134 | New Planner Season PSA

It’s new planner launch season and I thought it would be helpful to issue a PSA - Planner (come to your) Senses Announcement.

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TRANSCRIPTION

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the uncurated life podcast. It is chilly. I'm drinking a cup of tea, which means it's probably new planner season. And so I thought it would be a good time to, uh, do a P S A. I'm Cindy Guentert-Baldo. Thanks for being here. This is your first episode and you like what you hear?

 

I hope you will subscribe. I put out new episodes every Monday. And if this is not your first time here, welcome back. My dude. I'm glad to see you. You know, in the internet way, planner season tends to come twice a year, new planner season. Now there are some companies that shall remain. But nameless that release planners every five minutes, but in general, for most planner companies, new planners come about twice a year.

 

Once it's in the may, June, July kind of area with new planners that are academic based, whether they're for students or they're just for people who like to keep an academic year calendar. That was me for a long time. The calendar year, like year planner coincides with the. Right then the other new planner season is in the fall for the new year.

 

All of the new, this will be the 2022 planters that run from January through December. And we're in that. Now we're in deep in that now, and this may actually becoming a little late for some of you, but as new planners season generally stretches for a handful of months. I figured that it was about time for a quick chat from your internet.

 

Or big sister, friend, whatever you want to call me, your internet, voice of reason that you can listen to. I want you be able to listen to this whenever you feel like you're getting swept up in new planner season, whether it's right now or next year, the next time the, uh, the jovial planner company releases 85,000 products.

 

Like if you need it, if you need to hear this, I want you to be able to listen to it. I'm calling this a planner PSA. It could be a like, you know, planner, season advisory kind of situation. I don't know. However we want to call it, whatever, whatever we want to call it, maybe a planner come to your senses and it.

 

Whatever the case may be. I want this to be something you can listen to when you're feeling the pull of a whole bunch of things and your brain and your mind and your heart and your wallet are all screaming at you, bruh. And you need a little bit of extra encouragement. That's what this is. So let's get started.

 

Shall we? First of all, this might be the most dangerous time of year for a planet. When it comes to overspending, when it comes to buying shit, you don't need, like, I'm sure there's other dangerous times of year, but as a planner person who purchases planners this time launch time is like the hardest to resist the most fraught time of year when it comes to how you spend your money and what purchases you make.

 

And often emotions, emotions get pulled into it as well after. You're probably in need of a new planner for next year. If you're an academic person, this applies during the academic launch season, but like in general, right? Like most people right now are trying to figure out what planner or planners they're going to use next year.

 

And right when they're having this like crisis, this wondering this like vulnerable time when we're like. We're fragile because we're trying to figure our shit out. And then all of the companies come out with all their new shiny things and all of their marketing and all of the influencers and all of the everything.

 

And it's just bombarding us. You know, that when you're on social media, you start keying all those targeted ads for the new planner. You even potentially thought you might want. And unlike other times, when you might find yourself buying shit, you don't need for no apparent reason other than marketing at this time of year.

 

The thing that makes us extra vulnerable, extra fragile is that re feel kind of justified, right? Like I know I need a new planner. I know I'm going to need one. So of course I'm going to have to buy one. So I'm justified in buying shit, but eleventy million planners really, really. Are you actually going to use those really?

 

So like my first thought and my first kind of thought for you is to think about the method of only buying shit on launch day launch day, whenever a new planner launches or a new version or a new edition launches only buy shit on launch day. If, you know, you're gonna to use it, you've already decided, for example, the power sheets launch for affiliates was a few weeks ago and I'm recording this and I bought shit that day.

 

I don't know if I'm using power sheets next year. I'm in a current planner crisis when it comes to that, but I knew I was going to review them. So I knew I had a purpose for them. Now, at the point, you're going to hear this power sheets launches are already passed, but. Found yourself buying, you know, $60 planner on the off chance you might use it.

 

That's the kind of buying decision that I want you to try and back away from. If you know, you're going to use them something and then launched it up by the ship, by what you're going to buy. But if you aren't sure don't get swept up in the hype because that's what it is. It's hype. And in 99% of cases, The shit you want is still going to be there in a couple of weeks after you've considered it.

 

Now that isn't to say that there aren't certain designs or whatever of something that might sell out, but if you don't know you're going to use it, that doesn't matter how pretty the design is. Keep an eye on things in case they're coming close to selling out and really ask yourself if you're going to use it, but don't buy it on launch day.

 

If you're only curious, because you'll probably spend more money on shit you don't need just from the excitement that is marketing. It's all it is is marketing. In the same vein when shit does launch and you're buying something, let's say we'll use the power sheets example again, let's just say, you know, you're going to use them.

 

You've used them before. You're going to use them again, buying them as a no-brainer, but then all the accessories are out. Again. Just be very careful there. Don't let the excitement of all the new things cause you to buy shit. You're not going to use. Okay. Um, the reason I keep emphasizing this is because sometimes you have the stuff in your cart and all you need is for somebody to remind you to double-check and think, am I actually going to use this?

 

Do I actually need this? And that's enough for you to like back out. I just, I hate when people spend money on things and regret it because. We're in a capitalist society and money is a resource that is necessary to exist in this society. And it sucks when you spend it on something and then have regrets, but also there's the, the situation of more shit than you need, which will become more waste or more whatever.

 

Like it's just, it's perpetuating this like over consumption lifestyle that we're all sort of being exposed to by the media, by social media, by everything. And. You know, little changes. It's not that we're going to change the world by making little changes, but at the very least you might make your life a little less unsettled or uncomfortable or overwhelmed.

