For those who keep New Year’s resolutions (see my pros and cons about the concept here), getting organized tends to top a lot of people’s lists. I try my best at being productive all year round (emphasis on try). What helps me be successful at this is an old fashion well put together planner
1. Passion Planner
Since this planner’s inception, it’s been the one I’ve been the most impressed with. This leather-bound book is more than just a planner, it’s your life coach. The actual planner portion is weekly and has an hourly layout starting from 6:00 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., so it should definitely cover everything you plan on doing in a single day. This definitely isn’t all it encompasses, though. There are several pages dedicated to mapping your goals, as well as monthly reflection pages to help you assess how far along you are toward achieving your aspirations. There’s even an end of the year reflection at the end. While many planners end up recycled or in the trash at some point in your lifetime, Passion Planner is likely to be the one you keep to look back on your journey. If you can’t afford the investment, don’t worry. If you link their website to various social media sites, you can download the entire planner’s PDF for free.
2. Day Designer by Whitney English
This is my current planner and I am absolutely loving it. Similar to, but nowhere near as thorough as Passion Planner, there are a few pages dedicated to getting yearly goals together and planned. What is different about Day Designer from other planners that I absolutely love is that it has a daily outlook, rather than a weekly. There are still pages that let you look at the entire month for those who like to plan ahead, but I personally can be extremely overwhelmed when reading each task I have set out for me throughout the entire week. Taking life one day at a time is a much less anxious way of life. Each day has its own inspirational quote, hourly schedule, daily to-dos, as well as a section for notes and daily gratitude. I really enjoy the daily gratitude portion, which I personally haven’t seen in other planners. At the end of each day, no matter how difficult, you should try to find at least one good thing that happened. Day Designer reminds me to do just that.
3. Erin Condren Life Planner
A great option for those who love a weekly outlook. These now come in three different options, a vertical layout, a horizontal layout and an hourly layout. I’m going to talk about the vertical more because it’s pretty unique. Under each day are three separate boxes. Previously, these boxes were already labeled as morning, day and night, which is good if you want to separate your planner into time chunks. Now that they're blank, you can choose to separate it by categories, such as school, work, and home. These I absolutely love because there are so many different ways to personalize each one; you can change the colors for all of the various cover options as well as have your name or a photo printed on the cover. It’s all up to you.
Honorable mention: Lilly Pulitzer planners. A significant number of my friends absolutely swear by the queen of prep’s planners. I do enjoy the fact that they’re hardcover and come in a variety of sizes to meet your specific needs (ranging from pocket sized to jumbo-sized). The reason I put these as an honorable mention and not in my actual list of planners is because Lilly planners only come in academic year format, starting in August. The website does not even list them as a product option currently until the new planners roll out this coming summer. However, if you’re really interested in organizing your life with her famous patterns, Amazon has several of the 17-month agendas that go from August 2015 to December 2016.
