Digital or a Physical Planner?
The Full Focus Planner Bold Standard Series by Megan Hyatt Miller Review
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Are you someone who likes a digital planner or a physical planner?
I recently did a poll on Instagram and it was interesting to me how many people still love a physical planner! Spoiler alert I do too. Every year I love to start fresh, get a new notebook, some new pens, and usually a new planner. I usually would just head on over to Staples or Target and buy one of their planners, but something was always missing. My dad started using the Full Focus Planner by Michael Hyatt and he was in love with it. He started talking about goals and how it helps him with time management, and I am over here rolling my eyes going, ‘ok dad’.
After a year of working with my parents and being in the entrepreneur world, a physical planner was really something I started to rely on. My days are always changing, my hats are different for each project, and keeping that organized can be a lot. Let us also add in the pressure of needing to exercise, eat well, and maintain my relationships with my boyfriend and friends! After hearing about this planner from my dad for about 3 years I finally said, “Ok you win, I’ll try out the planner”. So here is my honest review of The Full Focus Planner Bold Standard Series by Megan Hyatt Miller, the goods, the bad, and if it is really worth your money!
Imagine this
It’s Monday morning, you roll out of bed and start thinking about the day. Something random might pop into your mind and you think “Oh don’t forget that! I really need to call that person!” You start getting ready for the day, you head into the office work on your tasks then call it some 8 hours later. You are starting to go into your Netflix coma when you think, “oh no I totally forgot to call that person and wasn’t there something else I wanted to do today, it was something important.” Unfortunately, I have been there way too many times and the more podcasts I listened to about time management and organizing your workday always had a common theme. Successful entrepreneurs are always using a physical day planner where they plan out their day the night before or have a dedicated place where they are writing notes down and can find them easily when needed. That was when I decided to purchase my quarterly Full Focus Planner. I ordered my quarterly planner in the bold series because honestly it seemed fun and sometimes you need excitement in the little areas of your life!
The Bold Standard Series by Megan Hyatt Miller
Each book works off of the quarter system, so 90 days. When my first quarter book came in the mail I was so excited! There are four colors in the bold series: Olive, Eggplant, French Blue, and Poppy. There are also two style options, a leather-bound planner or a coiled planner. I went with the leather-bound and the color variety pack so I could try all the colors before making a decision on which one I liked best. The first quarter book was the pretty Olive color so itinually me being a visual person, loved the aesthetic of the book. The quality is there! The pages all have these gold bold headings and the font is a perfect size. They also have two gold color ribbons that make it easy for your to know where you left off.
An Inside Look Into the Planner
The book starts off by talking about goals. Normally I am not a goal kind of person but this year I want to try it out. So, it starts with your annual goals of what you want to accomplish this year, then moves into detailing those goals even more (which sounds a little excessive to me, but I ended up finding this detail nice to learn about how I wanted to accomplish this goal). After you talk about your goals the planner moves into the monthly calendars for the quarter, so three months. These are blank so hypothetically say you skipped a quarter in your planner, the blank book is still valid for any time of the year. The next few pages are the rolling quarters. Personally, I do not like these pages. As a snapshot they are nice but overall, I never use them, and they just seem unnecessary.
Then it moves into your four daily rituals. You have a morning ritual, workday startup ritual, workday shutdown ritual, and evening ritual. I have never thought about implanting these kinds of things into my day but when I sat down to fill out the planner and looked over them, I ended up liking the concept. For one of my morning rituals, I always try to make my bed. For an evening ritual, I wanted to try and start stretching before bed instead of binging TV shows like I normally do to start relaxing my mind and body by the end of the night. These are something I try to implement, if I don’t do them throughout my day, it isn’t the end of the world, but I definitely try to be conscious of the fact that I want to do some of these rituals.
Next up we have the ideal week. I have yet to complete this one because I just do not know how I would like my ideal week to look! I feel like my week changes so often that sometimes it is hard to make it look ideal but maybe I will try it out later in the year.
Finally, you get into the daily pages and your weekly preview pages. The weekly preview pages are where you can go over your goals consistently and review them. Part of your weekly snapshot is with the days of the week and you can utilize these pages to write big events coming up or my personal favorite way to use it is to write my meals for the week which helps me grocery shop.
My Biggest Takeaways
After using this planner for almost half the year, my biggest takeaway is that it really does help me accomplish goals. It keeps them consistently top of mind for me and makes me organized. Even though I am a more creative spirit I like to have things organized. This planner keeps my day like that and really helps it move in a smoother process.
Two things I love is that when you make your purchase, you are invited to their Facebook community. This is such a great place to ask others how they use certain pages or answer questions you might have about why something is there in the planner. This is how I got the idea to utilize the weekly preview pages for meal planning! You also get access to free tutorial videos where they go through every page setup and why it can be important for you to utilize. There is also a podcast called ‘Focus on This’ where the hosts “…give you practical tips and proven strategies for increasing your focus so you can be more productive than before.” Although I have not used the planner for the full year, I can already say that I am a lifetime member. I really love the quality of the product and how it has made my entrepreneurship journey just a little more organized than before.
If you are interested in learning more or purchasing a planner for yourself, click the button below! I am using a give $10 get $10 affiliate links, that gives friends $10 off their first order, and I’ll get $10 when you make a purchase.
If you have any questions about the Full Focus Planner please feel free to comment below. I would love to hear your thoughts! I also really commend them on their website and showing how the planner looks on the inside. If you want to see more head on over to their site and take a look. The Full Focus Planner Bold Standard Series by Megan Hyatt Miller has truly been a game-changer!
