As the year winds down, we’re all in the market for new planners and calendars for the new year. My suggestion for 2019 is the PROSPR series of planners. Thanks to these planners, I’ve been able to improve my productivity and keep on track for my goals in 2018. The planners come in different varieties, inlcuding the PROSPR planner with a thermo composite cover, the Sprint Edition, and the Mastery Edition.
PROSPR focuses on your day-to-day success. It’s a great tool for mindfulness and keeping up with hectic schedules. Each planner is broken down to help you focus on staying successful. Because of the daily focus, the PROSPR and the PROSPR Sprint Edition are only 3 months. The Mastery Edition is for a full calendar year, though.
PROSPR + Sprint Edition
The “base model” of the PROSPR planner series is the Thermo Composite Cover PROSPR Planner. It’s 6″ x 9″, and features a slip for your pen(cil) and an elastic for keeping it closed. This is a great calendar for folks who tote theirs around with them, or want the fewest frills. There are also three ribbons for marking your place and important dates for future reference.
Included with the planner are a set of stickers and an idea book. I think the idea book is a great addition, because it gives you a place to jot things down without having to get out a larger repository. The stickers help highlight things, if you’re into that.
My favorite feature of the basic PROSPR planner is that the dates are left blank, which allows you to start the book whenever you’re ready, whether you’re in the market now, or shopping for 2019.
The Sprint Edition includes all of the same features, but has a faux leather cover, which is definitely nice to the touch.
Mastery Edition
The Mastery Edition is where PROSPR really shines. These planners run 13 months (December-December) and are packed with useful pages. With the smaller planners, focus is on the daily grind, but with the Mastery Edition, we get a monthly focus which is much better for long-term goals.
The monthly goals and recaps help you refocus at the end of each month so you can keep on track through the whole year. It also allows you to switch gears if you notice something that isn’t working, or if you want to try something new.
As you can see in the image above, each week has a prep page and a recap page. These help you break down larger tasks and longer goals into steps you can work on through the week. I find this more useful because it’s less restrictive than the daily planner.
The weekly spread is very useful. The hourly slots make scheduling appointments and meetings very easy, as well as marking out hourly tasks in general. If it’s not on my schedule, I’m not doing it. So, I schedule in anything which is a priority. I find it very useful to be able to pencil in time for a walk, for example.
I am particular to the PROSPR version of this type of calendar for several reasons, but the real value over other planners, in my opinion, is the headers and footers. Take your goals from the previous page and put them in their own column at the bottom. This helps you spread them out through the week and get them done even if you have to have a flexible schedule.
The Mastery Habits chart is probably the most helpful feature of any calendar I’ve ever used. I tend to default to staring at my phone in “spare time,” but the Mastery Habits chart helps me stay on track. I put things like “practice guitar” in there, and mark the days on which I remembered to practice. This is helpful in both planning and self-reflection. I can see how I’m doing on personal goals at a glance.
The scratch area on the right-hand page is useful because it allows you to aggregate notes to yourself about what works (or doesn’t) and helps you get your thoughts together for the next weekly recap and prep pages.
TL;DR
The PROSPR planners aren’t miracle workers, and they aren’t mean to be. Personal success comes from personal effort. PROSPR just makes that effort easier to manage. The basic PROSPR planner and the Sprint Edition cover 3 months of planning, while the Mastery Edition covers 13 months. The prices are reasonable ($19.97 for the PROSPR and Sprint Editions and $29.97 for the Mastery Edition), and they are worth the effort if you use them. Like most planners, if you don’t use them, they won’t help.
Disclaimer: PROSPR provided units for the purposes of this review. All opinions expressed here are my own.