 

My next tip. And this is an important one, especially when you're thinking about launch time and buying your next planner. If you are in a place where you don't really know what you're going to do yet is to do the work ahead of time, start thinking about what it is you think you'll need, not which brand you think you'll need, but what system you'll need.

 

Do you need a weekly, do you need a daily? Do you do most of your planning and Google calendar and just need something that you want to be able to do? Art or memory keeping or lettering practice or whatever. Don't let brand marketing tell you what you think you need and want actually assess what you've been using.

 

What has been working, what hasn't been working, so that you have a better idea of what you might be looking for. And then you can narrow things down. For example. Generally speaking daily planning is not for me. I tend to prefer a bullet journal for like rapid logging my tasks for the day and a weekly planner to visualize my week a daily printed planner has never really worked for me, but if the marketing for a new daily planner, like the new Moxy life daily planner really starts to creep into my mind.

 

I might decide, oh, Hey, maybe I should. That except I know I'm not going to use it because it doesn't work for me. If you struggle to discern what kinds of planners or what systems you might be wanting? I have a Skillshare course called finding planner peace that may help you with that. And I will leave a link to it down below.

 

It's a Skillshare premium class. If you're not a member and you've never used it before, my link will get you, I think, a free month, right? But like, I just I'm an affiliate, but I specifically designed that class over around how to help you figure out what planner you might be best suited for. And it's not necessarily brand specific, but it will give you some kind of ideas of which way to, uh, which way to turn, check the link in the show notes.

 

Another tip is to set a budget and stick to it. Like if you say this is how much I can afford to spend on planners and new planner accessories for the next year, stick to it, that will help you a not buy more shit than you're comfortable buying. And B it will make you. Thoughtful in terms of what you actually purchase, because if you're only allowed to spend X amount of money, you're not going to be blowing it Willy nilly on 15 different planter companies coming out with their cool shit, because you might buy something and then regret it.

 

And the thing you really wanted comes out later. So just set a budget, stick to it, and really like, be considering of how you're going to allocate each of those dollars or whatever. When it comes to influencers and influencer types, if you want to support them. Like me, when you do purchase, look and see if they have an affiliate link, it doesn't cost you anything.

 

And it helps them, uh, like make a little tiniest that much, but a tiny bit of money on the side, especially if they have helped you figure out what it is you like, like that's one of the things I do appreciate is when. Other people review planners ahead of time. So I can get an idea of what it is that I would like to buy.

 

And if my whole reason for doing planner reviews is so I spend the money so that you don't have to like, hopefully by me spending the money, you get to look at what it is and make the decision to not get it. And then you're not going to waste your money on it because you are. But if you decide to use an affiliate link, if you want to, if you don't then fucking don't like this, do what you're going to do.

 

And I'm totally cool with it either way. But on the flip side of that, if the same influencers or influencers in general planner, creators, whatever the case may be, if they make you want to spend all the money without thinking about it, maybe you should mute them during launch season. I've given this advice before and I mean it for me, Unfollow unsubscribe.

 

The mute is one of my favorite buttons in Facebook and Instagram, because you can shut somebody up for a while and they don't even know you're not going to offend anybody by and following them. They don't know you can't see their shit. And if you want to see it, you can still go see it, but it stays out of your feed.

 

And I promise you, there are people that I mute during launch season because I am just, I can't handle it anymore. Totally. Okay. And a fantastic tool. If you are a. Avid user of social media, like I am, and you need to get a break from it so that you can make your decisions about things with a little bit more thought.

 

And finally, I'm going to say this, and for some of you, you may be like, duh, and for some of you, you're going to be like, thank you. But it's an important thing to remember. You do not need all of the things. Most of these planner things are. And you can redate shit. You can go through the effort to re date shit and re and use it and make sure it doesn't go to waste.

 

But like that sucks, dude. That's a lot of effort. So before you make any planner purchase, ask yourself, will I use this during its intended timeframe? And if the answer is no, are you going to be willing to alter it in order to actually make it work and use it and not waste it? And you need to be honest with yourself when you ask yourself that, because if the answer to that is no.

 

And I know for me, it is, I can promise you right now that while I will slap date covers down on a planner, I will never read date a planner. And when it comes to undated planners, the jury's out. I generally speaking, I'm not a fan of undated planners, but because I'm lazy. But like, if that's your thing, then that's your thing.

 

But the question here is if you can take a hard look at this potential, this potential purchase, and be honest about whether the likelihood of you actually using it. That might help you from buying it because you don't need a wall of planners. Yeah. There are people on the internet with a fucking wall of planners.

 

I have a wall of stuff. I do planner reviews, but like, there are people who are part of affiliate programs are part of like squads or whatever who gets sent all this shit. They didn't have to pay for it. And if they did have to pay for it, there's like a certain level of elite ism that comes with having a wall of fucking planners.

 

You don't need that. You do not need. My hope for you. This planner season is that you are able to be thoughtful about the decisions that you make to not regret the money that you spend. And you make sure that everything that you bring into your house is coming into your house because it has a purpose.

 

You got this, I believe it. I think you're going to have a great time this planner launch season. And if you need any extra encouragement, find me on Instagram at Lama letters. I'll fucking encourage you. You got this, make sure that you check out that Skillshare class, if you need some extra help and don't forget to jump onto my monthly newsletter, I'm going to keep reminding you guys about this because I, I am.

 

That's what I'm doing, right. All of this stuff is in the show notes. Thanks to my patrons for sponsoring this episode. They love it when I do anti-consumer content I'm generalizing, but I think they do. You can check out my Patreon at www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo to find out more, make sure you listen to this.

 

If you need an extra kick in your pants, this planner launch season stay safe. And until next time friends peace out.