Part of the Origins of a Planner series.
I am, unapologetically, an app junkie. I love discovering new tools and imagining they will be the magic fix that finally brings every system in my world into one perfect rhythm. I download, explore, test, and build, half for efficiency and half for curiosity. I like to see how things work.
But here is what I have learned over time. No matter how advanced the app, I can always trace its logic back to a spreadsheet. Every system I have ever used—task managers, CRMs, project trackers—follows the same pattern. Something moves from one state to another, data flows from one field to the next, and eventually, everything can be exported to a CSV. In the end, it all returns to rows and columns. That is the familiar. That is where my brain rests.
Maybe that is why I find comfort in the familiar. I can map the new to what I already understand. Every shiny tool is just another version of structure, and at the heart of it, that structure feels like home.
Learning How Tools Think
I have always been good at software tools. Give me a new system and I will take it apart to see what it can do. I will figure out how it works, how it fits with what I already know, and how to make it more useful for the people around me. That instinct started long before I was ever in IT.
In the 1990s, I was working as a medical laboratory technician when our lab implemented a new information system. The day it arrived, I hovered over the technician installing it, asking questions about what each field did and where the data went once it was entered. While others typed and moved on, I wanted to follow it. I traced each entry across screens until I could see how one table connected to another. By the end of the week, I was explaining the database to the system rep. I loved that feeling, the moment when understanding clicked into place.
Later, I became the “Excel person.” I built schedules, test trackers, and shared checklists, linking data to outcomes long before I knew that was what I was doing. My coworkers started calling me “the IT person in the lab,” and eventually, I leaned into it. I went back to school and moved into technology for real.
Making Logic Visible
My first IT job introduced me to a program called DOORS, the Dynamic Object-Oriented Requirements Management System. It allowed me to link different pieces of documentation, connecting user requirements, design specs, code modules, and test cases, and to see the entire chain of logic in one view. The first time I saw it generate a report that connected every user need to its matching test, I nearly cheered. For the first time, I could show our team’s invisible work in a clear, auditable way. It was not magic, but it felt like it.
Over time, I learned other systems: change management, workflow design, and test management. Each one helped me see the relationships between information and the people who needed it. What I loved was not just data; it was the structure behind it. The way one piece connected to another, and how clarity turned confusion into movement. That ability to see patterns has carried me through every job I have had, from Burger King in high school to the work I do now.
I have always been the one who can look at a process, break it into components, and explain it back in plain language. My team notices it before I do. “Kathi can break that down for us,” they will say. It is why I am almost always the de facto trainer, whether or not it is written in my job description.
The Habit of Handing Things Over
I think part of that instinct comes from how I grew up. My life has always moved in cycles of transition, plugging into new environments and handing them off to someone else. I am a military daughter, a veteran, a military wife, and a military mom. Each of those roles taught me how to step into a system, learn it quickly, and leave it better than I found it.
In a military household, change is not an event; it is a rhythm. You learn to land quickly, contribute fast, and leave cleanly. If you care about the people who come next, you make it easy for them to pick up where you left off. That practice has shaped everything about how I think. I break down what matters and what does not. I explain not just how to do something, but why it is done that way, so the next person has context.
That kind of repetition—entering, learning, documenting, and leaving—has wired my brain for systems thinking. I can see the pattern beneath the noise, and once I see it, I can teach it. That is what every good tool does, too: it helps you see how things connect.
Finding Comfort in the Familiar
People sometimes think being comfortable with structure means avoiding change. For me, it is the opposite. Comfort in the familiar gives me the stability to explore something new without losing my footing. I can dive into unfamiliar tools or systems precisely because I trust my foundation.
That is why I love tools. They are puzzles that can be solved in a dozen ways. I might explore Notion, or Monday, or Power Query, each with its own quirks and logic, but the same core ideas apply. Capture the data. Understand the flow. Build a system that makes sense. I have experimented with plenty of systems over the years, everything from linear task lists to mind maps that looked like spider webs of half-formed ideas. It took me a long time to find a way to make those visual tools actually work for how I think. I wrote about that here: Rethinking Mind Maps: What Finally Made Them Work for My Brain. Every experiment teaches me something about how my mind processes structure, and I carry those lessons into the next system I build.
No matter how advanced the software, I can always see the spreadsheet underneath it: the relationships, the formulas, the logic that makes it work. It is not nostalgia. It is fluency. The comfort of the familiar is what gives me curiosity for the new.
Structure as Care
At this stage, I no longer chase tools hoping they will change how I work. I use them to reflect what I already understand. I still love learning them, exploring what is possible, and sharing what I find. That part has not changed. But I have learned that the tool itself is not what makes me organized. It is the mindset, the way I think, connect, and translate.
The comfort is in knowing that whatever system I use, the thinking stays the same. And when a new app does not fit quite right, there is always a spreadsheet waiting for me.
Next in this series: Planning as an Invitation