A recent post was about the results I’d gotten from telling people that I wanted to launch a podcast. It’s obviously not just enough to tell people about my goals. I can’t expect them to do the rest, I have to take action and to do that I need to focus on what those actions need to be.
I’ve written before about creating my own planner using a blank journal. I would buy a Rhodia journal ever other month and every week I’d create not only my schedule each day, but write all of the questions I wanted to ask myself to help me prioritize and focus on what really matters in my life (gratitudes, goals for the day, how I’m I feeling in the morning, etc.). Frankly it was time consuming and I think I spent almost as much time writing the questions and creating the calendar set up than I did answering the questions and filling in my daily schedule. It was also expensive since I was spending almost $30 Canadian every other month on the journal.
I was getting many of my planner questions from Brendon Burchard and a few from Mel Robbins so I decided to take a closer look at both of their planners. The High Performance Planner (HPP) from Burchard suited me better, even though it’s really big, so I started using one in January.
I add a few additional things to the daily pages such as gratitudes, how I’m feeling in the morning – which is from Mel Robbins, and what my self-care musts are for the day. I have to admit, this does seem to have had a positive impact on me moving forward on projects that are important to me, including the podcast, my coaching certification, the course I’m creating for the College of Education at the university, etc.). I feel like I have a much clearer picture of what my weeks and days look like, what my priorities are, who I need to connect with, as well as how I’m going to demonstrate being the person I want to be.
To buy one, it cost me about $35 Canadian at my local bookstore, which is pricey, but it certainly saved me time not having to create my planner every week. Like the journal, the HPH is for two months so this would add up as well, but after trying it for a month, I decided that I would look into ordering the one-year-package of these and had my local bookstore order the set for me (the official page for the HPP points people to Amazon to buy the “Full-Year Pack”, but I try to shop local when I can). For the year, it only cost me about $100 Canadian (with my discount card from the bookstore), which is a significant savings from buying them every two months or the journals that I was using to create my own planner.
Now, there is one issue. Not long after I ordered them, the spine on my initial HPH gave out on me and I repaired it with some packing tape (you work with what you have). Yes, I might be a bit rough with it, but I’m hopeful that this was just a bad one and that the others are much sturdier.
Overall I like the High Performance Planner because it suits me and my needs. There are many cheaper and more compact planners out there, and it’s important that you find one that works best for you so that you’ll use it, but this is what I’m going with for now.
