Planners—how effective are these things? Planners are little notebooks designed to help people remember tasks, distribute their time effectively, keep them organized, and more. Planners aren’t perfect. Some prefer online planners like Google Calendar, others Notion; they don’t use planners because they don’t like spending so much time using fancy handwriting, flashy highlighters, etc. Now, I will evaluate the pros and cons of using planners, and will be discussing whether they work for me or not.
To begin with, planners are super effective but come with some downsides. Let’s list the pros and cons:
For one, planners keep you organized. They help you see deadlines and tasks that need to be done. Planners also help you remember tasks by allowing you to write them down and keep them close to you. They also help you plan ahead of time. Planners help you plan in advance by allowing you to see upcoming tasks or deadlines. This in return can help reduce stress and anxiety. They keep everything written on paper or online so they don’t have to stay crumpled in your head. Having a planner helps build new habits and break old ones. By tracking routines and encouraging consistency, planners can help you stop old tasks and prioritize strong time management skills. They allow you to schedule and organize your time. These are only some of the pros of planners, as there are many more.
Now let’s list the cons. Planners can be super time consuming. For example, if you’re aiming to take a more aesthetic approach with planners, with all the fancy handwriting and flashy highlighters, this can take hours to do. Additionally one runs the risk of forgetting to add tasks to their planner, If you don’t carry it everywhere, you will likely forget a thing or two, which could cause stress and anxiety. There will come some days when you really need the day off and you just want to lie in bed and relax, but when you start thinking, you will think to yourself that this was an unaccomplished day. You see nothing checked off on your planner and think, “Man was this a bad day,” which can increase stress and cause anxiety. Additionally, some planners may have limited space. Paper planners especially might not have enough writing space for complex and long tasks. Therefore, writing down all your tasks may take more pages, which can make you feel overwhelmed from seeing all the tasks. When most people are overwhelmed or want to lower their anxiety or stress, they scroll, YouTube Shorts, TikTok, Instagram Reels, and more. And that’s how work piles up, defeating the whole point in having a planner.
Now I will be evaluating whether they work for me or not.
I personally see planners as not very useful, and at the same time, very useful. I guess you could say I’m the middle man, as I don’t really like them, but I don’t hate them either. I, as of now, don’t have a planner, but I am definitely contemplating whether I should get one or not. But the cons keep on getting to me, especially the time consuming one. There are many pros but they come with many cons, and I will always use Google Calendar as it is less time consuming, easier to use, and fancy writing is built in. In my opinion, I feel that online planners are better than paper calendars, and I will always think that way. Overall, planners can be helpful to many people, but I personally prefer digital gadgets; they are faster, more organized, and I feel as if they would work better for me, rather than paper planners.
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