Planners, Planners, Planners!

I’ve been relishing the prospect of the process of deciding which planner to use for 2018. I’m a nerd for tools and systems that help me keep track of tasks and projects and right now I’m even more of a nerd for tools that go deeper and help me grow -- be consistent in my attempts to grow.

So I spent hours this weekend researching 19 planners! I’ve narrowed it down to three top choices now.

I hang out with people who are also nerds for tools for planning and tracking and nerds for personal growth. In fact, the list of planners I wanted to research came from discussions in a Facebook group of nonprofit directors as well as my own preliminary research on a lovely summer day when I was laid up with a badly sprained ankle and spent hours on the internet.

So, since I know so many people who are also interested, and because it sort of justifies my hours of research – not that I need my actions to be justified at all, because I’m a grown up lady and I do what I want, and not that my enjoyment of researching planners needs to serve anyone but me in order to be worthwhile – anyway, I thought I would be fun to write a post to share my research and reviews.

First, context, purpose and methodology! Gee, this really is fun already.

Context: I have a well-developed comprehensive system of systems and tools to plan and track my professional and personal lives, development, projects, and tasks. I use my Google Calendars to track my schedule, including personal commitments or meetings as well as lots of recurring tasks that require time, like a weekly hour to schedule upcoming events on Facebook and our website and to create an email blast to send out. I use Todoist to track tasks for projects, especially recurring tasks like updating grant deadlines every quarter or making meal plans every weekend. I like checking things off and accumulating points! I use handwritten lists to map out my workplan about every month or so, then lists on small pieces of paper to just list the things I need to get done in a day or two. (Usually I think I’m making a list for one day but it takes all week!)

For two years, I’ve been using the Passion Planner on a weekly and monthly basis. I use the yearly planning tool too, which is a mind map of life goals. I like it. My timeline never goes how I think it will – I wrote down I wanted to read Positive Discipline and Nonviolent Communication this spring and I just finished Positive Discipline in December. So I don’t really use the monthly Gamechanger thing that’s supposed to tie to the year goals. But I do like the monthly Personal Focus, Work Focus, People To See, Places To Go, and Not To Do List, which I always enjoy filling in! I always end up writing not to freak out or be too hard on myself or get too buried in my job. I like the monthly reflection questions as a way of helping myself bring to mind the most memorable moments from each month. Pretty much invariably, I identify I need to prioritize self-care and courageous conversations more in the next month, and that’s always a useful course correction for me.

I use the weekly spreads pretty consistently; that’s what’s most useful for me. I fill up my calendar electronically, and I don’t always realize what I’m doing, then I end up with 3 days full of 6 hours of meetings each day…and voila, my ability to get ANYTHING actually DONE is really low that week! So I have created a weekly planning routine that really helps when I do it. First, I fill in the previous week’s box of Good Things That Happened with experiences and accomplishments. Then I fill in my meetings and commitments for the upcoming week, and I highlight the times I’m going to be at my desk. Sometimes I use my lovely pens and markers to color code work and personal. Then I identify my Big Rocks for the week, both personal and work. Big Rocks are the things that I need to make sure get prioritized. Then I write just 1 Big Rock thing in the “Today’s Focus” box for each day of the week. All of this helps me be realistic about my plans for the week, which can be a big challenge for me.

I’ve really enjoyed the Passion Planner. It’s one of my top 3 contenders for 2018 too. I just might want something that gives me more nudges around personal growth and more support around life balance. The quotes in it are do dang cheery they bug me sometimes and it seems to be aimed at people with fewer years of life experience than my seasoned 44. Those are pretty minor issues and I highly recommend the Passion Planner to lots of people. It’s very pretty and small enough that I have been carrying it around in my giant shoulder bag. (I used the full size last year in classic black and got the pretty pink compact one this year.)

Purpose: See if something else meets those same needs as monthly and weekly goal-setting and reflection, weekly visual understanding and planning, and additional nudges and support for personal growth and wellness.

Methodology: I was evaluating planners based on this criteria: Are days shaped like tall rectangles with times written in? Is there a horizontal weekly view? Does it lay out goal setting for life/year, months, weeks, and days? Does it support reflection for days or at least weeks, months, and beyond? Is it carry-able? Does it have a reasonable number of extra blank and/or grid pages? And is it aesthetically pleasing?

And now, the evaluation! These are listed in no particular order except the three I like the most are the last ones I’m going to list, you know, to build suspense and drama.

Verso Radical Planner – cool text, but the days are too small and not timed and there’s no weekly view, goal stuff, or reflection.

Day Designer – nope, days are the wrong shape.

Happy Planner – nope, no times on days.

Plum Paper – nope, no reflection.

Self Planner, aka Best Self Planner – has a daily reflection I liked but is only good for 13 weeks.

Get to Work Book – pretty neat, good, simple pleasing design. Good day & week views, very minimal goal setting tools, monthly reflection. But no bigger life balance support. Nope.

Emily Ley – Nope. In the one with days the right shape there’s no weekly view. In the one with weekly view, the days are the wrong shape!  

Erin Condren Life Planner – Nope, days are the wrong shape.

MEAD 5 star – Nope, days are the wrong shape.

Poketo Concept – Nope, it’s cool but not actually a schedule planner.

Ink & Volt – days are shaped the right way. Has a weekly view but no times in it! Has monthly goal tools. Has yearly reflection tools. It’s ok. Just seems kind of boring compared to the Passion Planner.

Plannerisms – Nope, days have no times. Space for goals & reflections but no questions to prompt thinking.

