I spent $200 on a fancy planner and it made me less productive

Bought this leather bound planner with all the bells and whistles last January, thinking it would change my life. I spent hours each week just coloring in the boxes and tracking things that didn't matter. The system was so complex I stopped using it by March. That's $200 down the drain for a book that now just collects dust on my shelf. Has anyone else fallen for the perfect planner trap and found a simpler method that actually works?

4 comments

4 Comments

vera_robinson362mo ago

Honestly, the prettier the planner, the more pressure I feel to make my life look perfect in it (which never happens).

rowan_thomas841mo ago

Yeah, the "pressure to make my life look perfect" thing that vera_robinson36 said is so real. I read this article once about how fancy planners can actually make you less productive. You spend so much time making your handwriting neat or drawing little doodles in the margins that you avoid writing down the hard, messy stuff you actually need to do. It becomes more about the show than the work. My cousin has this beautiful leather planner and she told me she'll rewrite a whole page if she makes one mistake. That's not a tool, that's a chore.

mia7002mo ago

Wait, you spent how much on a planner? Two hundred dollars? That's like, a whole grocery trip or something. I get wanting a nice one, but that price tag is wild.

lilyp372mo ago

Two hundred dollars" is the part that got me. I just checked my own grocery receipt from last week and yeah, that's pretty much it. I can't imagine dropping that on something I'm just going to write my to-do list in. My five dollar notebook from the discount store works fine.