Planning Strategy: Consolidating vs. Separating

Are fewer books easier to manage?

This is a really interesting question because the intuitive answer is yes—but in practice that isn’t necessarily the case. In this post I’ll explore the considerations for both!

Why consolidate

• The biggest reason to consolidate is simply to have fewer objects to carry around and worry about. It takes up less space on your desk and in your bag, there are fewer physical things to keep track of.
• It’s cheaper. Fewer planners and notebooks means you’re buying less. If you’re a decorative planner, you can buy fewer supplies if you have fewer places to use them.
• Theoretically, you have fewer places to look for space to put things, and to find them. In an ideal system this reduces the number of decisions you have to make on a daily basis about where to plan or log things, because everything just goes into the same place (sort of—I will get to this later).
• If you use planners to incentivize journaling, or you’re a completionist by nature (you like to fill pages to the brim and use every single one), it might be easier to keep up with fewer books. This is particularly important to people who use dated pages as prompts to fill space. Fewer prompts/pages means less space to fill.

Why separate

• If you have a lot of planning needs, it sometimes doesn’t help that they’re all maintained in a single physical space. Just because it’s one book doesn’t mean you’re tracking fewer things. So while you only have to dig around for space or information in one object, you may find that rummaging through the pages and sections of that object is just as frustrating as going through different objects.
• Blank space helps important things stand out. When a page is sectioned off to oblivion and filled to the brim with as much information as you can fit on it (I’ve done this), the information can cease to have meaning. This is particularly difficult to use if you track information you need to look back on. If you just want to fill the page, this is fine; but if you actually need to flip back and use any of the information you’re filling the pages with, you may discover it’s very difficult to do so if this swimming in a bunch of other stuff.
• In some systems, more books may actually be more portable, because you can separate the things you need on the go, and leave everything else behind. You can keep a larger planner on your desk and a pocket planner in your bag.
• Designating books for specifics purposes can help you focus. When you’re working in a book just for language practice, or fir managing your household, or for a hobby, you create a physical separation between that thing possible distractions.

What’s the right answer?

There is no universal right answer! If you’re happy with the number of books you have, stick to what works. If something feels off in your system and you want to try something new, consider disaggregating some of your planner functions and see how that goes. The right answer is likely going to be some balance between consolidation and separation that is unique to you and your lifestyle. And no matter which way you go, you should base your system on your planning needs.