Author, motivational speaker, and entrepreneur Amy Landino starts each of her YouTube videos with her catchphrase, ‘Good morning, good life.’ Landino’s channel @AmyTV which currently sits at approximately 432,000 subscribers is a place where people ‘come together to help you go after the life you want!’. As a part of her business, Landino, sells planners. Regardless of whether you buy an undated planner (I imagine we are waiting for 2024 stock to drop) in bambina rosa pink or lemon drop yellow, or even in a digital version, your planner screams the catchphrase, ‘good morning, good life’ in the gold font that I bet you can picture without me even showing you what it is. Landino, who proclaims she is obsessed with a productive lifestyle (and lemon water), also creates video content around creating a productive lifestyle. Whilst I imagine the content around planning in general came first, the planner appears to be a natural extension and now fits in well with the content Landino creates. Most recently, this was seen in the video 7 Ways To Fall in Love With Your Planner. Landino creatively cashes in on the idea that we are all very into our planners when they arrive but then lose momentum, so her video outlines ways in which your planner (which she is hoping a planner you buy from her) can become your second brain.
Aileen Xu of Lavendaire takes a different approach to planning but a similar approach to the commodification of it. Her YouTube channel which has over 2.18 million subscribers is for the ‘artist of life’. Xu’s channel’s slogan is ‘life is an art, make it your masterpiece’ and to help people do this she also has a product line! Amongst the traditional weekly reset planner, daily planner and notebooks, Xu also sells an Artist of Lifeworkbook, ‘a guided journal to help you create your most intentional and successful year’. Just like Landino Xu creates content that features the product in a seamless way.
Both Landino and Xu have taken two key features of planners these days, aspiration and productivity and repackaged them in an aesthetic way for their audience.
I on the other hand, am on my fourth diary (or planner in internet speak) of the year. But more on that later.
THE CURRENT CONTEXT OF PLANNERS
When you search ‘plan with me’ on YouTube over 6,100,000,000 results are presented back to you. Many of them talk about something called a ‘happy planner’. Happy Planner’s website claims they’re ‘going back to basics.’ The disc bound planners can be optimised and customised in numerous ways though stickers and washi tape appear to feature heavily. Australian stockist of the Happy Planner, Washi Gang states that they are ‘a fantastic tool for living a modern, organised life.’ They look like scrapbooks, and I imagine they take a lot of time to date or whatever it is you need to do. Now, the ‘about us’ page on the website appears to be written from the perspective of the planner, I just feel like I need to get that out there. In the 2021 article, What The Hell is a Happy Planner? And How Do I make One?, writer Jazmin Kopotsha says that Happy Planners are much like bullet journals except there ‘There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason, just a hella lot of stickers and gel pen action’. Says so much about who we are.
For those who are uninitiated with the Bullet Journals or ‘bujo’, this is a system developed by Ryder Carroll, around ten years ago, which relies on a notebook, a series of symbols which are about as easy to understand as hieroglyphics, and a fine liner pen. I’m being facetious, some people find this method very useful, and it’s not dictated what pen you should use. Anyway, according to Carroll, it’s a mindful approach to planning, as the purpose of the bullet journal is to ‘Track the past, order the present, design the future.’ I’ve never gotten into this system myself, and that’s because I can’t wrap my head around it, but some people are completely devoted to it. Whilst the idea is to just use a notebook, one with page numbers is crucial, as is setting aside a lot of time to work out what everything means. Carroll sells his own bullet journals on his site, but other brands, such as Moleskine and Leuchtturm1917, have also created products to fulfil this need.
It really is a situation of what does your planner say about you.
Planners as status symbols started with the classic Filofax, a product which got its name from the idea of a ‘file of facts’. Whilst the idea came about in 1910, it was in the 1980s they found fame, as their own website proclaims they were an accessory of the Yuppie culture of the era, so, think American Psycho. During this era, ‘suddenly everyone needed to be organised’, and have everyone know that they were busy with lots of ideas and appointments because they carried around this status symbol.[1] There are also YouTuber’s who crate content around this planner to this day, including Megan Rhiannon who created a video entitled, I guess I sold my soul to Filofax.
