A great planner is an extension of your brain.
A good planner keeps track of all the things.
A planner tells you when to be somewhere.
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Planners I have tried or tried to try in my daily life and practice:
Passion planner -all sizes
Happy planner -yes, all sizes!
Bullet journal - only for a hot minute
I’ve been on a quest to find the perfect planner my whole life. Well, I found a wicked good hack to make a weekly academic planner perfect at the time. I was in college and carried the practice through to graduate school. I can’t remember what it was though.
Blank weekly planner!
Once I discovered it, the Passion Planner was my planner. I was able to add pages, extensions, printables, stickers, etc and in the end, it was near perfect. I absolutely adore the Passion Planner and found it to be almost perfect on its own. This is what makes it even more perfect when customized. It is available via Amazon (Prime shipping!) or their website.
Before you can customize a planner, you need to find the right one for you. This means that you enjoy using the planner just as it is and it still meets your needs without a lot of extra fuss. (Bullet Journals aside) This is key to why we fall off track. There are going to be times in our lives when we are busy and you will need to have something to keep track of appointments or tasks amidst a crazy reassessment season or the shift from the school year to summer camps, new schedules, tech transitions...whew!
I’m not judging you if you like a well-embellished planner. There was definitely a period of my life where each page in my Passion Planner was embellished. It was something I did by myself for myself each week on a blissful solo date. I’m saying that you need to find the planner that works for you, not just with you.
For instance, how do you like to see your days? Does each page need to be a new day? Or do you need to see today embedded within a weekly spread? Sometimes the easiest for me while doing in-home supervision was a simple monthly spread. More recently I fell in love with a daily planner.
When you open your planner, what detail do you need it to have? Is it enough to have your daily spread split your schedule up by the half-hour? What about a weekly spread with 15-minute increments allotted for each day? What about no time frames just free or lined space with dates or an area for dates? I have LOVED all of them at some point.
What other space do you need within that spread? Do I need a to-do list carved out? What about an area for notes (blank or lined)? Is there space needed to track your habits, water, spending, exercise, etc?
In different employment settings, I needed different things from planners. In my first post-masters job, I had a generic At-A-Glance with a weekly spread and each day was broken down by 15 min increments. At the time, it was perfect for my needs as I was moving from client to client with little time between and billed in 15 m increments. There was NO free space on the page if I recall but it was not needed.
Across my past two employers, I’ve used the same planner, the Passion Planner. It is also a weekly spread with 30 m time increments and offered work to do, personal to-do, blank space and some boxes for goals and gratitude. It really is the best planner ever.
I tried the Happy Planner most recently to see if it was worth the hype of being customizable. I think if I were in a position to spend tons of time on my planner it might be the absolute hands-down perfect system with all DIY pages. You can add or delete pages as needed and it is fully customizable. I did a great job and in reality, it was more than I could have hoped for with the time I had. It would be a perfect field notebook!!
Currently, I am using a good ole notebook and Google Calendar. At this stage, I’m in a corporate office setting and my calendar can change at any point in the day. I’d go crazy trying to keep up on that with a paper planner. The notebook is for...well...notes and to-do lists. I fought my notebook system for years but it is perfect for me.
At one point, I tricked myself into believing my planner apathy was tied up in the type of spread. Flowing from my love of to-do lists and client management field notebooks, I thought I’d love a daily planner. I even found the perfect one! Really, I think I did. It was a mix of a structured schedule, to list area and blank space. It just wasn’t right for right now.
At some point you’re thinking I need a bullet journal. Nope, nada. Toooooooo muuuuuccccchhhhhh wwooooooooorrrrrrkkk!
My biggest tip would be to find a planner you might like and make a copy of it if you can. Please, friend. Do not go out and buy all the planners. This WILL NOT WORK. Honestly, the good planners are expensive and you’ll need time to try each one out if you are going to do a full-blown analysis. I have found SO many planners online that will let you download a free copy of their planner or planner pages. This is an excellent way to try out a new planner before committing.
I did this with the Passion Planner for nearly a month before investing in a real copy. It was perfect for me to be able to “try before I buy”. I was sold almost within the first week. I loved it. During my next period of planner angst, I tried a daily planner and was tickled to discover that Emily Ley had a downloadable copy of her daily planner page for me to try. Again, it was PERFECT! I was in love and when the planners went on sale, I purchased one knowing I’d done my homework and would truly use it.
Shortly before finding the Simplified Planner I discovered the signature line of Day Designer planners. I had been trying to get an off the shelf from Staples or Target version of their daily planner to work for me but I couldn’t get it right. One night, the Day Designer showed up in my facebook ads (how :)) and I find there is a whole different world of planners. See, they are EXPENSIVE. I tried the download of the signature daily page and found it to be superior to the others I’d tried. I splurged on the signature version and didn’t regret it!.
Once you’ve identified the variables you MUST have in a planner, you will have an easier time figuring out what planner you should try. Do your best to find a downloadable page from the one(s) you’ve identified as top contenders. If you know a friend who uses that planner, would they make a copy of a blank page or two for you to try out?
It is one of my dreams to really and truly develop the perfect planner but also, I don’t think there is 1 perfect planner. We all need different things for our day/week/month.