I talked about My Happy Planner in part one–you can just click to go read that!
So the other planners I’ve used this year have been trying to create my own bullet journal and the Passion Planner. I have also looked into Inkwell Press, although I haven’t purchased one of their planners. I do like their Weekly Kickstart notepadI use that to stick on the fridge and it helps keep everyone in the family on the same page.
I thought the bullet journal would be a no brainer–a planner with exactly everything I wanted in it. Well–it took a lot of time to set up the way I wanted it. And then because of my personality I spent a lot of time trying to do it right instead of just making it work for me. I got lost in the pages and numbering pages and transferring things to the correct pages and updating the contents page–it was just a mess. I only used it for a couple of weeks before I gave it up. Lots of people use it with no issues though and I do use a form of bullet journaling to keep track of the books I’m reading. I love using it as a reading type journal–its amazing for that! So, depending on your personality type, how complicated your life is, and how you use it–it might not be for you. On the plus side it was wonderfully light to carry around with me everywhere, so there is that.
—Passion Planner was the first planner that introduced goal setting into my everyday life and I will be forever thankful for that. It is excellent in making you think through stuff, set current, future, and way in the future goals and helping you think about how to break it down into manageable steps so you can achieve your goals. I loved having a weekly focus, a place to write down the good things that happened (it is so easy to think of the not-so-good things!) and then having the blank space every week for notes. It automatically assumed that I had a work to-do list and that helped keep track of things there and the inspiring quotes were super fun to read every week. The down sides were the days were broken into times (I basically ignored this as that is something I NEVER use), the fact I couldn’t add in pages, and the size. I got the smaller size so it would be easier to carry around, but then the lines were so TINY it took quite awhile to find a pen that would work in them. You can download a sample from them to try it out before you purchase (which I did and I really liked it until I got my Happy Planner). I purchased the dated planner, but next time I would probably purchase the undated so that the pressure to use it EVERY single week is off–nothing gets wasted that way!
What do you look for in a planner? Do you even use a paper planner–it’s a MUST for me!