Sometimes Change Isn't Good

I started to put stickers in my 2022 planner. With every single sticker, I started feeling frustrated that my usual planner--the one I've purchased for the past five years or so--decided to change the layout. If you recall, I blogged about how they added "features" that felt like too much work and took away real estate from the parts of the daily page I really need (and use the most).

It felt so stupid that I had to take time to 1) print all those damn stickers and 2) place them all down in the new planner. My old planner company makes changes every year, but the 2020 version of their planner was the best. 2021 was workable. 2022 didn't fit me.

I took pictures of my 2021 planner and my 2022 planner so you can see what I had and what I have now. I circled the areas I'm complaining about.

Here is 2022 and the new planner. You can see I added stickers to keep track of my sleep, my water intake, and my vitamins. I was originally hoping to group all three at the top, but the sleep sticker was too tall and I was forced to reconfigure my plan.

And this is my planner for 2021. As you can see, on the side of the page, vitamins, water, and sleep are pre-printed. (And there's a little checkbox for exercise, too! But I have stickers for that...which I'll also be adding to the new planner.) Now you can see why I was getting frustrated. So clean, so easy, so convenient. So perfect.

But you can also see that on the To Do side of the planner page, there's a place to record breakfast, lunch and dinner. In 2020, it was only dinner and I lost two lines of To Do List. You can also see in the upper left that there is priorities, self care, and money spent. This took away more lines from my To Do List.

I wasn't thrilled. I need that To Do List. There are days I have to write two items on each line because I'm so busy, so losing them hurt.

And in 2022, the company revised the page and took away even more lines from the To Do List.

That's when I said no matter how much I love those trackers on the side of the page, this is losing too much utility for me.

As much as I disliked putting those stickers in, look how much more room I have in the new planner! It's a little bigger, which I'm not sure how I feel about yet, but the space! And there's still room to record my workouts, birthdays and anniversaries, and add decorative stickers.

My former planner has broken my heart. Sometimes change isn't good. Sometimes it's only change.