At the end of every year, I will spend hours upon hours poring and researching all the different planners out there in my quest to find the PERFECT planner. Despite spending about 20 hours each year, I’ve come to the conclusion that it doesn’t exist and will have to make my own one day. However, I have finally found CLOSE to the perfect planner (and I double checked again this year and still nothing beats it) and I think I should share the fruits of my by now 60 something hours of research. Everyone has different desires in a planner though so I’m giving a list of the best I’ve found for different reasons.
For me, I wanted both BEAUTY and FUNCTIONALITY. It seemed like planners only fell into one bucket or the other, but good news! The near perfect planner I found has a mix of both (although it leans towards functionality so I prettify it with stickers!). I have personally tried every single one of these planners I’m recommending except for one that I just discovered for 2024.
Let’s start with the Functionally great planners (click on the titles to check out the product)
Pros: Prioritized tasks for the day, Cute Turquoise option (this was the one I bought), Weekly Reflections and Weekly Goals pages
Cons: The inside isn’t that pretty looking, it is sold out on the US site as of the time of this writing, so you have to ship it from the UK/Germany site
Pros: You get to write down your MOST important task of the day, followed by the 2nd 3rd 4th and 5th, and somehow this additional granularity of knowing what is the most important task, and the way it is laid out boosted my productivity. Also has a weekly planning page where you get to list the top five most important tasks for the week followed by others, and a reminder to only do those after the most important tasks have been completed. Overall really great for focusing on what’s important.
Cons: It is only 3 months long so you have to buy 4 for the whole year.
Now for my favorite part, THE BEAUTIFUL!
- I am OBSESSED and I mean OBSESSED with the Daphne’s Diary Planner
They are absolutely GORGEOUS and bring me so much joy. So much so that I even buy previous years just to flip thru them and doodle lol. You get a different beautiful design to enjoy every week!! The US stock varies though, when it’s in stock it’s free Amazon prime shipping but when it’s not you have to pay for shipping from the UK.
Con – Small tiny space to write so it’s not very practical unless you don’t have much to write down each day. I wanted this so badly though, so even though I usually have long ass to-do lists each day, I figured I’d find a use for it somehow and I did! I use mine to write things like gratitudes or jot down thoughts.
- Second and 3rd choice for beauty:
Not quite as gorgeous as Daphne’s, and also not much writing space, and you get one new design per month (with slight variations on the theme each week) but it’s still very pretty and a lot cheaper than Daphne’s
Fireweed 2024
Same company as Katie Daisy but a different beautiful design. This one I’ve not bought before but it looks so pretty!
Saved the best for last! For the BEST OF BOTH WORLDS of functionality meets beatuy, all the way from Australia (I told you I’m obsessed. I scoured the GLOBE for the best planner in the WORLD!) Introducing:
LH AGENDA – Made by women, for women! They have both Day planners and Weekly planners, as well as a host of other goodies you can check out. I like their Make Your Mark self-coaching journal.
I especially love them because they have a bunch of goal setting pages for the start of the year eg “self discovery” “life review” “ideal day” “my legacy” amongst others, a quarterly AND monthly review section, weekly goals section as well as daily to-dos. A year end review, AND inspirational quotes! I think you will see why I think it’s the almost perfect planner!
They have a number of options – I personally use the Weekly Large
But I’m going to be doing a lot of traveling in 2024 (I brag! Europe and Japan!) so I’m looking to get the Weekly Medium or Daily Medium.
I pretty it up with cute stickers like these that both organize and prettify things: Happy Planner stickers
Hope this helps you have a productive AND pleasurable new year!