Ruminations on Planning

My dear friend recently started a blog post series on planning.   This is not an unboxing/which-system-is-best/here's-my-weekly-spread kind of series, though I wouldn't be surprised if she got to that later.

No, this first blog post of hers is an introspective piece that asks the question:

Why is it that some of us spend lots of money, time, and energy on the act of planning, on planning for planning, and on planners themselves?  

 And then she said "tag, you're it!" so here I am to take a stab at answering the same question.

Currently using a Panda Planner, though I'm apt to shift at a moment's notice.  I'm ever changing, like the moon.

I have a number of answers, and here they are in no particular order.

• I love office supplies.  I love papers, and journals, and pens, and stickers, and washi tape, and post-its.  They fill me with glee.  The way to my heart is through stationary, pure and simple.  Well, stationary or yarn, but that's a different blog post.
• I am incredibly privileged in that I have disposable income that I can spend on planning supplies.  But I'd use a 70 cent spiral bound notebook and a number 2 pencil if I had to.
• When I was a kid I had a full-on sticker collection.  When I discovered that adults could have stickers too (stickers that are nominally functional even) I about plotzed.
• I am a really visual person.  Seeing something makes it real for me.  I get some mileage out of virtual tools like Trello's kanban board (especially since I am working with a virtual team), but I vastly prefer old-school paper planning.
• As visual as I am, I am even more kinesthetic.  The physical act of writing something down does something in my brain.  I enjoy the sensation of pencil or pen on paper (and let me tell you how much I do not enjoy it when the pen or the paper isn't right.  Makes me picky like whoa.)   Not only that, but writing things down triggers them into my memory.    When I was in school, I could recall a piece of information by remembering where in my notes I wrote it.  Bottom quarter of the left-hand page...got it!
• I thrive on to-do lists.  Sometimes they are more like "to-done" lists, because I am not ashamed to write something down and cross it off after I've already done it, but in principle, I work better off of lists.
• It alleviates my stress, and helps me to think more clearly to see the plan written down.  To know what the steps are, and to have it off-loaded out of my brain and onto paper makes a huge difference in how productive I am.  Brains are processors, not hard-drives...so writing things down frees up my RAM.

So basically, the TL;DR answer is:  I like it and it helps.  Digital planners are much less useful for me (though as noted above, digital project management tools have their time and place).  

Did I mention I really dig stickers?