The Planner Radiating Potential, From Inside A Drawer

So today, I bought a planner.

Not just any planner… no, no.

A nice one. Leather-effect cover, a little elastic strap, the kind of cream pages that make your handwriting look like it has a pension and firm opinions about wine.

£24. For paper.

I’ll be honest, the price was the appeal. A cheap planner is a notebook, but a £24 planner is a commitment.

I bought it because I’m going to become organised. Not slowly and not gradually. Immediately.

The moment it arrived I would transform fully, into a man who knows where his appointments are and possibly owns a small herb garden.

It arrived by special delivery on Tuesday.

I held it.

I admired the weight of it.

I opened it to the first pages and looked at all those clean little boxes, waiting patiently for the structured and frankly enviable life I was about to pour into them.

Then I reverently placed it in a drawer I’d prepared earlier awaiting its arrival.

Because I understand something about myself, and I’d rather I didn’t. But here we are: I don’t need to use the planner.

I need to own the planner.

Owning is the achievement. It’s not a tool, it’s a statement of intent, and I’ve made it, and now I can have a sit down.

A week passed and of course the boxes stayed empty. But the planner…. The planner sat there radiating potential, like a gym membership you can see from the sofa.

I told my wife I was “getting on top of things.”

She looked at the planner. She looked at me. She said nothing, which is somehow worse than anything she could have said.

So I came up with a very reasonable plan.

If I start feeling guilty about not using the planner, I would buy something to give the planner moral support.

Could be a special pen, or those little coloured tabs. Or maybe….. Yes definitely, a second, smaller planner, for planning what goes into the big planner.

Of course, the big planner hasn’t seen the light of day, but I’m now, by any measurable standards, a man who plans.

The infrastructure is in place, the pens are available and they all fit nicely into the drawer.

My transformation is complete.

I noticed an advert for a habit-tracking app. Apparently it syncs.

Hmmm… seems like I’m due an upgrade.