Have you ever been so good at something it became your weakness?

Hi, I'm Tessa, and for the last two years of high school I was great at planning. In fact, I was the best planner I had ever met. And that was my problem. I would spend so much time and energy planning every last minute of my life.

By high school I was competing internationally in powerlifting, selling over 250 cookies a week across four distribution points, walking seven dogs and leading the English Honor Club, while trying to keep my social life alive. People kept asking how I had a life. I did, but it was all managed behind three notebooks, too many to-do lists and countless post-its (I still find post-its everywhere).

I had built systems to be able to function the way I did. I believed in planning so much that I wrote my graduating thesis on its psychology, one of six recognised out of a class of 46. But those systems eventually consumed me, and planning had quietly become another full-time job. By the time my week was perfectly organised, I was too tired to start it.

When I swapped my backpack for a handbag in my first year of university, even my shoulders agreed there had to be a better way. For so long I kept asking myself why someone couldn't simply make a single agenda to keep everything. When I eventually burnt out, I decided to dedicate the next year to building it myself. What I didn't expect was for it to turn out the way that it did.