan, because I don't always have a dedicated page for every idea because maybe it's not that many grouped ideas to be a collection page yet, is I will start writing those things or those ideas into my index.

29:06Because I also felt like my index had to be perfectly curated with like exact lines and numbers and all of that. And I'm realizing again, more and more over the years is like, it is more important to be able to find that information again than worry necessarily where it falls in line. I sometimes will skip pages in my journal, especially if like I've had like bleed through or something that just doesn't look great for my next page. And then I will come back to those for like messy notes or something like that.

29:31And then I go into my index. I'm like, oh, I have page, you know, whatever through 20 right now, but the page I skipped was on page 15. And I'm like, but I'm like, Mark, that's not what this is about. It's about the topic and where to find it. So that it, for me has always been a really important part of planning is that if I have an idea that I'm looking for or trying to keep in my mind, regardless of how the rest of that page looks, I'll be like, oh, this topic was on this page, just a part of my weekly page, but just to be able to reference it again. But I understand what you're saying about it. But I feel like that the counter to that is to be a little bit more organized about how you keep your journal. And then that we don't have to worry about it being on a perfect page or a perfect spot when you go into it. You can just write and then come back to it later. Excellent.

30:19So curate your mess. I've got it, can do it. There you go. That's all you got to do is, you know, think about it that way and everything can lean curated if you really want it to. Yeah, I I think that given the fact that either of the extremes does have some kind of negatives associated with it, there is really decent benefit of having a happy medium like falling somewhere in the middle, whether it be more kind of messy leaning or curated leaning.

30:44Because both of them do have their pros and do have their cons, finding a blended or hybrid system can be a just happier place to exist in. Yeah, and I feel you completely on this idea of like messy and curated. Like a great example, for instance, I was jotting down a list of I was signing my team up for some training classes, but everybody had to volunteer for that training class. So they had to message me and say, Mark, I would like to be signed up for that. So I went ahead and started writing down a few names and I drew a little line.

31:13I was like, oh, I have a table, You know, once they're signed up, I'll check off over here. The thing is, I didn't think that I have 13 people on my team. I was like, well, not everyone may message me, so I'm not going to save 13 spaces for this. The problem is, you know, 13 people did. And so I had probably enough space for like 10 people because I was like, some people might not. And then I had to like go a bit beyond that. And I had already written notes below this little like mini chart that I made.

31:42And I was like, now this looks ugly, but I was just like, it's OK, You know, like yes, would I have preferred that? It looked really nice because I spent the time to be like, oh, names and checked when it's done. Like yes, it would have looked very cool. But at the end of the day, I just made sure the people's names were there, and then I signed them up for it. But that was a moment where I was like, oh, I should have taken a beat and I should have just said, OK, Mark, what are the possibilities with this? I didn't want to hold me back because again, I was in the moment and doing it.

32:12I wasn't truly really worried about it. But like that I think is a great example where like, I should have just waited a little bit and curated like that little piece, a little bit of my notes and it would have just like fulfilled me a little bit more. I'm fine with it. It worked. It did. It's a job, but I would have liked to be a little more more perfect. Yeah, whereas if you're someone like me, you would have held off until you had all the information before you made the table.

32:34Which doesn't necessarily help you in the moment though, does it? Because then you're kind of like kicking work to future you who already has enough problems like future you doesn't want you to pile on, stop piling on future you. But I do that very often when it comes to my planning and making things look and kind of like encapsulate all the information possible, Which I mean, I guess this is just one of my my biggest weaknesses is feeling like I have to have all the information before I can take action on things. And that does definitely manifest in my planning and my layouts and such.

33:04You know, in thinking about setting up for a new month or whatever, one of the things that I like to do is put in project collections or effectively just checklists of stuff that I need to do in order to reach certain goals or work on sort of projects or whatever else. And rather than just draw up a space in my layout and call it a day, I will jump into my layout planner, which is a digital document. I will type out all the things that I need to do.

33:26I will structure them on the page to make sure it looks nice. I will know exactly what dimensions of box I will need. Then I will go and draw the box. So it's like, cool, you've pre planned your list before you put it into your planner, which was supposed to help you planning out your list. Yes, that is exactly what I did. Well, see, the thing I get into is like, then isn't, I mean, technically you're doing work with it, but then I feel like it almost moves into that performative part because you have all the information to get there. So really all you're doing in a way is just rerunning that information for yourself.

33:57I guess if you're going to use it again later, I can see a benefit to that. But I think it's like when it's in the moment though, that you're just like, well, wait, you know, in my instance there, if you're like, OK, well, I need to have everyone's name and know they're going to sign up before I make this chart. But for me it was I need the name and I would just sign them up instantly. I wasn't waiting for like the full list to then do it. So like it wasn't helpful necessarily in that part.

