Planners

So I have been struggling with a planner format.

I like the concept of a daily planner.  I like the concept of writing down tasks so you do not lose track of them, of having your goals available to you every day, of having a single place to record ideas and quotes just random things that come into your head.  The problem, of course, is doing it in such a way that it is actual useful for you.

I have tried various versions of the "Non-Planner Planner" for the past 8 years or so - more of a large journal than a planner where I would write down some of the various sections noted above and include daily or weekly entries with tasks.  The problem was it worked really well for some things - like a place to keep goals and quotes and ideas - but it worked really badly for daily tasks.  I do not quite understand what it was, only that I found that the writing down and marking off of tasks became such a chore that in the end I would not do it at all and ended up with empty pages at the end of the year (empty pages make me sad).

This year I tried something different:  I got a simple notebook to write down things like quotes and goals and a simple calendar planner to write down tasks.  This too has proved disappointing:  my tasks do not get written into the calendar and I still end up with empty pages.  My compromise at this point is to start writing down some daily tasks in the notebook and write down events in the calendar.  I am still not happy with this compromise either, as I am carrying around two books where I need one and my ability to write down and execute tasks is still pretty minimal.

Or am I looking in the wrong place?  Is my ability to create and execute tasks that is the issue and not so much how I record them?  Surely I am not dependent on owning a particular type of book to record tasks but on the ability to write and execute them - for some people, post-it notes are enough.

But I like some kind of planner.  I like having them from years past, able to look back and see what I accomplished and wrote and (indirectly) what I was thinking for the year.  It is a unique historical perspective of years gone by.

So where do I come down?  We will see with trying to enter daily tasks - and executing.  Perhaps my failure is truly not the vehicle I have chosen but how I am driving it.