Erin Condren Planner vs. The Day Designer by Whitney English
Once again, it is that time of the year when new planners are being sold for the upcoming year. I don't mean to freak you all out, but there's only a little over 1 month left of the year, and 2017 will be upon us. Now, let's not freak out about all of those New Year's Resolutions we made in the beginning of the year and totally forgot about, I'm not trying to make all of you anxious. Instead, let's talk about starting off 2017 on the right footing, setting ourselves up for success and making sure that we don't just forget about our New Year's resolutions and goals. My solution? Planners.
Around this time of the year, most stationary companies are going to release their 2017 planner. I have always found physical planners useful to get myself organized and manage my time effectively ever since I was in middle school. However, as I've gone to college, finding a planner that works for both my school, work and personal life was a bit harder. The key to using your planner to effectively help you out is to make sure that it's format works for you and fits your lifestyle. If it does, then you will most likely use it everyday to help you organize everything in your life which will then help you reach your goals to success! For the past four years, I've only used the Erin Condren Life Planner and the Whitney English Day Designer. I found that these two fit most of what I need in my planner and today I will be comparing the pros and cons for each of them.
Before I begin, there's two things I need to get out of the way:
- I must admit that I'm not big on planner decorating. I may use colored pens and add a few stickers here and there, but I don't go all out and decorate each day/week spread because I do not have the time to be doing that, for one, and also because I prefer to use planners for their practical use. So, I'm reviewing each planner for their practical uses and not for their decor-ability, although I'm pretty sure there's going to be reviews with that information somewhere on the Internet. If you have any questions about planner decorating, like sticker shops for their format and whatnot, I'm afraid I won't be much help.
- An important point I want to make before comparing these two planners is that they are very different in layout; I'm not comparing 2 very similar planners. These two are the most popular ones I've seen allover the Internet's Planning Community and the only ones I've tried. I'm approaching this review in a perspective of someone who is very busy both with school and work, but wants to be able to manage her time better while also efficiently reaching her goals in all aspects of her life. I hope you bear that in mind as you read on.
Erin Condren Life Planner
The Erin Condren Life Planner is formatted like most traditional planners where the entire week is on a 2-page spread. It contains the typical yearly and monthly overview, extra notes page at the end, xxx. The weekly spreads used to be only formatted vertically, but now it is available horizontally, and also vertically with hourly time stamps.
Pros:
- Easy to bring wherever - While this planner may not be as compact as some planners out there, I think that it is still fits most medium to large purses and it is not too heavy to carry around with you
- Weekly spread format is customizable - I personally prefer the vertical layout, but I like how there's different options available to fit your personal need.
- Colorful layout - I like how colorful the planner is. It already looks cute and you don't need to worry about designing it anymore. I think this definitely gets me excited to fill it in
- Snap-in Coil Clips - You can easily add extra pages to this planner by getting their snap-in coil clips and sticking it to any paper.
Cons:
- Not enough space - Some days I am so busy, I feel like the daily slots does not have enough space for me to write all the things I need to accomplish. I like to write down any task that I need to do, even if it's minor or any thoughts that come to mind that feels important. Also, I'm a note taker, so if some recommendation for a book, movie, article, etc. comes up, I like writing it down on my planner.
- Lacking of guided goal planning pages - This planner does offer a yearly goal planning page and a blank page every month that can be used for goal planning, but for me it isn't enough. I really like setting yearly, monthly, weekly and daily goals. I like to set big goals and then break them down into smaller action items for different time periods. I am better at keeping track and being on track of what I want to accomplish when I do this. Not having these pages have led me to find some creative ways to fill in for this, but I'd like to just have one in my planner that's ready to go.
The Day Designer by Whitney English
I think that the Day Designer offers a more comprehensive planning format. The planner starts off with brainstorming your long-term goals and then it walks you through designing a yearly goal that gets broken down into three-month periods.
Pros:
- Daily Pages - I love everything about this set-up! The daily schedule is from 6AM to 9PM which is my ideal daily schedule. I like the "Top 3" of the day which keeps your focus on those tasks. I also like that there's space for other things that you can track like bills, urgent things, dollars, etc.
- Lots of Space - Because you get a whole page to plan a day, there's lots of space to write every to do and every little detail of notes you need to add to make your daily planning easier.
- Larger Monthly Page - Because I'm planning for work, school and my personal life, a bigger monthly overview calendar gives me more space to schedule important dates for the entire month. There are days where I have multiple important things coming up that needs to fit in one slot.
- Goal Setting Page - I like how it walks you through goal setting for the year and breaks it down into 3 month periods. It makes getting started and staying on track a lot easier.
- Minimalist Design - There's not a lot of fluff to the design. The entire layout is printed in a gray tone. Like I mentioned earlier, I like using colored pens, so it contrasts nicely against the gray backdrop.
Cons:
- Too large and heavy - To compensate for giving a lot of space, this planner is larger and definitely heavier. Because of that, I sometimes find myself leaving it at home on some days because it's very bulky to lug around with me.
- Can't add any pages - While this planner fulfills most of my planner needs, there are times when I want to add my own customized pages at certain sections of the planner, however the prong of this planner does not really allow for that type of customization.
The Verdict:
While both planners have a lot of great pros, I would honestly pick The Day Designer as my planner than the Erin Condren life planner. I have a very tight schedule and balancing work, school, blogging, my freelance business and personal activities is much easier to do with the Day Designer than the Erin Condren planner. I need a planner that can accommodate all of these things, and the Day Designer does that.
With that said, I am glad that Whitney English recently released the Day Designer A5 Luxe Planners that snap into a binder. This will definitely solve the cons that I had with the original Day Designer! I have ordered mine already to use for 2017! I can't wait to use it and review it for you!
