Guy at the coffee shop told me I'm overthinking my weekly spread

I was sitting at a Starbucks in Denver last Thursday working on my weekly layout. Some dude in a plaid shirt walks over and says I'm spending too much time on decoration. I told him I just like having a clean setup with color coded sections. He laughed and said his whole system is a black pen and a pocket notebook he keeps in his truck. That stuck with me because I realized I was spending 45 minutes every Sunday making things look nice instead of actually using the damn thing. He asked what I even track and I couldnt really explain it without sounding stupid. I cut my layout time down to 10 minutes and focused on what matters. Anyone else have a random stranger call them out on their process?

2 comments

2 Comments

thead4420d ago

You said he couldn't explain it without sounding stupid, but that's the whole point of a system. If you can't say in one sentence what you're tracking and why, you're decorating a notebook, not using one. I did the same thing for months with color coded habit trackers until I realized I was just filling in boxes to make the page look full. Now I just write down 3 tasks per day and cross them off. Way less pretty, way more useful.

tylerw7220d ago

That "filling in boxes to make the page look full" thing hit way too close to home. I spent like six months with a whole color coded system for water intake and steps and reading minutes, and the prettiest pages were the ones where I was just checking stuff off without actually caring about the numbers. Three tasks a day feels almost too simple but it actually forces you to pick what matters instead of just making a pretty mess. I kind of envy you getting there faster because I burned through three different nice notebooks before I finally figured out the same lesson.

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