The Panda Planner is a gratitude, productivity, and goal setting planner wrapped up into one.
I wrote a post a few months back about how I kept myself organized with a notebook and four color pen. Panda Planner gives me the same setup that I had but pre-printed out with the bonus of a monthly and weekly section.
The Panda Planner features:
- Monthly section
- Weekly section
- Daily pages with schedule
- Elastic closure
- Ribbon section markers
- Pocket for stickers and notes (I keep a Midori passport sized notebook refill I found on Amazon in there for journaling or note taking.)
Each month, week, and day, there is a reflection area so you can watch where you grow and where your weaknesses are. After all, how can you know how you’re doing if you don’t look back and take notes on how you can improve?
Nothing is numbered, so you can buy it anytime of the year and not worry about having half of it wasted.
To get the most of your Panda Planner, I suggest you do three things each morning:
- Review your month to remind yourself of your monthly overall goals and focuses.
- Look over your week so you know where your weekly priorities are.
- Look over your day with the other two in mind and plan out your day from there.
Once you get the hang of it, the three steps should only take up around 15 minutes of your morning.
Don’t know where you will get 15-minutes in the morning? Start your coffee pot or tea kettle and plan while it brews.
My only grievance about the Panda Planner are the ribbons. They’re built into the notebook to help you, but they’re all the same color. It would be helpful for these to have been three different colors so you could quickly tell which is which.
Over the course of the past few weeks, I’ve been using the Panda Planner I’ve picked up on some of my bad habits and seen where I need to improve. My main focus has been to stay off Facebook and limit how often I check my Gmail. I’ve noticed an improvement on both of those things, though not without some slip-ups. I decided to judge each day by the one that came right before it, and that helps keep me from beating myself up too bad.
Depending on your use, one planner will last you between 3 and 6 months.
Panda Planner is available for around $25 on Amazon and comes in a few different flavors including Classic Daily (the one in this review), Pro, Weekly, and Color.
Disclaimer: GeekMom received a review sample.
Your habits sound very practical, Dakster. For the ribbons, why not quickly stitch a colored thread through two of the ribbons, so they are each distinguished from the third? Or tie a small bead or charm on the ends?
I hadn’t thought about that. Thanks, Kay!
I have been thinking about buying this planner! Another review made it seem like there were very few daily pages in it. You said it lasts between 3 to 6 months; are there enough daily pages for 3 months? How many monthly spreads are there? Thank you!
There are 6 monthly spreads, 16 weeks 90 daily pages (I just hand counted them in my planner). If you don’t use the daily pages every day I can see how you can get more than 3 months out of it. Right now I don’t use mine on the weekends, so I get that much more life out of mine (but also not doing what I should be doing which is using it on the weekends to keep track of my goals).
Thank you!
Thank you for this review! I ditto your bio except I’m a reports analyst. Good to know about the 90 days! I’ve only used this organizer today (filled out my monthly pages, 1st week and first day) so far I like that it keeps me focused on only a few things at a time (I go crazy listing everything I want to improve otherwise).
Hi, thanks for the helpful review! I’ve seen some pictures of the planner on its Amazon page, and it seems in those like the planner has very poor binding quality (poor stitching, pages easily falling out, etc). How has it been for you?
I’ve had mine just a week, so far the book itself seems okay, but the fabric the ribbons are on is pretty short and glued to binding and easily pulled free. I was able to restick it, but I assume ti fall out again.