Planner Peace: Amanda
Amanda wrote in identifying two planner brands giving her peace — neither of which I had heard of! These include the Legend Planner (Amazon; undated) and the Living Well Planner (their shop; also undated!).
Her comments on the Legend include: “really easy to use goal setting pages for short and long term goal setting” and “really thick pages and 3 bookmarks”, while she notes that the Living Well contains “goal setting pages and budget built in. Also it breaks down one project per month, and one main goal per month. Plus more. Thick pages and tabs for each month”. The former is more budget friendly, but Living Well apparently has sales! Two new options for those seeking unique undated options with goal planning content included! Thank you Amanda!
Planner News
Several of you wrote in to alert me that EC has finally released new wall systems! Instead of whiteboards these are CLEAR, which are very pretty and still quite functional.
These do look a bit smaller than the whiteboard we use at our house and the clear board might mean some shadowing of the letters which I probably should not care about (but I have to admit I would notice it!).
Also, MakseLife has launched their new 2023 products – though I don’t see their new goal setting companion books on sale yet! Hopefully soon. Here is the (undated) 2022 version which is now on sale!
Audio Q: What do you do with tentative future events?
My answers: either use a sticky in my planner or put “discuss XYZ event” in google calendar (or my paper planner) to remind me to make a firmer decision closer to the date!
Do you have your own technique? Please share for listener Jen!
Listener IDEA: PlannerBase
A very smart listener has pointed out that there needs to be a central hub where you could search for your perfect planner by entering ideal characteristics — a PlannerBase! This tool could be created by entering characteristics of various planners (probably not EVERY planner, but perhaps 20 popular brands?) and allow users to search for size / layout / cover type / etc.
She suggested I work with someone to put something like this together. I LOOOOVE the idea. I am putting out a call to see if a) anyone has experience in building anything like this and b) if it already exists somewhere that I’m not aware of!
Planning On Fridays
This is 100% due to Laura‘s influence and the suggestion in her new book, Tranquility By Tuesday! I always planned on Sundays but I am beginning to see the value of a FRIDAY plan – with my favorite aspect being NOT having to deal with grocery ordering and meal planning over the weekend!
I’m also finding that planning out (particularly social events) the following weekend on Friday can be helpful.
Love of the Week:
Sooofa soft ring notebook by Kokuyo, ordered from JetPens:
Transition Life
Just chatted a bit about current feelings (all the feelings!) related to my career transition. I have exciting things underway but it’s also a bit scary! I discuss working on being patient with myself and how planning in close range (vs focusing on the far away future) can be helpful in this kind of circumstance.
13 Comments
Love the hub idea! I imagine a spreadsheet could do this rather simply…
I plan work stuff on Friday and life stuff on Sunday, a kind of Sunday basket system. That’s working right now.
Excited to listen to this episode (and consider Friday planning!) The MakseLife updated companion notebooks are available, here (source is that I ordered them, so that’s how I know, haha): https://makselife.com/collections/2023-collection/products/goal-setting-companion-notebook-set-2023
Oh thank you! Somehow I could not find on their site this morning! Will fix h the link too tomorrow!
PlannerBase would be amazing — I would 100% use that right now! I know I need to order for 2023 and have been using Plum Paper for the last 4 years — which I love, but I kind of want to try something different for 2023 but don’t really know how to figure out what!
I also use Legend Planner and I love it. Inexpensive, the yearly and quarter goal planning sections are good. Also has monthly review pages (which sadly, I don’t always do). Would love a Shu Review for your opinion!
I do my planning on Thursday evening. It allows me to firm up any weekend plans, and I will often try to start crossing off my weekend to-do list early so I can relax more. It also works best because most of our close friends are Orthodox Jews, so if I need to firm up Shabbat lunch plans or Sun plans, Thurs is the prime time to do it since they will be offline Fri night to Sat night. As Laura has said, the midway point of the week is 5pm Thursday. This was really an ah-ha for me. So, on Thurs, I look at the next week and a half-ish.
https://lauravanderkam.com/2017/10/midway-point-week/
If you like having a wall planner but don’t want white or clear, you should check out Daily Orders, which has black acrylic wall planners. http://www.dailyorders.com.au
I’ve had the large command centre for a few years, and love it! The company is based in Australia though so I’m not sure how much shipping would be to the US.
I listened to this on the way home from work this afternoon – great episode! I loved the listener question on how to handle events you might be interested in but haven’t confirmed. I put those in my Google calendar but flag them a different colour to confirmed events (in my case, I use a charcoal grey because it contrasts with my usual purple). That way I can see it, and my eye is drawn to it when I’m planning my week, but I can also see instantly that it’s not a confirmed event. If it’s something that needs tickets or an RSVP, I will put a reminder on the appropriate day in my calendar to check out. I’m a very visual person, so having something stand out against my usual colour scheme really helps call the events out.
Random comments: Hi, Sarah! What ever happened with the Oprah planner last year? My order was canceled and refunded by Amazon on its own. Hoping to try to get a copy soon. Also, Passion Planner downsized classic size because their barebones shipping methods meant planners were getting damaged when jammed into residential mailboxes — I would have paid more for shipping materials that held up, versus changing from a standard size to an atypical size for this reason. 🙁 And, as always, a vote for a BLP planning retreat!!
Hi! I did a review of Oprah!! Here: https://theshubox.com/2021/12/ep-73-two-journals-for-cozy-reflection-time.html
I ordered it normally and it did come so I’m so sorry yours didn’t! I didn’t LOOOOVE it and never used it and I’m pretty sure I gave it away to my neighborhood group!!!
and yes – I’ve heard that about PP 🙁 I know they were trying to keep costs reasonable. Maybe in the future they need BOTH size options to keep everyone happy?
Hey Sarah! If you want a Laural Denise planner, I have one I’m not using. Let me know and I can get it to you!
Danny! That is so nice! Only if I can send you something back. I’ll email you!