34:23But then I would have felt like, well, I already did all the tasks for that. So why am I going to come back and rewrite that inside of my journal if I've already done it? The point of it was the checklist. So like I feel like sometimes that's where I get a little like back and forth on it where like I see the benefits of it, but it's not helping me in that moment. So I think maybe it's important for you to know kind of what you want from it before you start to do it, which is, like I said, maybe sometimes just taking a beat and being like, OK, do I need to plan this out or do I just need to go for?

34:52It. Yeah, To clarify, I'm not writing a full project plan in my journal after the project has already been done. All right. If that's anything that anybody was picking up there, no, that's not the case. Also just making sure I know exactly what goes on the list so that then I can plan the layout so it will accommodate the full list. As opposed to putting in a section that I think will accommodate the list and then finding, oh actually you needed like 2 columns for this or you only needed one column for this.

35:17One instance of that I can think of is when I was making a guest list for my birthday celebration. I drew in the amount of space I was actually going to need for the number of guests I was inviting and then I just had this like weird, awkward space below it and like what do I do with that? I I got out a sticker, put it over the top and made the box longer, even though I had no intentions of inviting more people. I just wanted to fill the space up so that it looked nice.

35:42So we've got the ass box with four guests solid. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely ways to go about it. I mean, I think like, that's a great example. It's like wasted space. You know, it's like, well, I plan for this to be one thing and it went a different way. And so like, I have to like, retrofit the space to do something else. Now that can kind of get in your way a little bit where you're like, OK, well, if I would have just kind of went with it, I could have drew a box around it later and said, oh, pretty. Exactly.

36:09But it's all good. It's, I think it's one of those like it's a process that you learn over time, you know, and I, I think that throughout my planner history or whatnot, I have tended more into the curated space. I have tended slightly more into the messy. I think in terms of the messiness of it, the only things that I would consider messy in my everyday journals and such a layouts that I made that I didn't like. That's just because I didn't like them.

36:33It's not because they're actually messy. It's just that something about it gave me the ick and I'm like, no, I'm not going to use that. So regardless of where you fall, it's all good at the end of the day. It's really just making sure that your planning system term, your planners or whatnot, or fulfilling the needs you give them. Whether that be, you know, the joy of having curated spaces in there that look very nice, Whether it be that idea of being able to think on paper and just get things down really quickly and all of that type of thing.

36:57Both are valid, both can work. Just make sure that in either camp, you're not falling into the major cons that are associated with going to the extremes. So not being able to find your information again because you wrote things down messy and now you can't even read your own handwriting anymore. Or not curating to the point where it's like OK cool, I have to make three like mock ups of my layout before I put my layout into my journal to then write out my perfect plans. Both of those are problems, and they're probably not aligned with the functionality that you want for your planning system. Yeah.

37:27And I think just knowing that it's absolutely OK to be somewhere in the middle or some leaning way with it is to say like it's absolutely OK that this looks this way. And I think also too like something I've done, I have a handful. I know you've talked about like R&D journals too, like if you really want to plan something in advance and just have like a resource for that, you know, grab another journal and kind of sketch those things out and allow yourself to be messy as you are exploring that.

37:54Because it's almost like we said, you're giving a purpose to a journal. You're saying, OK journal, you are my messy sketchbook journal where I just think out ideas or do whatever with. But like you can work that all out there so that when you go to like set up a new weekly or daily or monthly, you have that and you're like, oh, here's the spacing. It looked nice. It works well, you know, like I used to have a version where I would actually take notes, like inside of the empty space, you'd be like, this worked out really well for me or this wasn't enough space, maybe rethink this and almost kind of like critique each week as I went through with it.

38:26But that's what's really helped me get to a point to say, OK, let's be thoughtful about what we're doing, but know that it also needs to be workable too. So I think for all the planner pals, just know like you don't have to be one way or the other. You might change over time or you might just change day-to-day. And if you feel like sometimes you want to be a little extra buttoned up, absolutely create a page. Take your time, have fun with it. But if you want to let loose, you know, let your hair down a little bit and have fun.

38:52If you need to give yourself permission to that on a separate page that no one will ever see, I say go for it. Live on the wild side, see what happens. And we, of course, would love to know Planet Pals. Where do you think you fall? Do you learn more curated, more messy? Very much in between. If it depends on a different space or a different journal, we would love to know. Let us know either in the comments on YouTube or you can hit us up at Planet Pals Podcast at Gmail dot com or over on Instagram at Planner Pals Podcast. An awesome episode as always, great talking about these different pieces and planner pals. If you want to get these episodes in advance, you can now take part because you can be a part of our official planner pals podcast YouTube membership where you'll actually get podcast in advance before they launch on the days that they do. We also are letting you pick some of the future topics as well as we go through, which is a giant perk because I mean, we want to make sure you're getting what you want. So make sure you click the join button right next to the Planner Pals name on YouTube.

39:46We also have you there, and we can't wait for you to share some of your cool stuff with us in the future. Whether you're part of the membership or not though, we want to hear from you. Planner pals, Do let us know your thoughts on whether you are a messy or curated planner. And as always, thanks for watching.