the hand drawn boxes were making me avoid opening my journal" hits home. My buddy in OKC did the same thing for like two years, spent forever on grids and little banners and then never wrote a single thing in the actual pages. He finally switched to a cheap pre-printed planner and just stickers in the margins now, says he actually uses the thing. Some people love the art side of it but if the setup keeps you out of the book, that's backwards.

That "split the money" line is close but not quite how the math works out. A tender is usually a day rate, not half your brick rate, so on a small remodel the helper might cost you more than the extra brick you lay. On bigger commercial jobs though, keeping a tender fed and watered all day is what lets you hit the wall count, so it can pay off there.