Top 3 Planners For 2022

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I’ve culled my planner stack this year. At least for now, there are only three real planners I’m going to be using. A tiny little planner pile. 

I have edited my life and made things more simple. This year what I need most is a home for all the things. I’ve chosen to split my life into personal and business. No one planner can be everything. Letting planners be functional means playing to their strengths.  

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This year my chief planner will be my Erin Condren Vertical Life Planner. This has been my central planner for five years now. I hadn’t realized it had been that long in my rotation. This year I am determined to use every page inside.  

Here’s a breakdown: 

  • ·      The front two pages of boxes are home to the eight areas of my life I want to keep track of

  • ·      I’ve got the January note pages track memories, a task list for the month, a drill down on my business and my personal side of the house, a list of books I’ve chosen to read this month

  • ·      The monthly view has bills, paydays, and my editorial calendar.

  • ·      My weekly pages are the same with the additions of a fruit and veggie tracker and a hydration tracker.

  • ·      I’ve popped in a meal tracker I can write on every week.

  • ·      I track spending, some habits, main goals, appointments, and meetings.

  • ·      The note pages in the back are harder for me to fill up. I was going to do a reading log, but t here aren’t enough note pages for all I wanted to do. If anyone has ideas, I’d love to hear them.  

My second planner is Sarra Cannon’s HB90 Goal Planner. I used it last year and got more words on the page than in any other year and some edits done. This planner is a workout. By the time you’ve planned the first quarter, you can’t believe you ever planned your writing business without it. She’s added task blocks this year. I don’t totally understand how to use them yet, but that’s on me. I’ve been spending time on other things. Oh, and if you want to learn about a Kanban board for writers, check out her YouTube.  

My third planner is more of a non-planner. It’s a commonplace book. I heard about it in a workshop with Shaunta Grimes over at Ninja Writers. These books have been around hundreds of years.

A commonplace book is a place for all the minutiae of life. A place for snippets. There is no wrong way to keep a commonplace book. I’ve chosen to lifelog in mine. One of my goals this year is not to get lost in everyone else’s goals. I’ve never taken selfies, but this year I’m doing them. I print them out using a Polaroid zip printer and stick them in. It’s a commitment to my mental health goals. Fortune cookie strips, receipts, notes from a meeting, epherma and to do’s that aren’t written anywhere else all end up in the commonplace book. I’m having fun.

That’s a wrap. Keeping it simple while I heal some stress that I let eat my soul. What’s in your planner stack?