Have you ever find yourself suffering from the planner freeze…. where you never got to start to use your planner for fear of making a mistake? For example you may feel you wanted to use the monthly spread to plan for your appointments but later find out that you wanted to use it for something else.
Planning can really help to improve your life especially if you tend to be disorganized, always late in handling assignments, feeling overwhelmed and anxious all the time and forgetting important dates.
But…the thought of making a mistake and having to spoil your planner or calendar cause you not to want to use these tools… that could make a difference in your life….actively. And you don’t want to use a pencil because you just don’t like how it looked.
Enter erasable pens.
I’ve started to use erasable pens, especially the Pilot Frixion pens and find that they are really worth the investment. Erasable pens cost more than normal pens because you can just erase off what you have written. So far I find the Pilot Frixion 0.7mm pens to be the best- they are easy to hold, write on and erase.
When erasable pens first hit the market, one of my former boss bought like literally whole range of colours of the pen. I guess she is similar with me, who have a creative side and require an aesthetic to keep her motivated. In our team meetings, she would update us on management direction, the roles we need to play and write down to illustrate things to us. And she would always use one of her colour Frixion pens to do this. I was interested when one day she wrote something wrongly and just erased the mistake off with the tip of the pen. When I inquired about the pen, I find that the cost was expensive and so I did not buy it.
Ironically I started buying these pens after I left that corporate job to be a full time caregiver for my mom. This is because I’ve also picked up on my blogging again from where I left off few years ago. Also I’ve taken over the role of my mom in terms of planning the family functions and events which included many steps to work towards those events. All these require goal setting and then breaking down into smaller managable tasks.
Because colours helped in my motivation, I find that I am more inclined to write using pen rather than a pencil. The erasable pens made me more consistent in my planning because I was no longer afraid of making mistakes and not being able to erase them. I even write using the erasable pens in my journals because they are nice to write on.
If you look at the picture above, I am using my favourite Kaison calendar to plot my daily tasks and schedule. Next to the calendar are the 3 erasable Pilot Frixon 0.7mm pens that I allowed myself to indulge in. Compared to previous years (prior to erasable pens) where my calendar and monthly planners are usually empty or written using pencil, nowadays they are more colourful and filled with items.