The Best Daily Planners to Organize Your Life

These are the 10 best daily planners to organize your life and get more done in less time. Find the best daily planner for your life and style.

Note: This blog contains affiliate links or referral links. Purchases from these links provides a small commission or discounts towards future purchases to me at no extra cost to you. Medical and health information and these recommendations are from my personal experience and do not constitute medical advice. Please seek professional medical advice for your health. Refer to my Full Privacy Policy and Disclaimers here.

I’ve been a planner girl for many years and a daily planner is my must have tool every year and I’ve been using a daily planner since 2016, I’ve tried many different brands and spent a lot of money on planners. So I’m here to give you everything you need to know about using a daily planner. I use my daily planner to track my to dos, goals, GTD system, health and symptoms from Rheumatoid Arthritis, journaling and more. It is the way I get everything out of my head so I don’t lose any important ideas.

The Pros of Daily Planners

Here’s what I love about the best daily planners and how I use mine:

• space for to do lists can be used for tasks you need to get that day or a brain dump so you don’t lose track of any important tasks, ideas or goals
• space for your timed schedule is great if you have lots of meetings or want to track your time or time block your day
• space for habits to track your health, self care and work towards your most important goals
• space for notes to track gratitude, meals, journaling, and for me, 3 small victories and happy memories!
• flip the page each day for a fresh start (this might be the thing I love most about daily planning, you can put yesterday behind you and look forward to a new start everyday!!!)

The Cons of Daily Planners

There are a few cons to even the best daily planners but here’s how I deal with them:

• if the whole year is in one planner, they tend to be heavier so be sure to check the weight of the planner you want if you plan to carry it. I use a ring binder so I can decide how much to carry. There are also some coiled daily planners that are only 90 days or 6 months to make them more portable.
• Typically, the whole year in one planner tends to have few notes pages. I would use a slim notebook to keep in the pocket or a separate bullet journal for all the other lists I need.
• Watch the preprinted hours to make sure it works for your schedule. I use the hourly schedule for time blocking but sometimes I put washi tape over the times if I don’t need them or need to adjust the hours.

Ok, now that I’ve given you the pros and cons, let’s get to what you’re here for…the BEST daily planners for 2022! If there’s a daily planner you have a question about, leave me a comment and I’ll give you my honest feedback.

Note: This blog contains affiliate links or referral links. Purchases from these links provides a small commission or discounts towards future purchases to me at no extra cost to you. Medical and health information and these recommendations are from my personal experience and do not constitute medical advice. Please seek professional medical advice for your health. Refer to my Full Privacy Policy and Disclaimers here.

The Best Daily Planners

1. Best Daily Planner System: Franklin Planner 7 Habits Daily Planner or Carrara Daily Planner

Well, I told you I track a lot in my daily life and the only one that can keep up with the chaos running through my head is the Franklin Planner daily planners. What’s unique about Franklin Planner is they have 2 day on page layouts and my favorites are the 7 Habits Day on 2 pages Planner and the Carrara Day on 2 pages planner. I love that every day, even Saturdays and Sundays have 2 dedicated pages.

I am a huge fan of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Dr. Stephen Covey, it’s one of those books I revisit and try to implement in my daily life. The 7 Habits daily planner has daily tips and motivational quotes to remind you of the principles. I love the classic white and gray marble simplicity of the Carrara Day on 2 pages which has a space for daily tracking which is perfect for my health and habits.

Both planners implement Franklin Planners effective system for planning. I highly recommend their free training course to walk you through their system. It truly helped me get everything in one place and be able to find what I need when I need it. Both day on 2 page layouts have spaces for your prioritized task list, hourly schedule (hours vary by planner layout), and one FULL page for notes which I LOVE for journaling, my 3 good things and small victories and any other notes I need to take. You can see how I’m using the Carrara planner on Instagram or my testimonial that is on Franklin Planner’s site! I think they cut it short because I gushed on it about it but you’ll get the gist.

One of my favorite features of the Franklin Planner is the narrow lines (some of the layouts have wider spacing but the 7 habits and Carrara have narrow line spacing). At first I thought my handwriting would be too large but I love it because I feel like it’s the first planner that could keep up with the brain dumping I needed to do some days. You know how that goes. So many things running through my head, they need to go somewhere or I’d forget to take care of it.

Here’s a peek at a couple of the layouts from my Franklin Carrara Daily Planner

Franklin Planner does offer a variety of different layouts and color options including day on 1 page, weekly and undated as well as different cover options including ring bound, wire bound, coil bound and traveler’s notebook style.

2. Best Printable Daily Planner for Productivity: my Simple Productivity Planner

The beauty of printable daily planners is you can print what you need, when you need it. My biggest struggle with planners is sticking with one layout all year long. That doesn’t work for me because every day is different! Some days I have a million things running through my head that I gotta write down so I don’t forget it. Some days I’m focused on knocking things off my list. Your planner should be able to flow and flex with your life and mind.

