You’re Not Lazy, You’re Just Doing Too Much
If you’ve been side-eyeing yourself lately and wondering why you “can’t get it together,” I want you to pause for a second.
Because most of the time, the problem isn’t laziness.
It’s overload.
And planner girls like us are especially good at disguising overload as a motivation problem.
I know this because I’ve done it. Many times.
The planner is full.
The lists are long.
The intentions are solid.
And yet somehow, nothing feels finished.
So we assume the problem must be us.
It isn’t.
Laziness and overload look identical from the outside
Here’s why this gets so confusing.
Overload looks like:
procrastination
avoidance
half-done tasks
constantly rewriting lists
hopping between planners or layouts
feeling “behind” no matter how much you do
From the outside, that can look like laziness. But what’s actually happening underneath is very different.
You’re not avoiding your plans because you don’t care.
You’re avoiding them because your brain doesn’t know where to start.
When everything feels important, nothing feels doable.
That’s not a character flaw.
That’s cognitive overload, and we’re going to address that right now.
Related Post: What to Do When You’re Feeling Overwhelmed
Planner girls don’t quit — they over-commit
Most planner girls don’t struggle because they lack discipline.
They struggle because they try to plan too much at once.
We don’t just plan today.
We plan the week.
The month.
The goals.
The habits.
The routines.
The projects.
The ideas we don’t want to forget.
And then we wonder why opening our planner feels heavy.
If your planner is asking you to manage:
appointments
tasks
goals
habits
routines
notes
ideas
long-term plans
and life admin
All in one place, all at once, of course it feels overwhelming!
The issue isn’t effort.
It’s volume.
Why planning more doesn’t fix doing too much
This is the trap we fall into, and planner girls tend to fall into it hard.
When things feel overwhelming, our instinct is to:
add another list
switch layouts
buy a new planner
get more detailed
plan harder
But planning more does not solve overload.
It often amplifies it.
More pages don’t reduce decision fatigue.
More tracking doesn’t create clarity.
More structure doesn’t help if the structure is holding too much.
Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is stop adding and start removing.
Related Post: What to Do When Your To-Do List Is Too Long
Doing fewer things is not “lowering your standards”
This is where guilt creeps in.
We tell ourselves:
“I should be able to handle this.”
“Other people do more.”
“I’m just not managing my time well.”
But capacity is not a moral issue.
You are allowed to want:
fewer priorities
shorter lists
simpler days
more white space
Choosing less doesn’t mean you’re unmotivated.
It means you’re paying attention to how you actually function.
A quick way to tell if you’re overloaded
Here’s a simple check-in:
Productive feels focused. You know what matters today.
Overloaded feels noisy. Everything is shouting at once.
If your planner makes you feel tense the second you open it, don’t ignore that. That’s your signal to simplify what you’re asking of yourself this week.
Not a failure.
A signal that you need to lighten your load.
What to do instead of pushing harder
When you feel stuck, don’t ask:
“Why can’t I just do this?”
Ask better questions:
What am I trying to do all at once?
What actually matters this week, not this month?
What could wait without real consequences?
What would make today feel successful, not impressive?
Most of the time, progress doesn’t come from more motivation.
It comes from reducing pressure.
Your planner is a support tool, not a productivity judge
A planner is meant to help you decide:
what matters now
what can wait
what to let go of
It is not meant to:
shame you
measure your worth
demand constant output
If your planner feels like a performance review instead of support, it’s not doing its job.
And that doesn’t mean planning isn’t for you.
It means your system needs less load.
When I say less load, I’m talking about reducing what your planner is asking you to hold, track, decide, and remember all at once.
Not a new layout.
Not a prettier spread.
Not more discipline.
Less load looks like this:
Fewer priorities on the page at one time
Fewer decisions you have to make when you open your planner
Fewer categories competing for attention on the same spread
Fewer expectations of what “a good planning day” has to include
A heavy planner system often asks you to track:
appointments, tasks, goals, habits, routines, projects, notes, ideas, wellness, progress, reflections, and motivation — all at once.
That’s cognitive load.
When the system is overloaded, you feel overloaded.
So when a planner starts to feel like a performance review, what usually needs to change is:
not your effort
not your consistency
not your motivation
But the amount of mental weight the system is putting on you.
Less load means:
planning fewer things at the same time
narrowing focus to what actually matters this week or today
letting go of tracking things that aren’t helping right now
allowing some pages to be simple, incomplete, or even boring
The goal isn’t to lower your standards.
It’s to make planning feel supportive again instead of demanding.
Related Post: The Sunday Reset Routine That Makes Mondays Easier
If you keep calling yourself lazy, look again
Before you label yourself as unmotivated, ask this:
Am I actually lazy — or am I trying to live three different seasons of life at the same time?
Because no planner layout can fix that.
You don’t need a new system.
You don’t need more discipline.
You don’t need to prove anything.
You need permission to do less at once.
That’s not giving up.
That’s choosing clarity.
Happy planning!
