It’s January, your 2010 planner has expired and if you haven’t already gotten yourself a planner. Time is ticking away and you’re boggled by the offerings.
I got my first annual planner on my 15th birthday. 14 annual planners later, I still find myself checking out new formats, brands and paper at the end of every year. So it doesn’t matter if you are new to annual planners or a seasoned user, choosing a new planner can be quite a task.
I’d like to share my roundup for top annual planner choices and outline some of the merits of such formats.
Daily
The one-day per page or daily planner, whichever name brands may choose to use, simply refers to planners where each day of the year gets it’s own page.
Users with a lot of appointments or just like the luxury of having extra space to write notes for that particular day will enjoy this format.
Quo Vadis Habana Pocket Daily
One of my choice brands for this format is the Quo Vadis Habana Pocket Daily. It’s got a similar size to the Moleskine Pocket Daily Planner but has other attributes that make it a lovelier product. Despite being a hard cover planner, it has a buttery soft, a tactile feel rare for hard covers. The paper quality, as with Quo Vadis products are consistent, bleed proof and is what I love about them most.
It also has the pocket at the back for storage and elastic closure to keep it all tucked in. An excellent interpretation of the classic daily format and size.
Quo Vadis Habana Pocket Daily (RM 70.00)
Quo Vadis Textagenda (Academic Year Planner)
In addition to the Pocket Daily, I also love the Quo Vadis Student planners. It’s got an excellent format for students and I wish I had one of these during my university days!
The font used are clear and large. Students spend enough time squinting at text that they shouldn’t need to strain their eyes on their planner.
There is also a brief but prominent appointments section but I imagine this is mostly to mark lecture, tutorial, seminar or plenary times for each day. Following that is a ‘Priority’ space, for well, priority reminders. This is surprisingly well placed and I find you can’t not look at it! You’ll also get lined space which are good for assignment information or reference info. There is also a sizable ‘Note’ section at the bottom for things that don’t fit in either sections.
In all I find this is well optimised for students in tertiary education. It’s got a good size, blunder-proof format and come with designed covers or refillable in an Quo Vadis hardy planner sleeve. It is a daily planner but has great division of space optimised for students.
Quo Vadis Textagenda (RM 50.00)
Weekly
The terminology for weekly format planners can be a strange and confusing place.
First you have the weekly horizontal, which some brands simply call weekly. Brands like Moleskine, Rhodia, Quo Vadis have another weekly format that somewhat resembles this. There are numerous iterations of this in Japanese planners that may not even fall within these categories.
All that confusion aside, my personal favorite for work is the ‘week-at-a-glance, plus notes’ (aka Weekly plus notes, weekly vertical). It allows me to view the week at a glance and has a whole page on the side for information that I’d refer to for the week as opposed to just a day – such as new bus route info for my commute to work.
Moleskine week-at-a-glance + notes
This format has been a Moleskine classic for a while. The weekly with notes is one of my favorite formats for work. However, something about the annual overview section always bugged me. I had a huge problem with this type of annual overview format and prefer a monthly planning overview such as those common in Japanese planners.
To my surprise, Moleskine has actually tweaked the one thing about it to make this planner almost perfect. If you’re not picky with paper quality and love the idea of this format then the Moleskine weekly + notes is one of the most widely available version.
Moleskine 2011 Red Large Planner Weekly Planner (RM 86.00)
Other formats
Quo Vadis Miniday
At 7x10cm this planner is cute as a button! The paper quality is excellent. The cover is durable, refillable and non-bulky. It even comes with a mini mechanical pencil!
The only thing you may wonder is, who will use such a teensy weeny planner?
The Quo Vadis Mini is actually in the daily format, which means every day gets a page making it’s size a lot less bewildering. Quo Vadis does not skimp on the components either. It has pretty much the basics of a larger sized planner – address section, year calendar for starters.
I’d get this for people with enough appointments or errands to need to keep track of them but not enough to justify lugging around a heavy planner. It can also make a great starter planner for younger users to get warmed up to the idea of planning on paper.
I have a friend who has never used a planner in her life but got one just for wedding planning. She didn’t have much to fill up a large B5 planner with and hated the idea of lugging it around but still needed something with the dates to write in. It would be perfect for her and I might just get her one for 2011.
Quo Vadis Miniday (RM 73.00)
So these are my top picks for 2011 based on availability and previous experience. What’s your top pick for 2011 or for all years? I’d love to hear your picks and the reasons for it.
