The Best Planners of 2017

Best Planners of 2017

One of my favorite things about a new year whether a new calendar year or a new school year is picking out a fresh planner. Growing up, my school required us to have and use planners and I have always enjoyed the process of writing it all down, highlighting it, and checking things off.

Technology has come a long way since my high school days, so I have integrated those tools and apps into my planning process as well. I keep all of my activities outside of the house on iCal. I have my iCal color-coded. Purple is for personal events (like workout classes, church, etc), blue for my photography business, green is for my day job, and yellow is for my blog events. I like keeping them all in separate categories and colors, so I can see my daily activities at a glance. I also find it helpful to input the address and add travel time for each event – that way when I’m headed out the door, I can quickly know how much time I need to get there and I can easily click on the address and go straight to my maps app.

Other apps that I have found useful include: ToDoist, Thinglist, Reminders, and Notes. The ToDoist is useful because it easily goes between the desktop and phone app, so you can always add what’s on your mind.

To me, however, nothing beats the process of writing down what needs to be done. I keep all of my blog tasks as well as my personal tasks in one planner like this one. I also like to write down my schedule in there. I love that it has one page for each day and that each page has space for an hourly schedule as well as for a to-do list. It also has space to write in evening plans (or dinner ideas) and gratitude. I’ve also linked up some other planner options below.