Modern life often resembles a race. While we try to balance numerous appointments, projects and other obligations, we still need to find time for sleep, eat, communicate… if we want to stay healthy and happy with our lifestyle. Work can be truly fulfilling, but we all need to spend quality time with friends and family.
Despite the fact a good old planners and organizers nowadays compete with many gadgets and apps, they still win in most cases thanks to their ease of use and handiness, so here it is …
A Selection Of Best Planners And Organizers
When we need a highly efficient tool, independent of sun light, internet connection and even electricity, a daily planner can literary save your day. Two to five minutes without interruption at the morning can pave the way to a successful day.
The secret is in prioritization. If we write down all tasks, we’ll easily make a selection of the most important ones. When we schedule them in the planner, we’ll see how much time we have for less important stuff. It is very likely some things will never find place in the schedule, but if they are not of much importance, there will be no damage.
Organize Every Day Of The Year With Daily Planner
A quality planner will help you not only to keep track of the day, it will provide a great overview of every week in the year, so you can use you time as efficient as possible.
It is made of sturdy materials, so you don’t have to worry if a little more sharp pen will make a hole through it, or if the hard covers will survive the year, if you really use it for every single day, what is definitely a major purpose of every organizer.
Can’t be described any better than already written on the front cover: Designed for action!
It is among the most popular planners in the world, with 88 pages altogether, a special section just for notes, packed with tips on time management, with blank pages to take notes and more.
Available in classic black and stand-out-from-the-crowd orange colors! Definitely a strong candidate for best daily planner.
Schedule Your Weeks With Weekly Planner
Some people start their week with Mondays, others with Sundays, but this is almost irrelevant. What actually counts, is how we use our time.
We all have only seven days weekly and it is entirely up to us what we will squeeze into this tight, predictable and often so ruthless frame. Experts advise to spend few minutes, maybe even a full hour every Sunday to make a visual plan of the next week.
What is the single most important event of the week? What shall be done on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday…? What are the chores we can’t avoid and what are the deadlines we must not miss?
When the major assignments are already settled and sprinkled throughout the week, don’t forget to include less attractive, yet still vital tasks, like cleaning the apartment or going to the library.
Of course you still need to plan time for fun and hopefully you can find at least few minutes in every day to do something selfish, just for you, maybe start a new habit, like short meditation or ten minutes workout which may significantly contribute to the quality of your life in long term.
Conquer This Year With Monthly Planner
Month is undoubtedly much more demanding unit of time to plan than a week or a day. You can accomplish a lot in one month. It’s for instance possible to learn the basics of foreign language or ballroom dance.
Maybe you can realize very demanding project at your job or take long memorable vacation. A month is relatively long but still manageable interval and it offers a lot of creative solutions with proper planning.
There are two pages for each month (starting with January and ending in December) and every month is divided into squares where you can enter the most important appointments or whatever you want.
There is obviously not enough space to enter detailed hour to hour schedule for every single day, however monthly calendars are aiming at different kind of organization.
For better idea maybe we should recall the old name of these calendars – month at a glance.
Make The Best Of It With Yearly Planner
We have already mentioned how much can be accomplished in a month. A full year is a whole different story. A year offers enough time to completely change a life path, if we want and sometimes even if we don’t want to.
Despite that a year can pass unbelievable fast and if we want to end it being proud on our achievements, we have to set some goals. These should be ambitious and still realistic.
What to expect from best yearly planners? They should be big enough to have space for everything we may consider important and small enough to be portable. Durability is another requirement. We don’t want seeing our organizers falling apart in May, don’t we? And, if possible, we like something extra, like additional pockets for cards or to-do lists. But this is all obvious.
Recent trends show planners are becoming more and more stylish. Yearly planners should not be only useful, they have to look good as well. After all they make popular gifts too.
Always At Hand, Week After Week: Pocket Planner
We live in mobile society and portability is valued more than ever before. Small size (3 1/2″ x 6″) with only 1/2″ thickness of course means less space for meetings and notes, so this kind of planners and organizers don’t offer so detailed planning than the already presented items.
With standard one week on two facing pages weekly pocket planners are often described as ‘a week in a glance format’.
Pocket planners are our handy little helpers, which we count on day after day. While they are not the best for getting a general overview of our weekly or monthly tasks, they may be invaluable when we want to take notes right here and right now.
The tear off section with blank sheets is always ready for taking important notes and it is refillable. There is also a separate section for addresses and important dates.
Academic Planner
Academic planners are another kind of organizers. Everybody with tiniest academic experience knows how much is going on in every school year, so it is reasonable to expect much bigger format, with a lot of space for all kinds of tasks (and events of course, students need to party, too, it’s scientific fact).
We also expect certain quality of paper and overall durability to survive the demanding academic lifestyle.
Classic academic planner is organized by weeks with monthly overview, so you can plan two things at once. Address and notes sections are also included, so you can have everything in one place, without unnecessary spent time for looking through pieces of paper with more or less important data.
How useful can such an academic organizer be, tells very simple yet fascinating fact: best academic planners (with slight changes) are on the market for more than a century and a half!
Her Secret: Mom Planner
We all know who is the busiest person in the world. Mummy! Mother get up first and stay awake long after the last kid falls asleep, and when somebody in the middle of the night needs a glass of water or a ghost buster or just a hug, mum is always ready.
Sometimes it seems she posses magical powers, she handles so many things at once, never forgets appointments at doctors, always changing sizes of kids’ clothes, birthdays and allergies of other mothers’ children and everything else. Her secret is finally disclosed – she uses a mom planner.
Yes, you got it right – supermoms exist and mom planners are giving them their super powers. Best planners for moms are packed with state of the art weapons like stickers, elastic bands, handy pockets and other additions even a Batman’s utility belt looks kind of boring and old fashioned.
There are several great planners for kids and husbands, but when we are talking about coordination of everybody’s schedule, there is only one possibility: Mom Planner – one planner to rule them all!
Who Needs Cute Planners?
Development of electronic organizers and planners didn’t hurt sales of paper planners. Despite all the fancy options we are used at modern gadgets, nothing feels like a paper and ability to cross out appointments, connect events or encircle meetings with red color.
Apart from all that, planners can act as kind of fashion statements a s well. There are many cute ones on the market and they are very popular among gift givers. The latest trend is ability to customization and personalization.
These planners are in general made from top quality materials and after customization with your personal photo, inscription and the name, they really give an additional value to their basic purpose.
Yes – they are still used for planning. We hope you have found one which suits you or your friend best!
