Making digital planning too pretty to use

When did we start valuing aesthetics over functional planning?

This past week, my TikTok feed all these google calendar hacks, notion template ideas, and planning hacks. And my perfectionist brain loved it. I immediately started trying to figure out which notion template I should try and how I should be organizing my calendar. But after a hexagonal thinking activity (more on this another time), I realized that I have been looking at my planning all wrong.

In the activity, I connected common topics together visually. It was just a way for me to visualize how I thought these topics connected. So what started as just one block about backward planning, I ended up connecting that block with the blocks- desire for change, organization/planning, and routines and systems.

And this got me thinking….have I been going about this all wrong?

What I mean is that once I’d expose myself to a new planning system, I would immediately take what I had and try to fit it into this system. I’ve bought Notion templates that I liked the aesthetics of, tried to learn as much as I could about its function, and then dumped everything I could in there only to use it for a few months before I would be onto the next template. Or I tried designing my own (which wasn’t ever as pretty). Rinse and repeat this with any digital planning tool, cause I’ve tried them all.

According to Frodera on TikTok, I was. Hearing this woman explain how she works with her clients to get clear on what it is they actually need, how they would use the tool, and then actually design around that got me thinking of a conversation I had with a coworker about going back to graduate school.

Both of us have considered going for a phd (wild I know), but we both agreed that we’d approach our degree choice differently this time. Instead of asking what I want to study, we’d look at our goals for our lives. Did we want to teach at a university? Or maybe we wanted to climb the career ladder and become deans of a college? Because that choice would be the one to help us decide what it is we actually wanted to study and what programs we should apply to. And so on and so forth.

So why would I not apply that same process to adopting a new planning system?

I’m happy to report that I stopped looking at planning template for notion and stepped away from the color scheme recommendations for my Apple calendar. Instead, I went straight to a piece of paper and started figuring out what I really wanted from my planner. To which I realized that my bullet journal does most of what I need it to do. What I would want to explore is having a digital space to establish systems (like a weekly reset routine), a solid database of Substack ideas, a digital/visual and expansive money or budget system, and a tracking system for things that need to be replaced on a regular basis. And getting clear on what I would need in those systems and how I would use those things will shape how I approach the design.

What’s funny is that I already do this with my bullet journal. I plan out what pages I want to see, what I would need, and how I would use them. Now I’m just applying that same thinking to the digital space.

This time instead of focusing on the aesthetics of other people’s digital planning systems, I’m going to try to remember to actually think about how I would use the tool and if it would actually serve me and my goals.

So here’s to actually prioritizing function over beauty- well at least where my digital planners concerned.