Start the year with the perfect tools for productivity and organization. The best planner keeps your schedule, deadlines, goals, and thoughts organized. Though no planner is one-size-fits-all, these daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly diaries allow you to chart your goals, appointments, ideas, and more all in one place. Some planners work great for strictly scheduling the hours of your day, while others work better for your long-term goal-planning success. The best planner for you comes down to personal preference in how you chart your time.
Planner styles get even more detailed, and we break down the ways to choose what's right for you at the end of this guide. We spoke with two stationery store owners and a productivity expert to get their advice on how to pick a planner.
"There are lots of different, great planners, and it just kind of depends on thinking about how you want to plan your week and how you want to visualize your week," said Jeremy Crown, who co-owns Little Otsu, a paper store in Portland, Oregon. Whatever style of planner you prefer, we've covered the basics of the best of what's out there.
Daily planners
For more detailed planning, daily planners offer hourly breakdowns of your day. Daily planners are one of the most popular formats. They tend to be bulkier than weekly or monthly planners but offer the most flexibility. These are ideal for students, teachers, and parents who need to keep careful track of a busy schedule.
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Best dailySplit into two columns for your to-do list and schedule, this planner comes with extra features including budgeting spots and pockets. -
Best for tracking everyday goalsGreat for tracking goals, the Self Journal lasts 13 weeks and has tasks and templates to help you complete daunting targets in smaller chunks.
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Best for writing a lotIf you’re someone who likes to write it all out, Clever Fox’s planner comes with quite a bit of room for planning your busy days, writing reflections, and doodling.
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Best themedPlentiful in options, Bloom’s Daily Planners come with various lists and charts that make them endlessly adaptable and good for specific uses like wedding planning or lesson planning.
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Best short-termAn updated version of the OG Panda Planner, this model comes with lots of space in undated, weekly, and monthly sections.
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Best pocket-sizedThe Lemome Pocket Planner is a small planner with the barebones essentials: a simple calendar grid and an extra section for contact information.
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Best customizableThe most customizable planner we’ve found, the Happy Planner offers vertical and dashboard layouts, as well as a myriad of sizing options and stickers for flair.
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Best JapaneseThe Kokuyo Jibun Techo has daily space for 24-hour scheduling and tracking to-dos, weather, meals, daily reflection and more on thin, bleed-resistant grid paper.
Weekly planners
Weekly planners are great for a zoomed-out view of your goals and to-dos if you'd rather look at the big picture instead of the day-to-day. These planners are less detail-oriented than daily ones but will have daily space to keep track of appointments and assignments. They're ideal for scheduling everything needed to complete multiple goals over a period of time.
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Best for flexibilityOne of the more affordable options on our list, this planner is compact and durable, boasting an undated week every two pages for scheduling at your own pace.
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Best cover designsPapier offers over 150 artist-driven designs, available in a hardcover or soft spiral, and personalized with your name. Inside, find weekly and monthly overviews, goal lists, and more.
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Best for creative projectsFocused on motivation, the Passion Planner offers a variety of layouts with space for your goals and the good things in your life.
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Most versatileOne of the most comprehensive systems out there. Make this agenda work for you with various layout customizations. Find teacher and academic versions, too.
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Best for strictly schedulingThis pocket-sized planner comes in a variety of formats, with 13 hours of scheduling time and space in the back for notes and a map of time zones.
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Best academicGreat for students, this planner is formatted from June through the following July with a section for yearly goals.
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Best for teachersPerfect for teachers, this planner goes from July to June with pages for checklists, space for student notes, and the option to customize by subject.
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Best desktopGet a glance of the week ahead with 52 undated sheets with space for daily appointments plus weekly goals, to-dos, and habit tracking.
Monthly planners
Monthly planners are ideal for professionals or students with several projects or classes to juggle over a long period of time. Though they provide less space than daily and weekly planners, they allow for a strong overview of deadlines and key dates. They're also a great option for parents who need to keep track of doctors appointments, extra curricular activities, and events for a big family.
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Best 18-monthThis attractive faux leather planner is monthly-focused, but also provides blank daily blocks for you to get a bit more granular if you need to.
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Best 24-monthHighly rated, this simple and inexpensive planner provides two years of monthly overviews without any filler; a perfect planner for minimalists.
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Best for budgetingThe monthly version of Clever Fox’s planner is focused on budgeting and personal finance. It’s undated so you can start anytime.
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Best for on-the-goBig plans come in small formats. This 3.5" x 6" At-A-Glance makes it easy to see a high-level overview of your monthly schedule and can tuck in your pocket or purse.
