2018 planners for busy women to take action this year
Anne of Green Gables has one of my favourite sayings:
Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?
Well, a new year is like a new day with a WHOLE YEAR of potential perfection staring out ahead of you with all the exciting opportunities you can imagine.
I always take time to reflect in January and plan for the year ahead. One of my favourite tools to help those dreams become reality (or closer to reality) is a new planner.
Gone are the days when everyone had the same navy or black (red, if you’re edgy) calendar or diary from Officeworks. Now there are zillions of wonderful planner products on the market.
You can of course use a bullet journal, which is simply a blank diary where you create your own entries. That’s exciting, but as a busy working woman and mother, I need someone to do the hard work of creating structure for me in advance.
Here is my shortlist of the best planners for busy women for 2018. Bonus: they are all Australian designed and made!
Hey Control Freak
Mind. Blown. This planner is quarterly only! Before you freak out, let me tell you that this gives you a lot more space to write your plans, sort out your goals, and get clear on what you want to achieve.
You can subscribe and get a new planner each quarter. I love that just the act of getting a new planner in April will prompt a quarterly ‘where did the first months of the year go?’ evaluation. This planner forces you to consider your progress on your goals every quarter.
If you’re a business owner, you’ll love the tips and prompts for reflection and planning on social media, lead generation and financial management.
Plus, it’s created and launched by two uber-cool Perth chicks. It’s nice to know you’re supporting a gun small business, not a bland corporate behemoth.
Saint Belford
This is less of a diary and more of a lifestyle curator.
With a week to a page format, it allows for a weekly review of your goals, with focus on meal plans, habit tracking, to do lists and what’s on. It also has a blank page, the drawing board, that you can use for whatever detail you like. You could use this for tracking expenses or weekly income, planning blog posts, jotting down meeting notes – anything really.
It also features inspiring quotes to get you motivated as well as mission-based prompts to help you action your desire from vague dream to step-by-step doable process.
Two Australian entrepreneurs created Saint Belford, with the goal of launching a planner that enables users to slow down by focussing on what’s truly important in life.
https://www.saintbelford.com.au/
Kailie Burgis
Etsy has the best stuff. This Etsy store has a lovely little planner by Gold Coast artist Kailie Burgis. This A5 hard cover planner is split into six months, and you get a discount if you buy the second planner later on. So, if you’re in finance like me, you’ll appreciate the chance to plan for both calendar years and financial years.
This planner is beautifully decorated and provides prompts for goal setting for the month ahead, focusing on areas such as:
- bills due
- things to get done
- habit tracking
- reminders
- long term and short term goals
It features lovely little items for reflection throughout and also encourages healthy habits such as eating well, drinking water and exercise.
Canvast
This is a good-looking planner. The cover is luxurious black hardcover cloth subtly embossed with the Canvast logo. But it’s what’s on the inside that counts.
The week to a page planner is undated, so you can fill it out fresh and get started anytime. If you take two weeks off on holiday you can leave the pages blank and pick up where you left off. Each week features sections for people to see, breakfast, lunch and dinner, ideas and priorities. I’m loving the perforated to-do lists that you can pull out and take with you anywhere. It also has a monthly section so you can view your entire month at a glance. And, of course, space to prompt you to consider your goals and the steps you need to take to achieve them.
It features plenty of inspirational sayings, and not the #overdone ones, mind you. You get space with prompts for left-of-centre elements such as for podcasts to listen to, places to travel, books to read and favourite websites.
Pop Planner
Another wonderful way to support a startup! These Aussie girls used Kickstarter to create their passion project, the pop planner. It has a soft beautiful faux leather cover that makes it easy to take with you on about town. There’s no spiral binding to get in the way, instead there are sewn in pages that make it more comfortable to use. It has two ribbons to bookmark your favourite pages and a document pocket to store important papers.
The mantra for this planner is: plan, organise, prioritise, and that’s just what it helps you do. It has all the sections you’d expect (goal setting, appointments, meal planning) and a few you would not. These include a two page planner for Christmas, details on Australian holidays, and space to build your own vision board right into the planner. The website lacks detail but because they’re a startup you can congratulate yourself for getting on board nice and early!
I hope your planner of choice brings you much success and goal achievement in 2018…
Bring it on!
Love, Dianna and the Miss Links team