Review: Planners and Journals

Whatever we’re going through in life, it’s a universal need to plan, review and assess our lives. It’s common amongst us all to want to feel more organised, get more done and be happy. So with this, and the ever present Christmas and New Year in mind, I’ve reviewed six planners and journals for 2017. Choose your favourite based on their use, pop it on your gift list and get thinking about, then doing, next year in a whole new way.

The criteria

I judged on look and feel (oh to touch them!), what they’re best for and their technique. Each has it’s own purpose for either looking back on your day or week or planning forward, and some both, so it’s useful to know what you’re most looking to change or do next year to pick the one that’s going to work the best for you.

Online versus physical planning and reviewing

We love your Google calendar and all it’s colours. There’s nothing wrong with writing your gratefulness into your mac each night either, but nothing compares to holding the books in your hands – it’s a joy to have a well made product at the best of times but when it can potentially change how you work, organise yourself and achieve the things you want, it feels weighty and exciting at the same time. Planners are the best for productivity and goal setting and journals for reflecting on what’s good and where improvements can be made. As long as you actually remember to put them in your bag of course.

None deviate from the general A5 size apart from pockitudes. Best Self and Desire Map Planner are the chunkiest. With all of the planners (as opposed to more journal style), it can feel strange committing a task to paper, but the act itself confirms the action and the potential motivation to then go and complete it.

Most came from the US for this review but others are available elsewhere if shipping becomes a problem, and for a couple it did add a hefty % on top of the cost. All worth it if you’re going to use the thing every damn day in the way that works for you!

Productivity planner, $24.95 (six months of pages)

Look/Feel: Stylish, black and soft print, almost pencilled note form inside. Handy page keeper too!

Best for: Getting you focused on the task you need to complete each day

• Six months worth of productivity planning daily and weekly
• Uses the Pomodoro technique of time assessment – allocating 25 minute units with five minute breaks for tasks, you’re required to assess how many Pomodoros a task will take
• Encourages break between tasks and even in the middle of big tasks – rather than breaking flow this tends to encourage efficiency
• Allows for weekly review which likely improves assessment of estimated Pomodoros, again making you more efficient and accountable over time
• Crucially, this planner sets up intention for actually using it – it’s very nice buying it for yourself or receiving it as a gift, but to feel any benefit we have to give it a go
• Easy to predict the pages and great that it allows for weekly then daily overview throughout

Would like to have changed…

• Quotes – this is personal taste, but seeing quotes everywhere else on social media has made me slightly immune to them, so I all but ignored them in the planner. If they float your boat though, you’ll love them

The Five-Minute Journal, $22.95 (six months of pages)

Look/Feel: Hardbacked cloth-covered sturdy bedside book

Best for: Creating happiness by setting intentions and reviewing each day

•  Six months worth of daily journaling
• Invites you to have a morning and night routine, introducing the journal as part of it
• Reminds you of  the importance of daily journaling, setting intentions and reviewing – almost an up- and download!
• Each page is for each day – no faffing around looking for each day and night
• Quick to use and probably easiest for instinct based responses

Would liked to have changed…

• As with the Productivity Planner for the quotes but if you like them, you’ll love them here too

Pockitudes, $10.95 pack of three (three months), $20.95 pack of six (six months)

Look/Feel: Small but full hand-held notelet book

Best for: Immediate, on-the-go recording of your thoughts and feelings

• Miniature, bright-coloured paper backed books that literally fit into your pocket
• What may feel like a novelty item actually ends up being a very useful and fun way of reviewing your thoughts
• 30 pages of gratefulness i.e. daily for one month
• List section to tick what you’re grateful for that day – choose people, experience, thing, pet, place or self. Review where most of yours go to focus elsewhere in future or choose to stick with a theme for the month
• Little touches that make a difference such as the ’10 pocketips’ at the end
• All round cute way to stop and reflect and potentially only have one thing to focus on for simplicity

Would liked to have changed…

• ·      The 10 pocketips are lovely, it may be useful to have other topics in the list in case suggestions are limited to a specific type of person, but this is a new and emerging journal with many iterations I suspect 🙂

Best Self Self Journal, £26 for 13 weeks of planning

Look/Feel: Larger chunkier hard back soft book

Best for: Planning in three-monthly cycles with daily tasks as visual sections

• Combines daily and quarterly planning with gratitude
• 13 week roadmap in one place, breaking down your achievable goal; the result, progress and actions, tasks commitments and how you’ll use the journal to achieve them
• Three overview monthly pages, 13 page weekly planner then daily diary for the 13 weeks (got that?!)
• Very detailed, with ability to adjust each day’s task into hour by hour break down and check ins with yourself, even with space to draw, note or write more along the side
• Space for daily gratefulness each day – either write three things you’re grateful for or one thing and three reasons day and night
•  Comes with a wipe-able planner
• Fantastic product for looking at a range of areas and the cross over between planner and journal

Would liked to have changed…

• This felt like the book I’d have to study the most to figure out how to use it before actually doing so. This will likely create the strong intention of buying into the process, but equally demands attention and dedication to stick with it. As with them all, if you’re up for it, it will work for you!

Desire Map Planner, $44 year of pages

Look/Feel: Largest of the bunch with deep ring-bound pages and tearable corners to mark progress

Best for: Getting to the heart of what feeling you want to experience with everything you do – start with the outcome and the actions, behaviours and thoughts may just easily follow.

• Daily workout for moving your mindset
• Ultimate in cultivating what you want to FEEL then taking thoughts, behaviours, actions and habits that all lead to those feelings
• Prompts throughout the pages and leading words such as ‘I will’ which engages your commitment to complete the activity
• ‘To do’ and ‘stop doing’ are great ways to focus on how to make space for all the things we want to cultivate and bring into our lives
• ‘Soul prompts’ mean we’re able to feel when we’re in flow or less so, and engage with what’s making us feel good or not at that moment. It’s like a mini hug to yourself!
• Love the weekend space – enough there to keep it going but also rest differently on the weekends

Would like to have changed…

• It’s impossible to make this mammoth book smaller due to all that it covers, it’s just that you need to be really disciplined in using it and carrying it with you to get the best out of it. Weigh up how it will make you FEEL to be using it and acting on the things you intend to do versus taking it on the bus/to meetings/walking around – I have a feeling it’ll be well worth it

Daily Greatness business planner, £39.95 year of pages

Look/Fell: Soft cover, bright and attractive colours mean you’re unlikely to mistake this on your desk for any other notebook

Best for: Speaks specifically to business owners and entrepreneurs, setting up the traditional goal phases but also mindset and confidence development along the way

•  Attractive soft cover with bright colours throughout
• Targeted at business owners and entrepreneurs, it opens with the specific focus on mindset of running your own business
• Weekly priority planner allows you to use clear space to think and write freely then weekly reviews with prompts and questions to reflect
• Space for gratefulness recording alongside business goals
• Reminders on making space for yourself, for your work, for others
• Also very specific reminders on ‘how many customers did we sign up’ and similar questions – focused recommendations for lining up outcomes with actions in a small business

Would like to have changed…

• The bright visuals work well but they may be too much for some people, and even the free space might bring anxiety about what to complete it with (but I’m really picking here!)

So that’s it – all six. I’ve carried these around with me for a few weeks now and friends and clients have had them in their hands too. I’ve loved them all and, honestly, the ‘what I’d like to have changed’ really was just nit picking. You’ll have noticed a theme amongst all six, which is that to get the benefit you’ll need to use them regularly. So which one takes your fancy and, importantly, which would you use the most to get from it what you need?