Planner Progress and a Mid-Year Checkin : Planner-ed Out Perfect, Part Three

The last time you heard me expostulating on all the reasons why owning a journal is vital to my life, was back in August, when I had whittled down the selection process to exactly which kind of journal I was going to be investing in for the coming year. 

Dissatisfaction with my first foray, resulted in the purchase of a Whitney English Day Designer the following December, and I've been giddy ever since.

(The last time you heard me talking about journals in general, was only a little while ago, when Finals Week had so finely riddle my brain capacity with holes like Swiss cheese that I found myself tumbling headfirst down the rabbit hole of the YouTube planner enthusiast community, instead of actually studying.)

I thought that since about half a year has past since I've had the planner, and therefore, I've had plenty of time to give it some use and figure out the ways I like to use it.

And unexpected water bottle explosions inside my backpack aside, it's held up super well!

That's right, my old Camelback flooded my backpack!
But it's still kicking. :) 

SO IN LOVE WITH YOU AM I 

There's a lot to be crazy about in the Day Designer. I don't know how I ever got along with just a weekly-spread planner, because the page-a-day layout is where it's at. No pesky to-do lists on my phone for me! I've got it all in one place, and plenty of room for adding in other things I'm thinking about. 

What I mean by "Quarter at a Glance."
I just fit everything important onto one page!
Thankfully, the Day Designer has a handy pocket in the front.

Two things I've started doing that I didn't think about before, was tracking my blog upload dates on the monthly calendar, and tracking my meals. 

Beforehand, I just used a separate journal to figure out upload dates and blog posts for the month, but I would always end up forgetting it, and it wasn't laid out in a way that I could easily switch things around depending on the business of my schedule. I noticed that I wasn't utilizing my monthly spread for much of anything - because I like to be able to see my whole Quarter-At-A-Glance for that sort of thing - so I've just started keeping my update schedule there! It's made a world of difference in helping me decide what post to upload when, and seeing it all in one place has made it a lot easier to visualize what kinds of things I'm uploading each week. 

Tracking meals wasn't really a thing for me, until I saw YouTube user MaeBad using her Day Designer as a Fitness Journal. It's super effective, because it allows you to see at what times of day you're eating (about every three or four hours), and what kinds of stuff you're being tempted to eat at, say, 11pm (peanut butter and oreos). Now, I just scribble in a sort of meal plan in the mornings, and revise it throughout the day as needed. 

But yeah, the Day Designer is still the best thing ever, no matter how many YouTubers I watch exalting the holy grail of the Erin Condren planner. I'm a Whitney English groupie for life. 

Besides, you can always still use fun stickers and washi tape in your Day Designer, too!
(Don't be mean; it's not for you, it's for me. And I happen to like a lot of color. And tiny animals.)

... AND YET...

So, yeah, I'm in love. You'd think that I'd be happy and confident in my choice and that I'd never have to worry about picking out a new planner ever again, so long as Day Designers were still around? Unfortunately not. It's by no means a worry that they'll somehow fade away... it's that they're evolving.

That's right. A couple of days ago, just in time for this post, Whitney English and the rest of the Day Designer team made the grand announcement that they were entering into a new partnership with Blue Sky Planners, to release a special line for Target.

That's right! Now the planners that I love and cherish and have changed my life are now not just as adorable and functional as they have always been... but they're available at much cheaper prices and in twice as many cute styles and sizes.

DARN. IT. I guess that makes this to be continued...

What planner do you use? What did you think of Whitney's big announcement? Should I buy a Target  version of the Day Designer, or stick with my trusty Daily format? Let me know, in the comments below!