What Is Planirvana? (The Planning Framework I Built After a Year Off)
What Is Planirvana?
Planirvana is what happens when you stop chasing the perfect planner setup and start running a system for the season of life you’re in.
Planner peace suggests you get there once and stay. Real planning doesn't work that way. Your system will stop fitting eventually, because your life seasons change. Planirvana is knowing that's coming, checking in when it happens, adjusting without feeling like you failed, and enjoying it all along the way.
It's the goal and The Imperfect Practice is how you get there.
How I learned this the hard way
When I first got pregnant, I was doing daily digital planning on my iPad. To-do lists every day, time blocking most days, habit tracking on top of that. It worked right up until it didn't. I had no energy to keep it up.
The iPad was the first problem. It was never where I was. Getting to it started to feel like a whole task in itself, and I was tired in a way I hadn't been tired before. The habit tracker was the second problem. It stopped being useful information and turned into a daily list of things I wasn't doing.
So I stopped. And not just for a week. I didn't plan at all again until my first was about nine months old.
When I came back, I didn't come back to a planner. I picked up a guided journal, because I had no idea what I wanted out of planning anymore, or honestly out of much of anything. I had to figure that out before a layout could help me.
What I learned in that stretch is the thing this whole framework is built on. Babies change their sleep schedules, their feeding schedules, and their general sense of what a day should look like roughly constantly. Any system that assumed next month would look like this month was going to break. So I stopped building systems that assumed that.
The five principles
1. Peace is temporary
Your system will not always work. It doesn’t mean it will never work again. Just that it isn’t right for what you’ve got going on.
A setup that fit you in March might be completely wrong by September, and that has nothing to do with discipline. A new job, new baby, new commute, a busy season at work, a health thing, a move, etc. You’ve built for the life you had. When the life changes, the setup gets to change too!
I’ve found that folks who plan for years aren't the ones who found the “perfect” system. They know when it’s time to adjust things. And not just functionally. Change for fun and keeping things fresh too - we’re only human after all!
2. Check in with your system
Once a month (or more frequently), look at how the planning itself is going. Not only the tasks. The system/rhythm.
Here's what I watch for, because these are the signs mine has stopped fitting:
I don't feel the pull to plan. Opening it becomes a chore I'm keeping up with instead of something I want to do.
I close it and think "thank gosh that's done" instead of feeling better than when I opened it.
I get to the end of the day with everything checked off and still feel like I didn't accomplish anything. Sometimes a day really is just staying afloat, and that's fine. It's the general sense of unaccomplishment, that means something's off.
That last one is the sneaky one. A full checklist can hide a system that's only tracking maintenance and never touching what you're actually working toward.
I keep my monthly and quarterly check-ins on my calendar, which is the only reason they happen. The smaller ones, like checking back in on my vision board and my goals, tend to happen when that aimless feeling shows up.
If you want somewhere to start, the Imperfect Practice Sheet is the free one-page version of this check-in.
3. Scroll on purpose
Inspiration is half the fun of this hobby. Follow the accounts you love. Save the spreads that make you want to open your planner.
Just know what you're looking for. I'm not scrolling for a setup to copy. I'm scrolling for the bits and pieces.
The things I actually take from other people's spreads:
Tasks I never would have thought to build into my routine
Color combinations and sticker placement
Seeing ten different versions of the same layout, especially when someone has the same planner I do
There's no single right way to use a spread. But sometimes watching other people solve it differently makes my own version better.
The rule I hold myself to: I have to have a planned use for something before I buy it. If I can't picture where it goes and what it's doing, I don't buy it yet. This rule has saved me more money than anything else I do. Because boy do I love to buy stationery for any and every reason.
4. Keep a rhythm you can return to
Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly. Whatever fits your season.
The purpose of a routine or rhythm at all is that it gives you something to fall back on - a default or autopilot if you will. A system you return to is better than a system you always maintain.
I've written out exactly how I do each layer of my planning here:
5. Function first, flair always
I think this is a given, but a planner should work. It should also make you want to open it.
I add stickers, washi, and colorful pens, markers, and highlighters. Whether I'm excited about a theme, or new ones I bought and want to use, or I saw someone use them a certain way on Instagram and wanted to try it - none of that makes my week run better and I don't pretend it does. It just makes me happy and excited to sit down with my planner, which is its own kind of function!
Pretty is allowed. Pretty just doesn't get to make the layout harder to use.
Where to start
If you want to try this, start with a check-in. You don’t need a new planner or journal by the way. Just take a moment to look at your current system and see if what you have going on still fits this part of life.
The Imperfect Practice Sheet is the free one-page version of that. It's the check-in I use, and it's the easiest place to start.
