Let’s be honest, conventional daily planners are boring. They help keep track of key dates, milestones and to-do’s but they lack a certain pizazz I want brought to my daily on-paper organizer. I don’t love organizing my calendar digitally, but I also wasn’t sure paper planners were for me until I met the InnerGuide.
The InnerGuide Planner comes in a few different cover options and are all constructed with supportive life coaching written into each page. It has monthly and weekly layout plans so you can plan however you prefer, and each includes bonus features like a mid-year reflection and journaling pages.
The InnerGuide is a mindful, human-designed planner I encountered while in college that’s been my primary life organizer for the past 5 years. It’s a calendar and a day planner, but it’s also designed to help you set long and short-term goals, and construct your life in a way that helps you reach those goals.
The planner is a standard day, week and month planner with the addition of mindful tracking of various ways in which you’re taking care of your wellness. The planner divides up wellness into three general categories: Spirit, Mind and Body, and divides those up even further into elements like Spirituality, Nature, Relationships, Work, Learning and Health.
It’s definitely helped me stay on track with my higher-level life goals and day-to-day tasks, and when used properly I think it could help anyone use their time more efficiently.
This monthly and weekly InnerGuide has all the same features as the previous one, just with a different cover. This includes 240 pages for planning and reflection.
My Favorite Part: Weekly Planning Pages
The weekly planning pages have plenty of room for noting appointments, meetings and engagements on each day. They also include space for noting “High” and “Medium” priorities as well as a to-do list, space for gratitude, an emotion reflection for the end of the week and space to set an intention right up top.
I’ve never run out of space on these pages for noting what I need to get done or where I have to be at a certain time. I like that there’s a small monthly calendar for this month and next at the top of each weekly page, and there’s a mindful “spirit” wheel on the bottom right corner of the second weekly page where you note which mindful areas you spent time that week.
I like this addition because it goes beyond all the concrete tasks you accomplished in a given week and helps draw attention to general areas of focus where you did or didn’t spend time. Very often I’ve neglected my spiritual side and know I need to spend more time being mindful, meditating or doing yoga the following week.
This festive peacock InnerGuide is also filled with the organization and life coaching tips written into the other ones.
One important thing to note is that the InnerGuide planner gives you a ton of space for written reflection. At the end of each month there’s an entire two pages dedicated to reflecting on how that month went, what progress you made towards your goals and how you felt that month. Then, there’s a whole two pages with prompts and space to write about the next month.
If you’re a writer (like me!) this is great. If you prefer digital goal tracking or find written questions and answers tedious, this planner may not be for you.
There are some months when I don’t get to the reflection because I’m too busy living my life to write about it. However, the months when I do I find that I’m more equipped to map out my life in a way that’s going to serve me and help me reach my goals.
The beginning of a new year is an excellent time to start with a new planner, and if you’re looking for structured guidance on creating your goals for the year, the InnerGuide has a whole section at the beginning for creating goals for the year. Their exercises include a visualization of your dream life, brainstorm and lots of connecting how you want to feel with what you hope to accomplish.
Pairing these two things together, in my opinion, gives your goals much more meaning and has given me more motivation to accomplish them.
