Product review: 2013 Daily Planner / Organizer from Tools4Wisdom

I am a list person. Each day I keep a list of tasks I need to accomplish that day, crossing out the ones I have completed and adding new ones through out the day. When this planner arrived in the mail I had a list of 17 tasks on a sheet of paper. Even though I work with computers every day and love my tablet, I prefer paper-based lists. It seems that I remember things better when I write them down, and there is serious satisfaction in crossing things out from the list when the task is done!

When the Daily Planner arrived in the mail I transferred my 17 tasks to the daily planner and lived with it for several days before writing this review so I can fully evaluate how it is working for me.

The Daily Planner is 8.6" by 11" spiral bound notebook. It is made out of high quality matte paper that is easy to write on. Its weight is 1 pound 5.4 oz on my digital scale. I am attaching a collage of 2 photos. You can see the organizer on the postal scale in photo #2.

The minder has several sections:
(1) A monthly section shows one month at a glance. The days are labelled with a day of the week but no Month or Date labels, which allows you to use it for any year or month you want after you add labels yourself into the provided spaces.
Each month fits on one side of the organizer, so you can see two months if the organizer opened (i.e. not folded in half). There are 12 pages that show the monthly layout.
(2) Monthly goals and ideas section allows you to identify top goals for the month. It also has a section to write down steps to accomplish these goals. Each month goals/steps take 2 pages. This section follows the 12 month layout pages, and there are total of 24 pages for goals/steps.
(3) Daily planner section follows the monthly section. The daily planner pages take 3/4 of the book, as obviously you will be using them up faster than the other pages. This section allows you to break down your daily tasks in to three sections: top priority, important but not urgent, and not important and not urgent. It also helps you to determine the top goal for the day and specific steps to accomplish it. This section takes the top half of each page. The second half of the page contains continuous improvement questions, e.g. "what will I do to improve my mental focus?" At the bottom of the page there is an hourly chart, spanning from 9 am to 7 pm where you can mark things that have to happen at a certain time.

After living with the daily planner for a number of days here are my observations

I LIKED:

1. I loved how the daily planner forced me to sort my daily tasks into three priorities. This is my favorite feature of the book as it helps me organize thoughts and priorities about the tasks for the day.
2. I liked the time line at the bottom of the daily page, as I could see my entire day schedule quickly
3. I liked the spiral binding of the book, it stays open on the day you want and it is easy to flip back and look at the previous days. It is easy to lose loose paper pages, the daily minder keeps them all together.
4. I liked that I can tear out pages without damaging the construction of the minder.
5. I liked how the goals of the month lead you into dividing your project into smaller steps, making the task less daunting.

I DID NOT LIKE:

1. I wish my favorite section - the three columns of the daily tasks - was longer. When I transferred my 17 tasks to the daily planner I had hard time fitting them all in. The three columns currently have 8 lines each. Each column is 1/3 of the page, so some task descriptions I had took more than one line (sometimes I had a phone number associated with a task or some additional info that did not lend well to abbreviation). On the other hand the continuous improvement questions section was not that important to me, so I would have been okay giving it up to have a larger area for tasks.

MY ADDITION:

1. I tied a ribbon to the back of the spiral of the organizer. This gave me a bookmark that I keep on the current day so it is easy for me to open the minder to the right page. (See photo #2 which can be found by following 'customer photos' link under the main photo)

I received a copy of this minder from Tools4Wisdom for the purpose of evaluation and an honest review.
As a person who likes making (and completing!) lists I enjoy working with this minder. There are a few things that could have made it fit how I work better (e.g. allow for longer tasks lists) and I wrote my suggestions to the manufacture who was very receptive to new ideas, clearly they care about their products and customers. I recommend this organizer!

You can find 'Daily planner' on Amazon by following this link


Ali Julia review ★★★★☆