Yearly and quarterly planners
Yearly or quarterly planners provide the most scope for those with specific personal or business goals. For this category, we considered both big-picture goal planners and 3-month planners that really drill down into how much you can accomplish in 90 days. For the latter category, you'll find that 90-day planners often have weekly and daily pages and space to plan out the quarter. That said, they're still distinct from daily and weekly planners because they focus on achieving longer-term goals, rather than plotting out your days.
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Best for goal planningComplete with gratitude spaces, to-do lists, and monthly refreshers, this research-backed planner is great for finishing goals both in work and life.
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Best for business ownersThis quarterly planner is focused on starting up your business and reaching financial goals; a great option for entrepreneurs.
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Best for procrastinatorsMinimalist in design, this planner gives structured planning over a quarter with goal tracking and to-do list space to finish your major tasks.
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Best reusableThe last planner you may ever buy, with weekly, monthly, annual, to-do lists, goal templates and blank planning space. Once complete, wipe with water and reuse. You can digitize your files with the accompanying app.
How to choose a planner
There are an overwhelming number of planner types. Chandra Greer, who owns Greer, a stationery store in Chicago, Illinois, prioritizes stocking her store with functional, quality options, knowing they might not be the right fit for everyone. "I'm more interested in the function," she said. "Is the layout useful? Is it something that is going to withstand being your daily friend for 365 days?"
To find out what will work for you, you can start by considering what qualities are most important to you. "I think if you sort of start with, 'What is it that I want to use this for?' that gives you a good starting point," said Alexandra Cavoulacos, founder of The Muse and author of "The New Rules of Work."
Consider daily, weekly, or monthly formats
For some people, a planner is merely a portable calendar, Cavoulacos said. Other people want to track projects and create to-do lists. The amount of detail per day will start to dictate how much space you need.
Dated or undated
There are many reasons you might decide to buy an undated calendar. "People might decide on March 28th they want a planner," said Greer. "But if a planner is dated, they're already three months through the year."
Plus, with an undated planner, you can always pick up where you left off without wasting days' worth of paper.
Horizontal or vertical
When someone comes into Little Otsu looking for a planner, co-owner Jeremy Crown first asks, "Are you more of a task-oriented planner?" He thinks people with detailed schedules or long to-do lists may prefer the column format of vertical layouts, while those who like making notes or doodling might prefer the horizontal layout.
Some planners also use a "dashboard" view, with a week or day on one page and the other dedicated to habit trackers, gratitude prompts, and other fill-in-the-blanks.
Size
Doctors, nurses, and chefs always want pocket-sized notebooks and planners, said Crown. You might want something big enough to hold your sprawling handwriting but small enough to carry around in your purse or messenger bag.
Minimalist or full of prompts
Planner aesthetics range from very bare-bones to packed with extras like quotes, charts, and check-ins.
"You want your planner to inspire you," Cavoulacos said. "I do think the sort of aesthetic piece, the inspiration piece, is also something that shouldn't be forgotten," she said.
Both Greer and Cavoulacos point out that you can add your own quotes and personalizations to even the most minimalist planner, as long as there's space. "It could become more of a person's little command center," said Greer.
Paper quality
If paper quality is high on your list of importance, Greer suggests taking a close look at who makes a planner.
"I definitely gravitate towards manufacturers who have a background in paper," she said, recommending several Japanese notebook or paper companies with planners such as Midori, Paperways, High Tide, and Kokuyo Jibun Techo.
Cover
Even if you're not into paper, you'll want to pay attention to the cover's material. Hardcovers will stand up to more wear and tear than softcovers. "Sometimes people will trade that durability for something that doesn't cost very much, but definitely people are expecting [their planner] to get through the whole year and not look like it was run over by a truck," Greer said.
Binding
It's important that planners lie flat since you're writing in them. Many are spiral-bound, but others are stitch-bound. Either will let you write on them, but you can flip one side of the book behind the other with a spiral binding. "A lot of people are kind of indifferent between spiral and stitch bound now, as long as it lies flat because that's really what they're looking for," Greer said.
Another concern with the binding is whether it will keep the planner together for the whole year. Some glued-in pages might not hold out as well. "If you have something that's stitch-bound or spiral, it's very sturdy for the long haul," Greer said.
Why not just use a digital planner?
"I don't necessarily think a planner is for everybody, just like any particular productivity hack or tool," Cavoulacos said. There are plenty of people who prefer to keep their calendars and notes strictly digital, and getting a paper planner might not make sense for them.
If you're on the fence, she suggests asking yourself what's attractive about a paper planner. "I think for a lot of people, it's slowing down, right?" Cavoulacos said. "It's like the lack of distraction. It's the moments to think, to cross things off — the satisfaction of crossing things off."
For Crown, it's more personal than a phone calendar. "It's your life in a book," he said. "[By] the end of the year, you have this book that was like, this is what I did. That's something that the phone doesn't do that well."
