I collect planners. More hope is sold in the planner aisle at Staples than at Max Factor… The NEXT planner will solve my problems…. the NEXT planner will make me organized.
(Heck, I get as much benefit from last year’s calendars as I do from a new planner; they all have value. Often, I don’t need alignment between numbers and days. I only need the shapes of time. Different story.)
I saw the Rituals for Living Dreambook+Planner from The Dragontree on Instagram; looked interesting. The PDF version was an affordable experiment. The layout of quarters and months and weeks looked a bit new to me. I printed off the various pages that contained information I wanted to know, as well as one each of the quarter, month, and weekly layouts, so I could see in detail how they were set up. I hate reading PDFs online.
Selected pages from the Dragontree Planner.
(Yes, that’s the way my desk looks much of the time.)
Good: Lots of information about how to think about planning; a mindful approach to integrating work and life; I like the content about creating rituals.
I like undated books; you can skip weeks if you don’t need them, and the unused pages don’t time out.
Less than great: The text is teeny weesny itty bitty, making me think the designers have not yet reached the age of needing reading glasses. This might be less of a problem if you purchase the professionally printed copy; I bought the PDF and printed onto ordinary paper with an aging inkjet.
Note Saturday and Sunday share a space. That’s not the way I live. My Saturdays and Sundays deserve (and get, in my regular planner) equal attention and respect as M-F.
No page numbers on the printed copy.
The bolded text on the daily (week-view) layout interferes with my own writing. ALL-CAPS heading, in bold, in tiny type, on my printer, are nearly illegible and therefore, merely blobs. (Most PDF-print-it-yourself tools face some version of this problem.) Rituals list is in all caps. Would be better for me if it weren’t.
Summary: I purchased the planner as a suggestion for tweaks to incorporate into my own planning system (a glued up amalgam of Outlook printouts and numbered pages in a hard-bound book, with add-ins), and I learned some new ideas.
If you think you will be using this planner for important work, you might do well to buy the professionally printed version. (Read someone else’s review to see if the paper suits your taste. I can’t speak to that part.)lanner
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