The Panda Planner for Productivity, Time Management and Happiness

I wrote a post a few days ago about the importance of daily actions that contribute towards our goals, and keeping the balance between our dreams and visions, and the actual daily actions that will bring us to the things we desire (you can read that one here). I found a planner recently that I think is so helpful in bringing that to life and helping us to walk it out – it’s called the Panda Planner for Productivity, Time Management and Happiness.

The Panda Planner has been designed to help with those three areas – productivity, time management and happiness. It is founded in positive psychology, but has also been designed by someone who has had Lyme disease and cancer (that’s a true double-whammy), as well as a traumatic brain injury, and needed something himself to help him with emotional hurdles while still facilitating being productive and accomplished.

The Panda Planner has three different sections – the first section is the monthly calender section so you can plan the apopintments and specific items for each month. On each of the monthly pages, there are sections at the bottom for this month’s goals, the why behind the goal, things not to get distracted by; then a review – the wins from the month, the insights gained and a section for how to improve.

The second section is the weekly section. This has similar spaces for wins and possible improvements on each week. It also has a space for things to do taht week to make the week great, broken down by personal/work/family and friends/relationship. There are sections for projects, goals, what you’re looking forward to, habits you’re focusing on developing, and your passion project.

The third section is the daily section. Each day starts with a place to write what you’re grateful for, and what you’re excited about. It has room for exercise, an affirmation and a focus point. It has places for tasks, an hourly schedule, a list of priorities for the day; then again – a review at the end with wins and places for improvement.

The Panda Planner comes in a variety for sizes and types. The standard size is 5×8, the larger size is 8×11. Both of those last six months – they’d be way too thick if they fit a whole year. To some people that’s a limitation, it doesn’t really bother me either way. There is a full-year one that has a weekly planner spanning both pages, which some people like more. There’s also a color ones for those who like to color along with their planning!

What I love the most about the Panda Planner, other than appealing to my fairly nerdy sense of organization, is that it helps us to see and appreciate the good things that happen in our life, starting the day with noting down things we’re grateful for. I also like that it has a lot of different sections to log information and break it down into manageable chunks. Then it encourages us to round out the day with some assessment of how things went and reflection on how we might see things going better.

I told some of my workmates about it and three of them rushed out and bought Panda Planners, so I saw that it struck a chord with other people beyond me, hence I’m writing about it today. They’re available on Amazon, in all the different formats and sizes.