From hindustantimes.com
Kritika Kapoor
Planners aren’t just about tracking goals today. They’re scrapbooks, mental health journals, and doodle canvases too. So, who plans these planners?
We’ve never Dear-Diaried harder, and the market knows it. Of course, we’ll probably flake on them (like our goals) before January even ends. Or leave them untouched because they’re too pretty to ruin. Or use once and realise we’re not emotionally prepared for this level of self-reflection. So, what makes for a good journal? The answer involves – surprise, surprise – some degree of planning.
On the same page
The journaling industry knows that all it takes is one missed day for users to believe they’ve broken their streak, making them give up entirely. In 2013, Alex and Mimi Ikonn tried a workaround with The Five Minute Journal. Slim, unintimidating, low-effort; it asked for just a few minutes each morning and night. And it did half the thinking for you: Prompts such as “I am grateful for…” and “What did I learn today?” It blew up online. Around the same time, digital designer Ryder Carroll’s Bullet Journal gained a cult following by giving people a flexible structure for to-do lists, reminders and goals. Then, Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, published in 1992, found new life on TikTok and Instagram, with its Morning Pages promising a clutter-free brain.
They worked because they made journaling feel doable. They gave accountability a better framework than a to-do list and a brain dump. You didn’t have to write well. You just had to show up.
Indian brand Odd Giraffe followed the same formula for its planners, and infused some joy into the process. The colourful yearly, monthly and weekly journals include habit tracking and even junk journaling. Users are encouraged to doodle, paste photos and build collages. Everything comes with a prompt, because “staring at a blank page can be overwhelming,” says co-founder Karan Joshi. “People need something that simplifies their daily workload, or gives them a moment to pause and talk to their inner self.”
The trick: The less a journal demands, the more likely people are to return. “If it requires tracking endless metrics, rating emotions daily, following elaborate routines, it starts to feel like work,” says Prateek Dubey, who has worked with stationery brands such as Doodle, and is now director at Elite Global Partners.
Notes, minus the noise
The other add-on: DIY decoration. On Insta, at least, journaling now means adding stickers, tabs, washi tape, pastel highlighters and glittery inks. Pretty? Yes. Productive? Not reliably. “There’s already too much noise,” says Aparna Muthu Thai, co-founder, Roda Notes. “A planner should give you clarity, not add to the chaos.” Their Tasknote focuses on what we need to do and when we need to do it. So, the journals are minimalist, in solid colours, and so compact that they fit into a pocket, and don’t take up much space in a backpack or on a desk.
Muthu Thai knows that most people underestimate how long tasks will take (what psychologists call the Planning Fallacy) and tend to plan for a future with no unexpected roadblocks. So, Roda’s planners are designed to lean into this optimism instead of fighting it. The weekly planners only leave space for key meetings and deadlines; enough to see the shape of your week without pretending you can control every hour of it. “A planner works best when it’s created with an understanding of how we actually behave,” she says.
To dos and don’ts
Not every planner is chasing productivity. Rupambika Khandai, founder of Twillo Story, wanted journaling to feel like a small daily pleasure rather than another performance metric. “Post-Covid, many of us realised that being productive isn’t enough,” she says. “It’s also important to live your daily life. I wanted to come up with something that would make people sit with themselves for a while, or for them to create something with their own hands, just a few minutes of pure sensory feeling.” Her journals have space to jot down your goals and to-dos, as well as the things you look forward to. There’s room to doodle and colour. “You shouldn’t feel derailed just because you didn’t plan a day perfectly,” Khandai says. “It’s meant to feel cosy, not intimidating.”
And it’s possible for a journal to now be deeply personal. Odd Giraffe’s wedding planners, for example, don’t just track vendors and timelines. They make space for the story: How you met, what you felt, the pictures you want to keep, moodboards that capture the day. Their travel planners pair budgets and packing lists with pages to journal experiences at specific locations. So what starts as a checklist ends up as a keepsake.
Most planners today skew towards women, with softer palettes and playful art. “Men often prefer a single, straightforward notebook,” says Dubey. Joshi adds that journaling’s rise is closely tied to social media’s self-care culture, which currently speaks more to women. “The male segment has untapped potential, for sure.”
Women tend to express more, believes Rupambika. “We’ve had some queries about why we don’t do journals for men. And while I explained to them that our planners are unisex. Men don’t use them because they’re too colourful.”
