If you have spent any amount of time in the planning community, you already know that planners are not one-size-fits-all. Walk into any planner Facebook group, scroll through YouTube for five minutes, or browse Pinterest for planner spreads, and you will quickly realize that people plan in wildly different ways. Some planners look like works of art. Others look like a project manager's command center. And then there's everything in between. The question that took me a while to honestly answer for myself was simple: what kind of planner am I?
I'll go ahead and answer that right now. I am a functional planner, through and through. The whole point of my planner - whether it was a ring binder, a book-bound planner, or the Google Calendar I live in today - has always been to make sure I don't miss anything and that I am as efficient as possible. That is where my joy comes from. Not from a beautifully decorated spread, but from a clean system that actually works. But it took me longer than I'd like to admit to stop judging everyone who planned differently and to get comfortable in my own planning skin.
The Functional Planner
System-driven. Every section has a purpose. Efficiency is the goal and the reward.
The Messy Middle
Function meets beauty. Stickers and washi serve a purpose - but the spread still looks good.
The Decorative Planner
Creative and expressive. The process of decorating is part of the joy of planning.
The Decorative Planner
Let's start with the style that gets the most attention, and honestly, the most criticism from people like me. The decorative planner is the person whose spreads stop you mid-scroll. Their weekly layout is covered in coordinated stickers, washi tape borders, hand-lettered headers, color-coded sections, and little illustrated elements that all somehow fit together perfectly. It looks less like a planner and more like a scrapbook page that happens to have a calendar grid on it.
I will be honest with you. For a long time, my silent reaction was something like, "Who has time for all of that?" or "That's not even planning, that's scrapbooking." I kept those thoughts to myself, but they were there. And that was not fair. Because here's the thing: the people doing that kind of decorating are getting something real out of it. They are not wasting time. They are getting joy. The process of decorating the spread is part of the experience for them. It is creative, it is satisfying, and it is theirs. That is exactly what planning is supposed to be.
The process of decorating the spread is part of the experience for them. It is creative, it is satisfying, and it is theirs. That is exactly what planning is supposed to be.
Now, I do want to draw a distinction, because I think it matters. There is decorative planning, and then there is excessive decorating that leaves zero room to actually write anything down. If your spread is so covered in stickers and tape that there is no white space left, I personally have a hard time calling that planning. But I get it - the creative side of it is fun. I understand the appeal even if it is not for me.
The Functional Planner
On the other end of the spectrum, you have the functional planner. This is the person who wants their system to work, full stop. The look of the planner matters far less than what the planner can do. A functional planner cares about having the right sections, capturing everything, processing notes, tracking projects, and never dropping the ball on something important. Decoration is an afterthought, if it happens at all.
That has always been me. When I was using paper planners, I had a very specific setup that I stuck to: an inbox for quick notes I could process later, daily or weekly pages depending on what I needed at the time, monthly pages for the big picture, a goals section, a projects section, and an A-Z reference file in the back for anything I used regularly like lists and go-to information. That system made sense to me. It covered everything. I could look at it and know exactly what was going on.
Inbox for quick notes · Daily or weekly pages · Monthly overview · Goals section · Projects section · A-Z reference file in the back
I was a committed ring planner girl for a long time. Day on one page, sometimes day on two pages, weekly spreads - I tried all the layouts. I even tried the Franklin Planner system more than once, and I genuinely think it is one of the most complete planning systems ever created. If you follow it correctly, nothing gets lost. But I could never stick with it long-term, and I still don't know exactly why. That's just the reality of planning sometimes. A system can be great on paper and still not be the right fit for you personally.
I also had a quirk that I will go ahead and admit: I hated leaving blank pages. If I had a daily page with nothing on it, it felt like failure to me. Which is, as I now recognize, a little ridiculous. A blank page just means it was a slow day. It doesn't mean the system didn't work.
The Messy Middle
Most people who have been in the planning world for any length of time end up somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. They want a system that functions well, but they also enjoy making it look nice. They use stickers and washi tape, but with purpose. Color coding serves a function. Decorative elements add some personality without taking over the whole spread.
I actually started out closer to the middle than I ended up. When I first got into planning, I bought the stickers. I bought the washi tape. I still have most of it, honestly. But even back then, I always did the actual planning first and decorated after, because I never wanted the decorating to get in the way of what I considered the most important part. I just couldn't prioritize aesthetics over function. That told me something about myself.
How Your Life Changes Your Planning Style
Here is something that doesn't get talked about enough: your planning personality is not permanent. It shifts as your life shifts. For a long time, I was homeschooling my boys and managing a household while dealing with health issues on top of that. I had so many things to keep track of that a full, robust planner system was genuinely necessary. My planner was always full. I felt productive. I felt on top of things. I loved it.
Then my boys graduated, and life slowed down considerably. And I'll be real with you - it was a strange adjustment. I had built my identity around being a planner, around being the person who had it all organized and tracked. Suddenly I had two or three doctor appointments a month, some bills, and a handful of family events that didn't come around very often. My full paper planner system felt like overkill, but I wasn't ready to let it go.
I had built my identity around being a planner. Suddenly the planner felt like overkill - and I wasn't ready to let it go.
Eventually I migrated to Google Calendar, and honestly, it suits my current life perfectly. I switch between daily and weekly views, flip to the monthly view when I need the big picture, and let recurring tasks handle the things that repeat. It is efficient. It is exactly what I need right now. But I do miss the days when my planner was full and everything I tracked in it felt important and necessary.
How to Figure Out Your Own Planning Personality
If you are new to planning and feeling overwhelmed by all the options, the best thing you can do before you spend a dime is to sit down and take stock of what you actually need to track and manage. That sounds simple, but most people skip it and go straight to buying a pretty planner they saw on YouTube.
1. How much do I have going on? Lots of moving parts means you need a real system. A quieter season might only need a monthly calendar.
2. What brings me joy in the process? The writing and the planning itself? The decorating? Just getting in and getting out? No wrong answer.
3. What have I actually used before? Your track record tells you more than any YouTube video will.
And just for the record, if you love all the planner things - the layouts, the trackers, the washi, the stickers, the pens, the whole experience - then almost any ring planner or book-bound planner with enough space will make you happy. Fill it up to your heart's content. That is what it is there for.
Stop Comparing Your Planner to Everyone Else's
I spent more time than I should have watching YouTube planner videos and comparing my plain, functional spreads to the beautiful, decorated ones I was seeing. At some point I had to ask myself why I was doing that. My system worked. It caught everything. It kept me on track. Did it matter that it didn't look like the ones on screen?
It didn't. It doesn't. Your planner is a tool. The only standard it needs to meet is yours.
The planning community can be genuinely wonderful - supportive, creative, and full of ideas. But it can also create this quiet pressure to plan a certain way or use certain products or make your spreads look a certain way. Resist that. Your planning personality is yours, and it doesn't need to look like anyone else's to be valid.
One Last Thought
I have often thought about what my planning life will look like when I'm older and even more of the busyness has settled down. Maybe I will go back to a simple paper system just for the joy of it, even if I only have a handful of things to put in it. Maybe I will end up with a monthly wall calendar and that will be more than enough. Or maybe by then I will just have someone around to tell me where I need to be. That would be fine too.
The point is that planning changes as you change. What you need from a planner at thirty is different from what you need at fifty. The best planning personality you can have is the one that is honest about where you are right now and what actually serves you in this season of life. Start there, and the rest will sort itself out.
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