Also on YouTube, many people have entire channels dedicated to planning and planners as opposed to mixing these topics in with other lifestyle content. And in some instance, one planner is not enough. A video on Rana Plans channel even explains how you can use multiple planners at once. There is also a video about Rana’s updated stack, which is the pile of planners and notebooks keeping her organised. All of Rana’s are Louis Vuitton planners, in case you’re wondering. In a similar vein to Amy Landino’s 7 Ways to Fall in Love With Your Planner, Alaina of The Organised Money, shares a video which explains ‘How to Actually Use Your Planner’. The content surrounding planning is mainly preoccupied with decorating planners (decorating for the seasons is very popular) or watching people plan. I much prefer the latter.
For many people reading, they may not own a planner and be wondering if I’ve ever heard of Google Calendar or Notion or something similar. The short answer is yes. I share an iCal with my boyfriend and keep social events and appointments in there for when I am out and booking things. Other than that, I am paper all the way. Much of YouTube is preoccupied with planning apps, digital planning methods and helpfully, digital planning tools to assist Neurodiverse people as well as more traditional ways to plan (which you can also sell). In fact, many organisation and lifestyle influencers who sell products also sell digital versions. Etsy is filled with them! Regardless of whether planners are paper or digital the new options when it comes to planning and planning adjacent items have a few things in common.
MAKING SIMPLE THINGS COMPLICATED
Goal setting, accessorising and habit tracking seem to be key to using and selling planners these days. As does encouraging us to buy things that promise to make our lives simpler and more aesthetically pleasing. By this, I am referring to the way that Kikki K and other brands have made a fortune off plain paper notepads with the words ‘to do’ at the top or ditto the seven days of the week or tiny glasses of water which we can colour in as we drink them, like the diaries from Migoals.
At this point, we can stop and acknowledge that the decisions we make around planning and the physical items which we use to plan are speaking about us, in the same way those who carry/ied a Filofax were trying to say something. I am not sure what I am trying to tell others, but I am trying to remind myself I can be organised and live a life that is organised.
USING PLANNERS TO BE BETTER
In Jia Tolentino’s essay ‘Always be Optimising’, Tolentino speaks to the idea that the ‘ideal women, is always optimising’. Tolentino’s piece refers to many physical aspects of womanhood such as maintaining beauty standards but also speaks to the idea that things like domesticity and self-improvement are seen to be fun when we are in an optimising headspace. How we seek to organise ourselves is us seeking to be the best versions of ourselves we can be, and this includes being productive in aesthetically pleasing ways. This lines up with the idea that our society is very good at convincing us that we are the ultimate product within the ultimate brand, us.
Jenny Odell’s latest book, Saving Time, which I am currently reading, explores the way we organise our time, and unsurprisingly productivity and money are at the centre. I will report back once I have read more. Anyone who has ever attempted to use time more effectively or be more self-disciplined would be familiar with the myriad of strategies that attempt to squeeze every second out of every day; time blocking, and the Pomodoro method are just a couple.
THE INTENSE WORLD OF TEACHER PLANNERS
Now, I haven’t even delved into the heady world of teacher planners. These are often very colourful, made for teachers by teachers and are an excellent example of the often femininised domain of organisation and planning of themselves, their families and of social events (I’ve just got to check with the missus[2], after school catchups etc.), and, if we’re being honest, of the teaching profession. Teacher planners are different because the pages are often split up into the school periods which very rarely run hour to hour, in Australia at least. Traditionally schools order planners from Createl, who in the last few years have sought to compete with the pretty planner market by offering floral or Indigenous designs. I have had numerous of these but stopped when I didn’t want to have a planner for work and one for personal and non-teaching work. Rana Plans would not be impressed by my lack of ability to use multiple planners at once. The insides of these planners were often the in the same shades of blue as the Microsoft Office logos and would have tiny quotes on each page which were often more depressing than motivating.
