Wow. The intimidation of a blank page. I sat today with two separate planners in front of me, one for work and one for personal. The task was to plan for 2018.
I gazed at the beautifully printed pages. And then had to put them aside.
I picked up, instead, a note book I have used on and off this year to record things I have been studying. It was easier for me to put down some rough ideas on its blank pages than to concretise steps into my beautiful new planners. Turns out, I wasn’t quite ready for them.
I has (and have) a number of thoughts swirling in my mind that, I guess, are storms in my brain. Brain storms. And I had not taken the time, yet, to pin down those ideas before attempting to write plans. But, instead of being struck into inertia, as I was temporarily by those blank pages in my planner, I used the rough pages, and a bit of time, to extract my ideas onto paper so that I might see the pattern emerge that would allow for a plan to be written.
Having done this, I am now much better prepared to put strands into orderly places that might eventually form the rope I am seeking to make that will bear weight.
In starting with my shiny planners, I was missing out on the crucial step of ideas and imagination. Having pinned down those pesky tendrils, I feel I am better equipped now to put together the rough plans of how 2018 might unfold for me. I suspect many of us are intimidated by the official planning press, and our ideas fail to find ground and fail, therefore, to ever find flight. I love productivity systems, but I am becoming better these days at making them more malleable for my own ends, rather than the other way around. That feels like a little bit of progress.