It is time… to make that very important decision for the new year.  While I’ve been pretty sure on my preferred planner style for a long time, I still fantasize that there might be a totally different system out there that transforms my life and boosts my productivity and gets the work done for me or something dreamy like that.  Aside from how much I rely on a planner to stay organized, I’m simply a paper fanatic and love discovering and hoarding beautiful designs and layouts.  That, combined with my curiosity in trying out different planner styles, pretty much requires that I get several planners a year.  I’m too impatient to try out only one per year, there are only so many years!  So from all my scouring, ranging from basic features to in depth goal planning, here are the ones I’m admiring.

01| Sugar Paper Planner– Every year I get the Sugar Paper Planner and every year it ends up being my favorite of all.  This year especially I feel they’ve perfected the balance of simple and detailed.  The weekly notes pages have sections to list your top three priorities for the week, to-do list with check boxes, to email, to buy, goals, all while staying compact with plenty of note taking space.  I love the sturdy binder cover and while I like this kraft color one, I like my gray one more.  Monthly tabs, monthly overview, clean design, this planner has become my standard for perfect and I really don’t need to look at other ones but I do anyway.

02| Marjolein Delhaas Basic Planner– Got this one purely because it’s beautiful and everything I love about minimal design.  Though gorgeous, it doesn’t fulfill all my needs, but this is by far the planner design of my dreams.  If we could get the Sugar Paper Planner to look like this I’ll vow to stop looking for another planner again (for a little bit).  Also this “almond” color has been added to my list of favorite colors.

03| An Organised Life– Another minimal beauty that keeps it pretty basic, with a rare inclusion of a pen holder- I appreciate that.  Again, this is one I love for the design and is definitely geared more towards a free-form planner user that doesn’t want too much structure.

04| Journal J– Love the cover and layout/design of the pages.  Clean lines and fonts, I see you.  A subtle detail I noticed is how each day in the weekly view is enclosed in a square shape.  This is way more spatially comfortable for how I mostly write in lists and something I’d see myself appreciating.  I also like the extra notes and drawing pages.

05| Get to Work Book– I have come so close so many times to getting this one after repeatedly hearing great things about it.  I think what holds me back is that 1) it’s bulky and 2) has a lot going on that I’m not sure I would use.  Still, I’m very curious to check it out for the project breakdown pages and reflect and goal-set pages.  The layout of everything also feels very intuitive and easy to navigate.

06| Grid Planner– Just beautiful and one of my favorite patterns, who knew.  A bit of a no-no for me that it’s undated but I can forgive that.  I like how each day has a list by hour of the day plus a blank space for notes or drawings.  The extra space for notes next to each week in the monthly view is also very clutch.

07| Project Planner– This too is annoyingly undated but uniquely focuses on project planning and timelines.  Lots and lots of note taking space and features for organizing project info, and still has monthly and weekly views.

08| Hustle Daily Business Planner–  One of the more hardcore ones I’m mentioning and it’s geared towards business planning as the name already suggests. I’m super intrigued to test this one out since I file it under hoping it gets the work done for me, HA.  Has a ton of features like budgeting, social media planning, goal tracking, health and food planning, etc…  It also once again feels like it might be overkill, but also might be life-changing??

09| Productivity Planner– Came really close to getting this one on a few occasions, too.  I see this as something more supplemental to a regular planner since it focuses on a productivity method.  It employs the Pomodoro system which breaks down a large task into time intervals with short breaks in between.  This is actually the way I try to work now but I’d be interested in seeing if tracking the progress in this planner would help keep me more focused.

10| Daily Greatness Business Planner–  The other hardcore one on this list.  The business vision planning and action pages look both challenging and beneficial, maybe to the point of intimidation but I have yet to adopt a system that keeps me on top of these exercises.  I see this as a good place to start establishing structure and building healthy business habits.  Side note: wish it came in more colors.

Wouldn’t it be cool if all planners offered smaller trial run versions so you can test them out and then make a better decision of which one you’ll commit to for a WHOLE year?  Told you this is a very important decision.  Here’s where you tell me what planner you use, or are going/wanting to use, or think I should use.  Thoughts?  Contemplating a new option from this list?