Hello friends, I hope you are well! Today I wanted to talk about planning! Usually every May I pick up the newest Erin Condren Life Planner when it launches, and share a haul. But this year I haven’t shopped, so I thought I would talk about what’s changed with my planning. The post is a little rambly, so there’s a video if you would rather watch! Okay, let’s jump in!
For the past 3 years, I have used and loved an Erin Condren Life Planner, particularly the vertical layout, and 2 out of 3 years I had the colourful layout. Last year I tried out the neutral colorway because I thought I would be using stickers most of the time… and I used them once. With the craziness of wedding planning, I just didn’t have time for it! And I think that is what started my need for something more simple.
Then I started to notice in the fall that I wasn’t looking at my planner very often. I would fill it out every Sunday, and it would sit there until the next week. Life Planners are expensive ($50+), and I didn’t want to pay for something to not use it. But there was one thing I loved about the planner I was using, the monthly spread. This is what I have used for almost 4 years to plan out my blog posts, and I didn’t know if I could work without it.
So I spent an hour or two laying out the rest of the year in my bullet journal in monthly spreads, and it’s working! I’m not sure if I will make it to the end of the year in this journal or if I’ll have to move it into the next one, but I’m happy to be able to plan further ahead!
And my day to day planning has become much more simple. I was never using up all 3 boxes of the Life Planner anyways. I’m trying to stop myself from making my to-do lists a mile long, so I’m fitting around 4 days on a single page. I started out with half a page and have refined and condensed it over the last two months!
I’m also finding that doing a brain dump every few weeks with all the small tasks I want to get done on one page has been helpful, and I slowly incorporate those tasks into my day then so it again. I didn’t really have the room to do that in my Life Planner!
While a bullet journal can be intimidating because it’s a blank slate and you have to play around to figure it out, it’s quite freeing! Being able to flip to my daily to-dos, then flip to my journal prompts before bed is really nice. And I can easily carry my bullet journal with me, where I couldn’t quite do that with my Life Planner!
I guess I wanted to write this post for those of you who are still trying to find what works for you. It’s worth it once you do! And don’t feel weird or judged because you don’t go with what’s popular or “in” right now. I felt like I would be disappointing people who look forward to that haul post or the giveaway I usually do with it, but I don’t want to spend $50 on a planner that’s not working for me.
This isn’t at all to say that I wouldn’t recommend the Erin Condren Life Planner. I loved mine for 3 years! It’s just not working for me now, but maybe it will again at some point. The quality is definitely there, and if you are going to use it every day it is worth the price! I still love their products, and will probably pick up a notebook or two from them in the future. I did look into their Petite Planner line, but that was again just too much space for a single day for me!
The Video
If you’d like to hear me talk more about my switching planners, and to see examples of what some weeks look like, check out the video below!
I will probably do a bullet journal update once I’ve filled the one I’m currently using, and I’ll go through what I would carry forward and what I wouldn’t. I’m not sure exactly how fast I will fill up the pages I have left, but look forward to that post in the future!
What do you use as a planner? Or do you not use a planner at all? Let me know in the comments below!
Thank you so much for joining me today!
