My Favorite Planners for 2022!
It’s Planner Time!
Hi, my name is Michelle and I’m a bit of a planner addict.
One of my favorite things about Fall is picking out my planner for the following year. When I was a kid the best part of going back to school was getting to pick out new folders and notebooks, binders and pens and pencils. Picking out my planner each year feels like that to me and I look forward to it every year.
My digital calendar is my source of truth, but my paper calendar is what I use to manage my day, my week and my tasks. I’ve gotten very picky about my paper calendar over the years. In this blog, I’m going to walk you through the five planners I looked at for 2022 and tell you which one I picked at the end!
The Simplified Planner by Emily Ley
The Simplified Planner by Emily Ley is a beautiful little planner. It’s also super popular on Instagram, and I can see why. It's pretty, it’s colorful and Emily Ley and her team have produced an attractive, fun and elegant planner. It’s beautifully designed, I love the fonts used. The planner has both monthly pages and weekly pages. At the top of each monthly spread is a handy little “Simplicity Tip”. It’s lovely.
There are several features I like about this planner. First of all, as I said, it’s very colorful. It’s a very happy little planner. One of my pet peeves about planners is the paper planners are made of. I like to use lots of colored pens, gel pens and markers and if the paper is cheap, the pens and markers bleed through and suddenly your planner is a mess. The Simplified Planner has excellent weight paper. Not only are the daily pages a really nice weight, but the monthly divider pages are also a nice weight. Usually, only the monthly divider pages are a decent weight because they need to support the monthly plastic tab.
I also like the double spiral binding. By the time I lug a planner around in the bottom of my ginormous purse or computer bag or carry on bag for a year, I do a number on the binding of any planner. This one I think would hold up.
Now, what I don’t like, or I should say what doesn’t work for me for this particular version of their planner, because I got the weekly version, but they do have a daily version that’s much bigger.
It’s called the Simplified Planner and for me it’s...a little TOO simple. Each day only has lines, no times, and there’s only seven lines. Even on a Sunday, I rarely have as few as seven things on my calendar.
Speaking of weekend days, you don’t even get a To Do section on Saturday and Sunday. I don’t know about you, but my weekend To Do list tends to be extensive! I need my weekend day areas to be just as functional as my weekday areas.
For those reasons, as much as I really do think this is a happy little planner. It’s not going to be one that works for me.
But, while it doesn’t work for me, it could be PERFECT for YOU! if it works for you, let me know what you love about it and I’ll share it over on my Instagram stories or Youtube shorts!
PRICE: Various $16 - $60
The Perfectly Planned Planner by Carrie & Co
The Perfectly Planned planner by Carrie & Co is out of the creative minds of the Carrie Green team over at the Female Entrepreneur Association.
The planner comes in two different sizes. The pale pink and light grey planners are nine inches wide by ten and a quarter inches high. The navy planner and the limited planners are seven and three-quarters wide and eight and three-quarters wide.
The Perfectly Planned planners have a monthly spread and there is a weekly overview and then a daily sheet. The individual gold coils holding it all together are nice and strong and sturdy.
But, because there are monthly, weekly, and daily pages, plus monthly goal planning pages, these planners weigh in at a HEFTY two pounds!
One thing about the Perfectly Planned planner that I love is the packaging! This planner comes beautifully packaged in a fantastic keepsake box that coordinates with the planner. So, as you’re going through the year you can toss in pictures, movie stubs, awards your kids received at school, just all kinds of things. It’s a fantastic idea.
I also love the pocket in the front of the planner. I wish it held a little more and I wish there was one in the back, too, but the one in the front works just fine.
The weight of the paper was pretty good. It doesn’t have a super sturdy feel, but my pens and markers didn’t bleed through and it wasn’t easily ripped out of the planner. So, no real complaints there.
At the beginning of each month there’s a page to set your high level intentions and goals for the month. It’s not as extensive as the The High Performance Planner I discuss below, but it’s a lovely little moment in the planner.
Lastly, on the daily pages, I quite liked having to write out my top three goals for the day and I used the daily notes section for other tasks I needed to attend to or notes I needed to make for myself throughout the day. Those two sections were fabulous. I did wish there were separate days for my Saturday and Sunday, though.