Desire Map Planner – I like this one but nope. Days are shaped the right way but no times. Can’t tell if it has weekly views. Can’t tell if it has reflection tools. I like that it has a focus on feeling good! And I love that it has a weekly “Stop Doing” feature! I downloaded some free pdfs from the website that I might incorporate.

Tools 4 Wisdom – honorable mention here for sure. It has days the right shape, weekly views, support for personal and work goals & reflection. I don’t like any of the covers though! And I want more on the personal growth side.

Panda Planner – honorable mention here too! Days are shaped the right way but weeks are planning only, not a 7-day spread. It has a morning review I really like, with space for an affirmation you write, and gratitude space. Has good support for goals and daily, weekly, and monthly reflection. It has a great emphasis on habits which I like. It’s undated, which I could live with. And it’s small, which is cool. It’s a little plain. It’s a Tier 2 contender. But it lost out to the ones coming up!

Full Focus – This was a very strong contender in spite of the icky corporate sell on the website. What I like the most from this is the emphasis on Morning Startup Ritual, Workday Startup, Workday Shutdown, and Evening Ritual. It’s got tools to help you identify what you need to do to start and close personally and professionally, and then a daily checkbox to help you remember to do it. Days are shaped right and it has a weekly view. The goal setting has both a Habit Goal and an Achievement Goal, which I really like. And it has a weekly and quarterly reflection. Also, I really love the Weekend Optimizer page, which is about planning your personal time in ways that feed you. But each one is only for 90 days, so it ends up being pretty expensive for a year. But they do make the good point that quarterly goals might be more useful and practical than annual goals. I like that, it’s more bite size and manageable.

Now for the final 3 candidates!

One is the Passion Planner. I like it and I might do it again. It has lovely thick paper, blanks and grid pages in the back, and great planning and reflection elements. The compact is a lovely size with very pretty covers, and it weighs 14.9 oz. It costs $30 but since I’m in the email list I’ve got a sale code or something. 

Inner Guide Planner – Totally covers all the basics and offers lots of support for personal growth and goals supporting full living. Days are shaped the right way and include room for lists. Has weekly views. Great for goals. I love that it names so many different areas of life. Goals include achievement as well as feeling, and steps include actions as well as thoughts, sort of a cognitive behavioral approach. Super great for reflection! The monthly reflection includes challenges and accomplishments; questions include internal obstacles as well as insights. It has a good list of mindfulness approaches to consider as well, and space to reflect on Mind, Body, and Spirit (which, since I’m an atheist, I’ll re-interpret as emotional well-being). Days do not include a daily focus, but since I’m NEVER up at 6am I could easily use that space to write in a daily focus. It has a few extra pages. It weighs 1.3 lbs and is 8.5 x 9 inches, a little bit big and a tad heavy but offers so much! At the moment of writing this I’m heavily leaning toward this one. Price is $26 for spiral bound soft cover or $29 for faux leather harder bound. Not super pretty cover designs but I could live with either. I’m leaning toward the spiral bound so I could have the option of folding it half under, but I’m worried it would get beat up and I’d be sad later in the year.

Rituals for Living Dreambook – ok, just to warn you, this is pretty woo woo. I’m into it and self-conscious about it. Here’s an example of the woo being taken too far in the direction of privilege: The makers define supporting peace as decreasing the stress in our lives. That makes me just super uncomfortable because obviously peace is prevented by structural and political barriers that have to do with violence, oppression, injustice, corporate domination, and generally the exploitation of the poor and less powerful by the rich and privileged. That’s just a real annoyance of mine. I think defining peace as less stress (for which they sell candles etc) reduces the likelihood that people will develop the consciousness necessary to actually create justice as the precondition for peace. So I start out fairly critical of the people who are making this, on a political level.

But, of course, no other planner website has a definition of peace at all, so I have no way to know, maybe they are all politically ridiculous. (But these folks operate “spas” in Portland and Boulder, so my stereotyping brain is feeling ok pointing out how problematic this is.)

Back to the planner.

Days have the right shape and a daily Intention which I like very much, as well as a space for Morning Rituals and Activities and a daily Gratitude space. It also has a reflection question at mid-day each day. Weekly views are good and include a daily habit tracker tool for habits which you designate each month. Love that! The weekly views also has a list called Rituals for Thriving which lists activities that help with mindfulness and wellness. It has a weekly planning page spread in addition to the planner pages, which I think is a great idea! There is support for goal setting on a monthly basis. It has weekly and quarterly “Life Edit” reflection tools.

It’s 300 pages, but it doesn’t say how much it weighs or how many are blank or grid pages. It’s 7x9, good size for a purse. My frustration is their website doesn’t show much of the goal-setting part of the book, at least I can’t find it. So it’s been hard for me to see if it’s what I want. And it’s $43, with a pretty flimsy-looking cover that’s all white and will be real likely to get messed up. They charge more than $20 more for a cover, which they’re sold out of.

I watched some YouTube reviews of it to see more. One showed the questions in the beginning which lead to the goal-setting, inluding “How do you feel when you wake up in the morning?” and “How much your waking time do you enjoy your life?” I like reflection questions a great deal. It also shows that it has blank pages after each month. And it has lots of mind mapping space for lifetime goals and 1- 3- and 10-year goals. I like that.

So right now, I’m torn between Passion Planner, Inner Guide Planner, and Rituals for Living Dreambook and Planner. 

I think if I can’t decide I’ll go with the Inner Guide since it’s less pricey and seems pretty great. But if you have experience with the Inner Guide or the Rituals for Living, please share how it worked for you and why!