Kelly Spenhoff

I can visit my blank book stash and find just the right book for any new project.

Spring cleaning? Meal planning? Let me dig around my stash for a few minutes first. 

Here’s the thing: I can spend all my time setting up the system. Making my notebook cute. Creating color coded sections and washi tape tabs. It’s so much fun! The notebook for a project becomes its own project. And it’s always more fun than the original project was going to be. I’m happy to work on it all day.

A paper planner is the same. It gives you a way to procrastinate for 365 days in a row. 

Each one is a craft project that takes time and focus away from the thing it’s supposed to be organizing. I always abandon the notebook before I finish the actual project, anyway.

I still plan meals for my family, but I’m not even sure where that notebook is anymore. I just jot it down on scratch paper and get it done. 

I have a morning routine. It’s a list of things I want to do every morning, written on a sticky note. I don’t even check anything off. 

Before, I would procrastinate by doing a fun thing that I told myself was part of the job at hand. It felt like I was making progress, but I could avoid the parts I didn’t want to do. Of course I’ll scrub the bathtub. Just as soon as I finish drawing cute icons for the key to my new cleaning notebook. 

For decades, I turned every job I didn’t want to do into an arts and crafts project first. It was a way to start with the fun part of a job, but too many times that’s as far as it went. 

Now I don’t need 15 fun notebooks with tabs and bookmarks and unfinished checklists to remind me of what I wanted to do but never finished. I either get started or I don’t.