Now, for what I don’t like or didn’t find as useful as I was hoping.
For starters, the weight! While I love how sturdy the front and back covers are and the individual coils held up through a year of traveling with it. (I stuck it in my checked baggage twice.) If you are a girl on the go like I am, it’s just not portable enough for my lifestyle.
I bought this planner because I thought I’d love having a weekly overview page and then daily pages. As I look back over the past year, I rarely used the weekly pages. When I did it was because a big event was happening.
But, now I know this isn’t a deal-breaker for me when I’m evaluating a planner! That’s a WIN.
The biggest thing about the Perfectly Planned planner that didn’t work for me were the time slots. There were only hourly time slots. For me, this was a bigger deal breaker than even the weight. I really need a half-hour mark for my days. I have meetings and appointments that start on the half an hour. Sometimes, I’ll have a meeting that starts at the top of the hour and another that starts at the half-hour! So, not having those half-hour time slots was something I struggled with all year and what made me ultimately abandon the planner in September.
Overall, the Perfectly Planned planner is a gorgeous planner. If you aren’t someone who travels a lot, then the weight shouldn’t be a huge problem. Because it’s a monthly/weekly/daily planner, there are a LOT of pages and the coils held up magnificently. But, if you’re like me and you travel and really need those half-hour time slots, then this might not be the planner for you.
This planner ships from the UK, so there may also be a currency exchange you’ll need to manage if you’re in another country. With that said, I purchased my planner for 2021 in October of 2022 and had it shipped to California and I had it within three weeks.
PRICE $59 (approx due to currency exchange)
Passion Planner - Daily Version
I’ve used the Passion Planner weekly version in the past couple of years, but I thought I’d give their daily version a try after my experience with the Perfectly Planned planner.
The Passion Planner is geared more towards students than business people. With that said, I’ve always found it very useful.
The Passion Planner isn’t just a calendar. The beginning pages of the planner are dedicated to mapping out goals and then breaking them down into achievable steps. Additionally, there are journal questions at the beginning and end of each month to reflect on how the month went.
The one feature I quite liked in the daily planner that I didn’t see in the weekly planner was a two page spread where you can plan your entire year! THAT feature I absolutely loved!
I was also very happy that The Passion Planner daily has time slots each day from 5:00am to 11:00pm! Including the half-hour time slots that the Simplified Planner and the Perfectly Planned planners did not have.
There was also plenty of room each day for my tasks that didn’t necessarily need a dedicated time-slot. I personally didn’t have use for the “Today in one word” field, but it wasn’t in my way, so it didn’t bother me.
The setup each day is a two-page spread with the left-hand side for the calendar and notes/tasks. The entire right-hand side is the “Space of Infinite Possibility”. That’s an entire page for notes, brainstorming, mindmapping, or whatever. For me, that was mostly wasted space.
Now, let’s talk about the weekly version
The Passion Planner - Weekly Version
I’ve been using the weekly version of the Passion Planner for years and, quite frankly, it’s been my go-to planner. I’ve tried other planners, but I keep coming back to this one. My daughter originally introduced me to it when she was in college and it was a game-changer for her back then.
However, while she prefers the daily version, I prefer the weekly version.
The weekly version has all the same journal and goal planning features as the daily version, with one exception: the two-page annual planning pages are not in the weekly version. They offer a lot of supplemental downloads, but so far I can’t find the two-page annual spread. However, I did figure out a hack for it, which I’ll talk about in a minute.
The weekly spread has time slots from 6am to 10:30pm, and has full days for Saturday and Sunday - which I quite like.
You have the ability to choose between a week that goes from Monday to Sunday, or from Sunday to Saturday, which is another nice feature.
Another feature I quite like about the weekly Passion Planner is the To-Do List section for each week. There is both a Personal area and a Work area. As so many of us have to juggle both, this is a very useful feature.
The seven days of the week are spread across two pages, with the To-Do section on the bottom left and the “Space of Infinite Possibility” on the right. In the weekly version, the Space of Infinite Possibility is just big enough to write notes, ideas, and reminders in during the week.