In more recent years, brands like Mrs Edgar, The Functional Teacher, Planner Collective and The Daily Planner have all taken the teacher friendly layout of the traditional teacher planners but made them much more 2010s candy coloured water bottle and beaded lanyard friendly. All these planners have wire ring binding which would drive me crazy no end; I need a sturdy planner. What they do all have in common are the same optimising additions that are see in non-educational planners, goal setting, inspirational quotes, and stickers. It’s another version of exercise apps and Instagram, we must keep track and document and hang onto our great ideas and remind ourselves to drink water and read. If we do all these things in equal measure, we are living you see.
I am only being partially funny. Now, I have no evidence on the impact technology has had on my brain, but all I know is that I rely heavily on lists, and everything needs to be written down somewhere. With this in mind, I am going to talk about my planners and planning stack and why I ended up trying four different ones this year. If stationery isn’t your thing, thanks for reading this far.
I LOVE STATIONERY
I am stationery obsessed, my friend Rhea thinks I might open a stationery store one day, and honestly, I cherish the thought. I’ve always been this way. I love notebooks and writing and pens and journals. Officeworks is heaven and when I went to Korea earlier in the year my suitcase came back significantly heavier due to all the notebooks. I’m about to go to Japan, and I must make sure I have enough room. I have early memories of a clear planner with the character of Tomato Girl (?) from Morning Glory, a company with a misleading name that sells cute character driven stationery. I had nothing to put in this planner, but I loved carrying it around and writing lists. My school mandated diaries were always covered in stickers and now, looking back, I am not sure I was organised at all but pretty into the idea of it. Teaching allows me to indulge in this obsession, though I’m convinced even if I were an Air Traffic Controller, I’d still make it work.
My first planner of this year was the A4 Weekly Planner by An Organised Life, a NZ based company which sadly, shut down this year. The planner itself was minimal (no Happy Planner for me thanks), but unfortunately for my tastes, did have some quotes and a bit of cursive. The minimal design and large size were the main selling points, until they weren’t. You see, I decided the planner was too big and really, I just use notepapaper a lot anyway. Because of this, I then moved on to the Leuchtturm1917 weekly planner and notebook. Even though each double paged spread had a page of writing notes, and it was a comfortable size, the days of the week were too teeny. I’m aware that I’m starting to sound like Goldilocks but I figured because I love my softcover Leuchtturm1917 notebooks I just go for their softcover diary in the A5 diary (the size I’d been trying to avoid all along!). Given the time of the year the only colour left was sage green, a perfectly fine cover but not the shade of any colour I am into now, I don’t know if you’d call it pastel, but I digress. I have since ended up with a diary that I have bought previously and loved. The Hightide Iris Weekly Diary B6 in Navy. I usually buy mine from Milligram but they don’t have them in stock yet. I thought it was too small, not enough space for lists and tasks, but reality is it’s just what I need it to be. It’s in my ultimate diary colour and even has a pocket on the front to store random bits of shit in. If I were to create a ‘stack’ like Rana, I would also need a notepad. In last week’s piece, I mentioned my preference for the Midori A4 notepad. I also love the Plan B A5 notepad. I write everything I need to do on these and sometimes, if I’m feeling fancy, I’ll write down when I’m going to do it in my diary or circle my three most important tasks on the list like Grace Beverley. Interestingly, the video of hers I linked became so popular, she then decided to create and sell her own planner! If I’m journaling, I’ll use whatever I have available to use next, but I like a grid (dot or square paper) and a soft cover. And just because I’m being very specific, these are my favourite pens.
Are you a digital or paper planner? And what’s your favourite pen?
[1] Interesting fact, my grandma bought me a Filofax for my 21st birthday, I’ve always mentally been around 54, anyway, I barely used it.
[2] An Australian (?) term where men often refer to their wife as their ‘Mrs’.