#PlanningForPleasure: Perks of Being a Planner Addict

Today, I celebrate my 38th birthday. Hooray! And because it’s my birthday I’m taking a day off from work to do the things I love, such as spending the whole day relaxing, having fun with my family, reading, watching TV, eating…. you get the picture! But I also wanted to take the time to share with you why I do this one thing I’m obsessed about – Creative Planning. If you don’t already know, I’m a planner addict. I’m obsessed with decorating my planners and journals, and that’s so obvious on my planner IG account, @planningforpleasure (follow me, if you haven’t already!).

A lot of my friends who see my decorated planner posts are often amazed about how I find the time to do it, especially since I like downloading, printing and then cutting stickers manually. As a work-at-home mom of 4, doing all these isn’t always easy because I obviously have other more important things to do. But I keep on doing it because it has its perks.

It allows me some me-time.

Life as a mom can be tough and hectic. It’s so easy to forget to take care of myself because I’m busy taking care of my family, the household chores and my work responsibilities. But I know taking time out just for me is a must to keep my sanity. However, going out of the house by myself is something that’s not always possible especially now that we have a new baby. So that means I have to find a way to have me-time at home.

I try to take several 5 – 10 minute breaks each day to either read, browse online or watch TV but lately what I enjoy doing the most is decorate my planner. If not that, then for sure I’m stalking my fellow planner addicts on Instagram or watching their “Plan with Me” videos on YouTube. Haha! It gives my tired brain and body a much-needed break. Oftentimes, these mini planning breaks are enough to get me through the day.

It gives me a creative outlet.

I never thought I had a creative bone in my body. But rediscovering creative planning two years ago changed all that. Since then I found out that not only can I decorate my planners, I am also capable of DIY-ing some stuff too. I’ve made my own planner clips, bookmarks and dashboards. I’ve even learned how to make my own leather travelers notebook and inserts! It gives me so much pleasure to grow as person and discover things about myself I never knew before. Being a planner addict inspires me to keep creating!

I allows me to record important events and milestones.

I’ve always been the sentimental type. I love taking pictures, making sure that my family and I will have lots to see so that we can look at them one day and remember our accomplishments and all the fun times we’ve had as a family. I record those as much as I can in my planner along side my to-do’s and appointments. While I try to make scrapbooks as well, I find that recording these moments in my planner is just a lot easier and less time consuming.

It allows me to follow my bliss.

I love the smell, the look and the feel of paper. I can spend hours in a bookstore just smelling and touching books. I get such a high just by seeing pretty paper, colorful pens and other stationery. I derive so much pleasure in touching my leather travelers notebooks. Hahaha! It sounds funny to me just by typing it but it’s something only a stationery and planner addict will understand.

I also prefer writing on paper over recording things digitally. I guess, I’m old school like that. But there’s something about the feel of writing on actual paper that I just can’t explain.

Most of all, I just love how combining paper, pens, stamps, ephemeras and stickers creates a work of art. I can’t draw for the life of me. I don’t have what it takes to be a typical artist. But decorating my planners helps me create beauty and that just gives me pure pleasure.

It allowed me to find my tribe.

I used to think there weren’t a lot of people out there who loves doing what I do. So you can just imagine my relief and excitement when I found that I wasn’t alone and that there was such a thing as the “Planner Community”. It was through following my bliss that I was able to finally find them, MY TRIBE. Turns out there’s a LOT of us all of over the world. There’s definitely truth to the saying that “Your vibe attracts your tribe”.

Seth Godin, in his book called Tribes, said that “A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.” Well, my fellow planner addicts and I definitely share some common interests and we definitely communicate a lot online over on IG, Facebook and YouTube. This wouldn’t have even been possible years ago without the Internet. It just gives me great joy to belong in such an awesome community that continuously pushes me to keep my brain’s creative juices flowing and challenges me to do better.

There’s also a lot of people in the planner community who are helpful and generous in sharing their ideas and their planner stuff through RAKS (random acts of kindness) as well. I love, love, love my tribe!

It gave me an opportunity to work with like-minded individuals.

What’s the point of belonging to a tribe if you don’t interact with them, right? But beyond just liking and commenting on planner posts, belonging to the planner community has allowed me to work with some of them who have created businesses out of their passion.

These are the planner sticker suppliers and planner or journal designers/makers/sellers that I’ve had the pleasure of featuring here on the blog and on Instagram. (Browse some of my #PlanningforPleasure posts to see those that I have featured already.) Of course, working with them has allowed me to try some of their products for free. While the freebies are great, of course, it just feels so good to know I’m helping out these small businesses too.

It allows me to inspire others.

I’ve had some people tell me they love how I decorate my planner and that I have inspired them to do the same. These comments come both from people I know and people I’ve never even met. To this day, it still baffles me how my hobby can actually influence other people. But it just makes me feel so good to be able to do something nice for someone else.

I admit that there are days when I don’t feel like decorating. Then I get comments about how people love what I share or I suddenly get hundreds of likes on Instagram. It gets me out of my funk pretty fast. It gives me great pleasure to know that what I do has encouraged others to be creative in their planners too. Some of them have never even really used planners religiously before and now they’re actually trying to use one.

Being a planner addict has definitely contributed a lot to my life and I’m very thankful for that. It lets me create and appreciate beauty. It gives me freedom to be me and allows me to be happy.

I can see myself growing old doing this. Haha! I mean, why not, right?

Are you a planner addict too? What has it done for your life?