In both the daily and weekly versions of the Passion Planner, there’s also a monthly spread, with squares for each day big enough to actually write in.
But the best part of the Passion Planner, the daily version or the weekly version, is that it’s FREE!
There are free downloads of both versions, plus other printables, available totally free on their website. All you have to do is input your email address and they’ll send you the PDF.
That makes trying out the Passion Planner super easy.
If you like it, then you can also buy a hard copy of the weekly or daily version on their website. The hard copy versions are nicely bound in leather and the paper is pretty good quality.
What I like to do is get the PDF download and print the entire planner. Then, I take it to someplace like Staples and have them bind it by quarter. This way, when I’m traveling, I don’t have to lug the entire year around.
I mentioned above that I love the two-page yearly spread, but that it’s not in the weekly planner, which is the one I prefer. What I do is download the daily planner for free and then only print those two pages. Then I add those pages to my weekly version. It’s a little bit of extra work, but it’s not too bad.
When it comes to the Passion Planner, there isn’t much I don’t love. The daily version doesn’t work for me, but my daughter loves it. I do love that I can print it and then have it bound in a way that meets my needs.
PRICE: FREE - $40. They have hard copy and digital. I do wish there was a way for me to make a donation though, since I only use the free PDF. There is an option to buy a planner to be donated if you’re up for that, though!
The High Performance Planner by Brendan Burchard
For our last planner, I looked at The High Performance Planner by Brendan Burchard. There is so much to unpack with this planner!
First of all, this is much more than just a calendar. This planner is a goals journal, a habit tracker, and a life management planner.
Each planner is for two months and is undated. At the beginning of each month, there is a two-page monthly spread with decent size boxes to note big days, birthdays, anniversaries, etc. Because each planner is for two months, there are daily pages. Similarly, to the daily Passion Planner, each day is a two-page spread, but that’s where the similarity ends.
Brendan Burchard is a life coach who is all about living your best life through thoughtful reflection of what you’re going to do and the energy you’re going to bring to your day. For each day, there are Morning Mindset questions and then Evening Journal questions to think through how the day went. Additionally, you can score yourself on how well you stuck with your daily habits. Some days I was really good at this, and some days I wasn’t. But, I always appreciated that they were there.
The time slots only ran from 6:00am to 7:30pm. I like to be able to time-block until at least 9pm, so this didn’t work for me all that well. However, I did appreciate the amount of space given to each time slot.
I really wanted to love this planner, but there was one big thing that didn’t work for me.
The binding.
The High Performance Planner has a solid book binding, not coils. Which means when it is fully open on my desk it takes up a LOT of real estate.
What’s more, while I appreciated the daily mindset questions and reflection, instead of becoming a joyful part of my day, they become a heavy task.
With that said, I’m in a super busy season of my life. If I wasn’t and I had more time each day in which I felt I could stop and reflect, I think I would have appreciated them more. I intend to try this planner again at some point in 2022 and see if I still have the same reaction.
So, which one did I pick?
For at least the first quarter of 2022, I’m going to go with the weekly version of the Passion Planner. Like I said, it’s the one I keep going back to! The two-page spread for the week really seems to work for me.
But, there are a couple of other planners I’m going to keep my eye on, so I’m not going to promise I won’t switch at some point next year!
As far as the journal and goal tracking options in the Passion Planner and in the High Performance Planner, I actually have a completely separate goals journal that I’ve been using for the last couple of years.
But you’re just going to have to wait until next week to read about that!
Do any of these planners resonate with you? Have tried one or two before and have thoughts? DM me over on Instagram and let’s talk about it!
OHHHH, and don’t forget this month's FREEBIE!!! My Sunday Money Date Checklist is my weekly check-in with how I’m meeting my money goals and it’s seriously been giving me LIFE! Check it out here, my gift to you. 🤗 🤗 🤗
**I am not a licensed financial advisor. I am a money expert and I offer education, tips, tricks and my opinions around money. You should consult a professional who understands your needs in order to make the best decisions for you! Additionally, some links in this blog may be affiliate links, which means if you click the link and buy the product I may earn a small commission - at NO COST to You! It’s one of the ways I keep the lights on around here so TYIA! 😉
