B2S Series: My Favorite Planner

Coming back at ya’ today with the next installment of my fall 2019 Back to School Series, discussing my absolute favorite planner of all time. Anyone who’s ever had to take photos for my blog or who has read the post about my crazy Excel spreadsheet can probably guess that I’m a Type A personality, so it’s no surprise that I get a little obsessive about my schedule and to-do lists. You can imagine how many daytimers I’ve tried over the years… So today I want to share my holy grail of planners, talk about why you should be using a planner (especially as a college student), and provide a link to a Labor Day sale! Now let’s get started (because today’s carefully outlined schedule says it’s time to do so, wink wink).

Why Should You Use a Planner?

I’m sure you already know how important it is to your professional/academic/social life to never accidentally miss an appointment and to be on time to all of your events, so I’ll spare you that lecture. Once you get to college, though, you won’t have your parents hovering around anymore to remind you of that interview you have at noon or the labs you have on 8 am Friday mornings. I can’t tell you how many of my classmates and peers missed scheduled events during the first few weeks of freshman year, and I’m certain it was because they had nowhere to write down the times/locations after the teacher told us them in class. In one ear and out the other, am I right?

Yes, you can use a calendar app on your phone or laptop to keep track of events. If that works for you, great! Personally, I still prefer handwriting in a tangible planner. I mean, how else will I get an excuse to use fun sparkly gel pens? Not only do I enjoy the satisfaction of physically crossing things off my daily to-do lists, but I’ve also found that handwriting events and times helps me to remember them better. Also, I never have to worry about accidentally typing the wrong time into a digital calendar! I guess you’ll just have to call me old-fashioned.

What Planner Do I Use and What Are Its Features?

Last year in my freshman seminar class, my professor required that we all purchase the Academic Passion Planner* online. Passion Planner is its own company specializing in various kinds of planners that are designed to—you guessed it—help you cultivate your passions and strive towards your goals. For every planner purchased, they also donate one to someone in need! This post is not sponsored or anything, I just really love their planners.

So much so, in fact, that I was super-duper excited to buy a new one for this school year. (Just an FYI, academic planners mean they start in August and end in July. Regular planners, starting in January and ending in December, are also available to purchase.) So why do I enjoy my Passion Planner so much? Here are just a few of the great features!

• The planner has both a spacious monthly layout, which I use to write general events (color-coded, of course), and a weekly layout, which has clear lines on every hour to easily write down the exact times of all your appointments.
• The planner has little boxes to write your monthly, weekly, and daily focuses. These help you stay on top of your goals and define the one thing you need to accomplish each day/week/month in order for that block of time to be considered a success.
• Just to make sure you’re not getting too caught up on productivity, the monthly layout includes a spot for your social life, with a place to list people you want to see and places you want to go. It even has a “not to-do list” to remind you of bad habits you want to avoid.
• The planner separates to-do lists and projects based on whether it’s personal or for work (or in my case, school). Too often we get caught up in the daily demands of our classes that we forget about the goals we want to accomplish for ourselves, in our own time. This awesome feature helps remind you to work towards both and to not put yourself on the back-burner!
• The Passion Planner is designed to inspire you and help you reach your goals, so it also includes motivational quotes and a place to write down good things that happened to you—I love that positivity!

There are so many other unique aspects of the Passion Planner, but if I talked about all of them and how I use it, this would be a very long blog post. In addition to traditional planner features like the monthly/weekly layouts, the Passion Planner is meant to be your one-stop shop to keep all your thoughts. It has lots of blank space to brainstorm and includes something called a mind map, which is basically a guide to help you break down and achieve your life goals! There are infinite ways to use your planner and personalize it to your needs. It took me a few weeks to get used to the layout and all the different features, but once I did, I fell in love!

If you need more convincing or want to see more of the planner up-close and personal, their website and social media have tons of cute videos to showcase all the different ways to personalize the Passion Planner and cater it to your needs.

So How Can I Get My Hands on the Passion Planner?!!

Okay okay, so you realized that you should have a physical planner to keep your brain in order. And you realized you need it to be the Passion Planner, which is perfect for all you students and dreamers hustling to make your goals a reality. Now the only question left is, how can you buy it? Well, and, how much does it cost…

I ordered the black, medium-sized academic planner, which is originally $30 (plus shipping, so in total mine was $37). Yes, that’s a lot of money for a planner. BUT, as I’ve already mentioned, this planner offers a lot of really cool features that other daytimers don’t. Not to mention, because the planner has so much space to keep to-do lists and random thoughts, you spend less money on traditional list-pads and sticky notes. They even donate a planner for every one purchased, so you can feel good that your money is well spent.

If that’s not enough to convince you, you’ll be happy to hear that Passion Planner is currently having a Labor Day sale on all academic planners! You can now purchase the exact planner that I have for $24, plus shipping. I ordered mine a week and a half ago and now I wish I had held out for the sale! Either way though, I couldn’t live without my planner and am glad to have it, regardless of the price. You can buy your Passion Planner HERE! But don’t wait, the sale ends tomorrow!

To check out my other Back to School posts, click the links below!

B2S Series: How to Make the Most of College

B2S Series: My #1 Tip for Remembering Names

Do you use a planner? What’s your favorite kind, and what are your best tips for staying organized? I’m obsessed with color-coding, so that’s how I know which events are related to school, work, athletics, social life, etc. Let’s chat organization in the comments below!

Have a great Labor Day, girly.

Miles of smiles,

Grace

*Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. This means that, at no additional cost to you, I may make a small commission if you click the links and make a purchase. All thoughts and opinions are my own.