The first word that comes to mind is WOW! I have been completely amazed by the daily Simplified Planner by Emily Ley.
Full Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. Making purchases through an affiliate link doesn’t cost you any extra but it helps offset my blog expenses.
As I researched planners for this blog, I came across the Simplified Planner by Emily Ley. As I’ve said previously, I’ve been a Franklin Covey user for over 20 years. But in reviewing the Emily Ley planner and her thoughts behind the design, I decided it was worth a more detailed look.
I purchased an Academic Daily Gold Pineapple Simplified Planner in early July. The academic year planners run from August 1 to July 31, with the academic school year. I started using the planner on August 1 and have been very pleasantly surprised
Shipping and Packaging
I ordered my planner on their launch day and even though that is one of their busiest days, I had my planner in less than 2 weeks. That’s a very reasonable turnaround time. The outer box was a standard brown UPS box. This is actually something I prefer since I live in a high traffic vacation area and we are regularly hearing about packages going missing from people’s porches. The less descript the better in my case.
Inside was anything but plain. The planners come in a navy storage box with gold labeling. This was shrink wrapped when it arrived but I removed the wrapping to prevent glare on the picture.
Inside the box, there was a small “for WHAT MATTERS MOST” booklet on top of the bubble wrapped planner.
Overall, the packaging and unboxing experience was excellent.
The Daily Simplified Planner
There are only a few pages before the calendar section but they are enough. First is the belongs to page and a nice note from Emily. That is followed by information on “THE PROCESS OF SIMPLIFYING,” “HOW TO USE YOUR SIMPLIFIED PLANNER,” and “CARING FOR YOUR SIMPLIFIED PLANNER”. Next comes the 2017 and 2018 calendar pages along with holiday pages for both years. Finally, there is a Bucket List page which I think is a great idea. This encourages you to think about the things you want to do or accomplish in the next year. Once they’re on the list, you can add them to your planner pages as appropriate.
Their website says: “The Simplified Planner is a beautiful, joyful agenda for busy women in all seasons of life. Designed minimally on purpose, its open pages serve as a fresh start every day. We believe margin matters, and our mission is to inspire women to organize, simplify, and carve white space for the good stuff of life.” I found this to be very true. Having a clean slate to work with each day made life seem less overwhelming. It really did free me up to be more intentional with my days.
Emily also does a Facebook Live the month before each set of planners start. She uses this to help everyone set up their planners for ultimate success.
The Monthly Calendar Tabs
There is a colorful mylar tab for each month that opens to the monthly spread. As the name of the planner suggests, the layout is very simple. Small calendars for last month and next month are in the upper right corner to provide easy reference. There is a ‘SIMPLICITY TIP” at the top of each page but it is small enough not to be distracting. There is a column on the left side for notes, then Sunday – Tuesday on the left page and Wednesday – Saturday on the right page. No lines within the days, just open blocks so that it’s easy to write as little or as much as you want.
The Daily Planner Pages
The Daily Simplified Planner is a one-page-per-day planner. The page is broken into four sections: MY DAY, TO DO, MEALS, and NOTES. Everything is laid out in two columns. The first two sections cover about 2/3 of the page length and the last two cover about 1/3. There is also a “Headline Space” at the top of each page with the day and date and space to use as you need.
The MY DAY schedule column is the upper left portion of the page. It has hour time blocks from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. printed along the left edge of the column. At the bottom of the column is a meal planning area.
The task list column is always on the right side of the page. This column is very simply a column of check circles and lines for your task list.
The planner is designed so that it can be folded back to show only one day. In addition, Saturday and Sunday share one page. Sunday has some weekly tasks added to the page to remind you to plan and reset each week.
This extremely simple layout has proven to be very productive and efficient.
Product Quality
This is one of the areas that impressed me the most.
The cover of the planner is very thick with a nice feel to it. It has gold embossed details that you can “feel”. I’m not known for being gentle with my planner. It goes with me everywhere. I haven’t gotten any scratches or dings so far.
The spiral is a thick weight and even with my “not so gentle” use hasn’t bent or split anywhere.
The paper is amazing. Their website says that is “Thick, 70lb, pure white Mohawk Via paper.” I don’t really know much about paper so that really didn’t tell me anything. It is a thicker paper than I’ve ever seen in a planner with a beautiful, matte finish that is easy to write on. And markers don’t bleed through so you don’t have to be careful about what you use to write on it.
My Experience with the SIMPLIFIED PLANNER
If I am completely honest, I didn’t think this planner would work for me. My planner has always been a lot more than schedule and task management. It has served as a journal and a location for lots of reference material. In addition, with the Franklin Planner system, when something needs to be planned for a future date, you write it on that date and forget about it.
This planner made me rethink my planning process. In the end, this turned out to be a good thing that made me much more intentional about my days.
I still plan my week out but I’m now doing that on Sunday instead of Friday. In addition, I’m only planning my schedule at this time. I might put a time block for a specific project on a day but I don’t actually put anything on my tasks lists until the night before.
I did have to find other solutions for some of the things that I used to keep in my planner but in hind sight, I think they just cluttered my mind. Because of the simplicity of the design of this planner, I found I was concentrating more on what I needed to accomplish and less on the layout of the planner.
The Prioritized Task List
This planner doesn’t have a column in the task list for prioritizing the items. To make my list a prioritized list, I needed to think about priorities first and then write them on the list in order. I thought this would mean extra work but it really didn’t. It made me think about what I wanted to accomplish each day before I started the list. I do my planning each evening for the next day and this continued to work.
I have always kept a “master task list” for those items that I want to do in the future but don’t have planned for a specific day. The problem I had on a semi-regular basis was that I’d forget to check the master task list when planning my day. Since writing things on future days doesn’t really work with this planner, I ended up expanding my master task list to include date when things needed to be done on a specific day. Now, the first step to making my prioritized task list is to check the master task list. Things aren’t getting lost on it and in just a month I’ve accomplished several things that have been on there for quite a while (some over a year).
Extras
They have a planner quiz on their website that will help you decide which one of their planners is the best fit for you. You can check it out here.
There are several additional products on the Emily Ley website. I’ve tried a few of them so far and I’m sure I’ll try more as time goes on. The quality I was impressed with in the planner has come through with every other product I have purchased from them. Check out their full line here.
Final Thoughts
I really didn’t think anyone could come up with a planner that would get me to move away from Franklin Covey. I didn’t think they could get me to even try another brand, let alone switch to it. Emily Ley accomplished that this month. I would highly recommend this planner to anyone looking for a one-page-per-day, coil-bound planner system.
There is only one recommendation for the company that I can come up with. I would love to see a ring-bound version of their planner. I understand why the weekend days share a day but with a ring-bound version, the extra pages wouldn’t be as much of an issue. It also allows for additional information in your planner when you want it. For me, that would combine the perfect format with the perfect planner. Until then, I’ll use the spiral-bound Daily Simplified Planner
You can also find additional planner reviews in these posts.
Planner Review: Fancy Pants by STARTplanner
Planner Review: Living Well Planner
Planner Review: Franklin Planner
Disclaimer: I purchased this planner system at full price from the company. The company did not provide any products or discounts. They were not even aware that I was planning to review the planner once it arrived.
Full Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. Making purchases through an affiliate link doesn’t cost you any extra but it helps offset my blog expenses.
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