Ingredients of a good monthly planner
A monthly planner is a must if you are a person who has things to do, places to go, relationships to keep and dreams to live! Be picky about the planner you choose. It is going to hold your life’s adventures and keep you organized!
Use only one monthly planner.
Combining your personal and professional appointments, to-dos, and contacts will lead to a more balanced life and will help prevent conflicts. The planner will also replace messages on sticky notes, envelopes, napkins, or other papers of desperation. (wink)
Make sure your monthly planner is portable.
Make sure the planner is portable so you can schedule appointments, take action on to-dos, or to write down new to-do's as they come up. It will make your time at meetings, traveling, or simply having tea with a friend more meaningful. Take size and weight into consideration and become one with your planner.
The monthly planner must include the following:
- Master task list
- daily and/or weekly to-do list
- monthly calendar
- daily and/or weekly appointments
- place for other lists such as: dreams, books, gifts, etc.
- contacts/addresses
- notes for the day.
Customize your monthly planner.
Create special pages or dividers to include special projects, life goals, books to read, grocery lists, expense reports, pictures, websites, gift ideas, family records, etc. You can store whatever information you want to keep at your fingertips.
Match with your personality & current situation.
Make sure the planner works with your personality. If you enjoy working on the computer, you may consider using a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) or Pocket PC. There are tons of benefits to using a handheld computer. They provide alarm reminders, portability and back up on your computer desktop. It also makes it easy to add repeating appointments such as birthdays, girls' night out, date night, etc. Though small in size, they have available software for meal planning, money management, workout planners, plus more!
A paper planner will be beneficial for people who rarely work on the computer or who remember things better by writing them down. Decorative paper themes are also available to match your personality with sports, nature, comics, and more.
Weekly Planner vs Daily Planner
When deciding if you want the weekly or daily planner, you will first need to consider how active your days are.
The weekly planner is nice because you can see the week at a glance and filter your to-do and appointments based on your daily themes. The weekly planners tend to be smaller and less bulky because they use less paper.
A daily planner is nice when you have a large list of to-do's for each day and need a place to reference conversations, ideas, supplemental info for the to-do's, and follow-up.
Regardless if you choose the weekly planner or the daily planner, I HIGHLY recommend you get a two page layout. You will want the extra space.
Here are my personal favorites
Weekly & Daily Planner
PDA
I LOVE my PDA! I personally have a Tungsten T5 but I enjoyed my T3 too. I enjoy having a weekly planner, daily planner and a monthly planner in one place! I can also categorize my to-do's easily so I only have to see what errands I need to run, or I can see what I have coming up next week with an easy tap on my screen. I also like the idea it is backed up on my computer at home, should anything happen. One of my favorite things about the PDA is that it always looks "neat." There are no scribbles, things crossed off, or messy handwriting. I am also not storing or buying lots of paper for my planner. However, I will be the first admit, the PDA is not for everyone. If you want to explore the pro's and con's to PDA vs Paper planners, read PDA Review.
Organize your life with FranklinCovey!
Ahh...the Franklin Covey Planners. This is my first and ultimate love for monthly planners, or shall I say LIFE planners. The only reason I am not using Franklin Covey is because of my love for an electronic planner and commitment to creating a paperless office. They also have software you can use with the PDA, but they don't make versions for Apple Computers.
Franklin Covey has so many options to choose for size, layout, and even style. From my personal experience, the Monarch is huge and quite bulky to carry around. It also takes up a large portion of your desk. The Monarch does allow for you to place regular size paper into the binders for agendas, flyers, etc. The size I preferred is the Classic. It has the size of an 8 1/2 X11 page, folded in half, so you can still add your own pages, if needed.
Planner Pad
I really like the filtering process from placing to-do's into categories or projects, to the actions on specific days, and then the appointments. Having all the information on one page truly helps keep you aligned with your goals and projects.
Evaluate your current planner
You probably already have some form of a planner, whether it is one you purchased or created yourself--even if it is a normal pad of paper. Ask yourself "What's working about this current planner?" and "What is not working about this current planner?" Keep that list and use it to evaluate your future monthly planner. With the above suggestions and your own list you will find a planner that is better suited for your current needs.
Realize that using a new planner will involve initial investment of your time and money. The sooner you begin, the sooner you will benefit from the planner—the ultimate life management tool.
I have created a checklist you can print out and take with you to office supply stores, or to use as you shop on-line. Each sheet lets you evaluate 2 planners at a time. There is also space for you to add you own criteria from the evaluation of your current planner. Download checklist.
