Reduce Anxiety and Confront Perfectionism with a Panda Planner

“If you are depressed you are living in the past. 
If you are anxious you are living in the future. 
If you are at peace you are living in the present.”

―Lao Tzu

I love this quote because it really helps me put things in perspective when I am feeling anxious and can quickly bring me back to the present moment and ask myself - what can I do right NOW to help this situation!?

Today I want to talk about something called the Panda Planner, a highly structured planning tool designed by Michael Leip, that focuses on goal setting and infuses elements of positive psychology into monthly, weekly and daily plans and reflections.

For me, setting goals, problem solving and reflecting on what has gotten in the way, truly helps me feel calmer, less anxious and ready to CONQUER!

Michael Leip was diagnosed with Lyme Disease, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and cancer and synthesized the lessons he learned and the tools he needed to create the Panda Planner! Pretty amazing, huh?

Leip created the Panda Planner out of necessity to stay organized but also help build habits to work through feelings of anxiety and depression.. Since he was also an entrepreneur working independently and writing his own roadnmap to build his business, it was also very important to create an organizational system to GET THINGS DONE. Enter, the Panda Planner.

Cover of my Panda Planner!

From personal experience and learning, I know that setting and achieving goals builds confidence, self-esteem and motivation to keep working on our dreams. I also know that many of us experiencing anxiety and perfectionism can sometimes create mental roadblocks to get in our own way.Thoughts like, I can’t do that, I don’t know where to start, I won’t be able to do it the way I want to, It’s too overwhelming to start now, I’ll just wait, until later are a few self-sabotaging self-talk phrases that get in the way of our success.

David Burns, author of The Feeling Good Handbook, discusses perfectionism and its close ties to anxiety. He explains that perfectionists are some of the biggest procrastinators because they are so afraid that whatever they do will not meet their very high standards. He also says that many other procrastinators tend to put down their own accomplishments, seeing them as “not a big deal” or telling themselves that what they did “wasn’t good enough..”

However,

“People who are highly successful and productive usually give themselves credit for what they do. Because they think about their work in a positive way, they feel excited and involved” (Burns, 1999, p. 177).

The Panda Planner covers all of this, which is why I think it can be an amazing tool for some of us. Let me tell you a little more about it.

So, the Classic Panda Planner, which I have, is divided into month, week and day sections and each section has space for goal setting for the month but also space to reflect on your achievements and accomplishments, something that we don’t always do!

For each month, Panda Planner encourages you to identify a Focus and also identify a Habit that you want to work on (one of mine was to really use my planner the way it was intended). On each day of the month, there is a circle that you can check or mark to reflect that you practiced your habit. The research says that it takes 21 days to rewire our brain to “learn” a new habit, so this feature is built to help us do just that.

Each week reflection page has space to reflect on your “Big Wins,” and how you will improve this week. It also dedicates space to reflect on how you can make the week great in the four major areas of your life: Personal, Work, Family/Friends and Relationships. I also love that it it gives an opportunity to think about things “I’m Looking Forward To.” Very often we stress about all the things we HAVE to do in the upcoming week, but how nice is it to think about things that we have to look forward to? It also has a section to think about what new thing you will learn and what “passion project” you might want to work on! Again, the planner wants us to find time to follow our strengths and find joy in the things that we do. The planner then invites us to organize our week into four big Projects we want to work on and our top goals for the week.

Each day, Panda again encourages us to think about what we are grateful for and excited about. We start the day with an affirmation and focus and also think about what exercise we will do for the day! It’s not even an option. The planner has space for our top five prioritizes of the day and then hourly spaces to schedule how we will work on them. The day ends with another space for reflection on our wins, keeping us in a positive head space!

I remember Michael Leip, in one of his instructional Panda videos, explaining that he likes identifying his priorities first and then breaking the day up into chunks so he can work for certain amounts of time on each one and then move on to the next one in a planned manner. I also recall he said something about a two hour segment of work time being something he’s comfortable with and how he keeps his phone and other distractions away until a planned break. Good life productivity hack.

Overall, I think this planner is great to help you take control over things and get focused so you can reduce anxiety. It also has a lot of guided, well-thought-out sections to keep us positive and help elevate our mood. I like that Michael Leip has experience with depression and anxiety and that he purposely created a planner to help combat those issues. I really think it’s a great tool for someone actively working on themselves and with a goal to live a balanced life.

I found this planner helpful when I had more time to plan ahead and stick to my plan as opposed to working at a job where things are more unpredictable and where we have to respond to unexpected events, etc. The planner is about $27.97 currently on Amazon and it only fits a few months at a time (though they are not dated so you can use them any time) so you will have to buy more than one a year if you use it consistently.

Happy Planning! I’d love to hear if you decide on a Panda Planner and if it works for you!