How I use an Emily Ley Simplified Daily Planner

I am so excited about this week’s post! For the past several weeks, I have received multiple emails from Emily Ley’s website announcing the launch of the 2020 calendar year daily and weekly Simplified planners, and mine just arrived this week! I started using the Simplified Daily Planner this year and it has been a game changer for my time management during the week! Over the past few months, a lot of folks have asked about my daily planner and how (and why) I use it. So, I hope that this post will help busy women (and men) decide whether a daily planner is something that will help with their daily planning. I post this again at the end, but here is a referral code you can use for your first Emily Ley purchase.

First, what is a daily planner?

Later, I will write a post about the differences between daily, weekly, and monthly planners, but for now here is the gist on what a daily planner is. Basically, it is a planner that provides one day’s entry on each page (or two days per page, at most). There are many daily planners on the market right now. They range from book bound versions such as the Panda Planner, the old utilitarian At-A-Glance, and more premium brands like Erin Condren’s Petite Daily planner, the flagship Day Designer, and the classic Franklin Covey. But, for me, the gold standard in daily planners has to be Emily Ley’s Simplified Daily Planner.

Why use a daily planner if you are using a weekly planner as well?

For the past four years, I have used a large Ban.do weekly planner to keep up with all of my personal and work commitments. It literally changed my life, and I love it so much there will definitely be a whole post about the virtues of my weekly planner. (For those interested in buying a Ban.do, here is a referral link for $10 off your first purchase.) So, if I have such a beloved weekly planner that I use religiously, why bother with a daily planner? Well, beyond my obvious obsession with passion for planners, I did a little research into how people use daily planners and thought it would definitely work for me. You see, at the time I decided to buy it, life had gotten a bit crazy. I teach a law school class in the spring and also supervise interns at work in addition to my own casework. I was supervising more interns than usual and was trying to keep up with my class and cases when I felt things falling through the cracks. I had a lined post-it pad that I would use to keep up with my to do list and found it was disorganized and unhelpful. I tried writing down as much as I could in my weekly planner, but there was not enough space. I needed more space to write my to dos and to help me see where I had pockets of time to get tasks done. Enter the Simplified Planner!

Although every daily planner is different, they share the following features: an hourly (or bi-hourly) schedule to list appointments, a lined check list or to do list, and a notes section. Other planners may include a space for your top 3 goals for the day, your menu, a wellness section, a habit tracker, and other features. What I like about the Emily Ley Simplified Planner is that it only has the main 3 sections: schedule, to do list, and notes. No other bells and whistles. Because the page is so simply designed, there is plenty of space to write down other things you would like to track.

This year’s planner is similar to last year’s design, but with a couple of new changes:

• The planner came in a pretty navy blue box along with a small booklet with tips on how to get started using the planner
• The inside cover, like last year’s, is navy and has a folder opposite a cute page of stickers to decorate your planner. (I use mine as a functional planner, so I save the stickers for other calendars I own)
• After the nameplate page are more detailed tips on the process of simplifying and how to use the planner
• The next two pages contain a yearly view of 2020 and holidays.
• There are several prep pages that help you review the routines you used last year and what you will try this year as well as a bucket list for the year
• Each month is marked with a different-colored tab in laminated card stock
• Each daily page is dated and has a flag with the weekday’s first letter in alternating colors that coordinate with the colored tabs
• Weekdays are full pages while weekend days share a page
• Some new features this year include 4 notes pages located after the bucket list (folks have been asking for these!) and the days that used to be in an orange color are now back to yellow

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Simplified planners also have other features that I like. They are beautiful. Although the pages in every Simplified Planner are the same, you can choose from about 6 covers released each year. Each planner is hard-covered with gold foil corners. While the weekly Simplified Planners are bound like a hardcover book, the daily planners are bound with a very sturdy wire-o binding. Also, the paper is AMAZING. Emily Ley uses 70 lb white Mohawk paper. This is very good quality paper as it holds up well to most types of pens, has a good texture for writing (not too smooth, not too rough), is lightweight enough that they can fit a year’s worth of daily pages into one planner, and, weird as it sounds, it even smells good! The only way to describe the scent is high-quality. 😊 That said, they are not just for women. Emily Ley sells a Dapper Desk planner, which is very similar to the Daily Simplified Planner. However, the cover has a neutral style and is book-bound, so these are often used by men and women who want a more professional-looking planner.

What is the best way to use a Simplified Daily Planner?

After much research on the subject (I am a research attorney, after all), I found that Emily Ley and others recommend you start each day with a blank page. At first, the forward-thinking planner in me balked at the idea. I plan ahead, not day by day. However, I soon realized that this approach is the reason why many women who use this planner do so in tandem with a weekly planner (yay, I get to keep my Ban.do!). And, there is something really uplifting about having a blank page every day. For me, it is a tangible metaphor for each day’s being a new start.

So, here is how I use mine:

• I start with a blank page every morning (unless I have an early travel day- then I do this the night before)
• At the top of the page, I note priorities or special events for the day
• I add in any appointments I have listed in my weekly planner to the hourly schedule
• If an appointment starts at the half hour, I use a slash in the middle of the hour line to note it
• I brainstorm what I need to do that day in a separate notebook (you can skip this part- I’m just that particular about it)
• I add items from my brainstormed list to the checklist section and group the items according to color-coded categories marked with a dot sticker (Emily Ley sells color-coding dot stickers as well).
• Work-related tasks start at the top of the checklist; personal tasks I list up from the bottom of the checklist
• Any space between appointments on the schedule I reserve for a task category and treat it like an appointment (see sample)
• If a task or appointment takes more than one hour, I use down arrows to block off that time
• If I have a task with multiple sub-tasks, I list it in the notes section
• Since I use my monthly layouts in my Ban.do planner for long-term planning, I use the monthly calendars in my Simplified Planner for habit tracking my exercise and other goals for the month

Mind you, the point of the Simplified planner system is to help you find time in your day for things that bring you joy. Some of my days are crazier than others, but I try to write in some self-care tasks that I treat as appointments. As such, my goal is not have something to do each hour of the day, but to find ways to use my time wisely and have a to do list that is prioritized. In a lot of ways, I have been keeping lists like this for a while, just in a more disorganized and impractical way. With the Simplified Planner, it is as though my to do list took its vitamins.

A little symbol of grace →

Emily Ley stresses the concept of grace over perfection. One way that I have incorporated a little bit of grace in my planning is by using a symbol commonly utilized in bullet journals. In the bullet journal method, next to each task, symbols are added to signify various tasks and what their priority is. I wish I had time to bullet journal, but there is no way I would have time to create a planner from scratch every month. That said, I have incorporated the migration symbol which looks like this: > or a right pointing arrow: → in my daily planning to signify when I have not completed a task and have moved it to the next day. So, while placing a check mark next to each completed task is really satisfying, I am relieved to see the little arrow that says I can get to it tomorrow.

I strongly recommend using a daily planner if you feel like your to do list is overwhelming and disorganized. If you are not being as productive during the day as you would like, definitely give a daily planner a try. As of this post, Emily Ley has 2020 daily and weekly calendars fully stocked as well as one design of the 2019-2020 academic year daily planners on sale. (Once they sell out, they are gone!) If you are a first-time Emily Ley customer and would like to try one of these planners, do as I did and use a referral code. Here is one that will get you $10 off of your first order: click here.

If you have questions about using a daily planner or just want to wax poetic about how awesome they are, leave a comment!