So I created the Simple Productivity Planner for the ultimate planning flexibility. It has 4 different daily layouts (as well as 4 weekly layouts) so you can choose and print only what you need. There are 50 pages of worksheets to guide you through how to be more productive. and I hope you love it!

You can see what each page of the Simple Productivity Printable Planner includes over in my Etsy shop and it’s at a super low price for a limited time because my priority is not to become a gazillionaire selling printables. I love to create planners and my priority and the thing that fires me up most is helping you live your best life. And I think this Simple Productivity Planner can help you be intentional with your time so you can achieve your goals. I hope you’ll stop by and check it out. I appreciate your support and would love to hear what else you’d like me to create for the shop that will make a difference in your life.

3. Best Daily Planner for Simplicity and Color: Emily Ley’s Simplified Daily Planner

Before discovering Franklin Planner, I was a loyal Simplified Planner fan. I LOVE the Simplicity Challenge, the happy colors, the cover, everything in it is beautiful! I’ve written an incredibly detailed review of the Simplified Planner here and the 2022 planner format is the same as the 2021-2022 academic planner.

The Simplified Daily Planner is a day on one page format for weekdays and Saturday and Sunday share a page. Sunday has extra preprinted tasks like meal planning and doing something to “fill your cup” before the week starts. I love the fill your cup reminder and because of this planner, I make sure to save Sunday nights for planning, audiobooks and puzzles, that’s what I enjoy doing to fill my cup and get ready for the week ahead.

This Simplified Daily Planner helped me really think about things I can do to simplify my life. I started the practice of habit tracking in the hourly space since i didn’t really have that many appointments and recording my 3 small victories and happy memories in the notes space. I don’t know how else to gush about this planner but it feels like home whenever I use it. And I do have one for 2021-2022 I couldn’t resist getting so will hop in and out of it whenever I like. I love the colors in this planner, every one of the happy stripe colors.

4. Best Daily Planner for Portability: Erin Condren Daily Planner Duo

Erin Condren Planners are what turned me into a planning nut in 2015 and really the colors and style made me enjoy planning. I never got too crazy with decorating it besides using colored pens and occasional stickers and highlighters. And even now, I use my planners for function first and then if I have time, I add occasional stickers and highlighters. But the Erin Condren Weekly Life Planner really made me want to open my planner more because I enjoyed it and less out of sheer overwhelmed desperation.

I loved planning so much that a weekly planner no longer fit the bill. And when I started wanting a daily planner, Erin Condren didn’t have any daily planners. Low and behold, they came out with a few daily options. The Daily Petite planners which are traveler’s notebooks and their coiled A5 Daily Duo set (2 coiled planners, 6 months in each book) is what I’m featuring here.

I love the idea of just carrying 6 months at a time and I like the A5 size for portability. Honestly, I don’t usually need to see the whole year at once and when you are carrying the planner on the go, I like something more portable.

I was so excited to try out the Erin Condren A5 Daily Duo that I had sent to me for 2022 that i couldn’t wait and I used it last summer. As you can see in the picture below, I used some washi to cover up the hourly schedule since we didn’t have any appointments and I could use that as a brain dump space. I used white out to redate the daily page so I could use it over the summer for my on the go planner, not fancy here, just functional. I needed something lighter than my beautiful but chunky ring binder for the hours we were spending at the park walking while my teenager was training for cross country.

I used a water tracker sticker and more white out to cover up the mini calendar on the page. For some reason, mini calendars on my planning pages drive me crazy. I don’t use them so I find a way to cover them up with a functional or inspiring sticker so I can make better use of the space and it brings me joy!

Because there are only 6 months of pages, it still has some of the extra pages like flagship Weekly LifePlanner has such as the 12 box overview in the beginning of the planner and the 2 pages for a monthly dashboard, which are essential for me for my goal overview.

If you want to check it out, you can get $10 off your first purchase here when you join the free insider’s program and get notified first on sales. Erin Condren has a huge selection of planners, you can find my Erin Condren planner reviews here for the honest truth about the planners I’ve tried.

5. Best Daily Planner for Customizability: Plum Paper

Plum Paper planners was the first planner I customized and it’s so fun to build your ideal planner. You can choose from a 6 month or 12 month version. When I last had a Plum Paper, it was a weekly and the paper is buttery smooth, I loved it but it’s slick so you might have to test out your favorite pens to make sure they don’t smudge. I added quite a bit to to it and it’s a chunky beauty.

They have since come out with these daily planners, one layout has a hourly schedule and one doesn’t. You can add up to 65 pages to a 6 month book but there are no add ons available for a 12 month bound version. You can also opt for unpunched daily inserts for ring binders so you can add whatever you want! There are lots of different types of add-ons including:

• life
• reflection
• fitness
• budgeting
• business
• teacher
• student
• notes and lists
• creative
• stickers, and
• even sheet protectors!

Within each add-on category listed above, there are more choices on the site so be prepared to spend a couple hours perusing their site to build your ideal planner. It’s pretty amazing!

6. Best Daily Planner for FREE!: Passion Planner Daily

Passion Planner is a great planner with daily and weekly options. The founder created Passion Planner when she was a broke college student. As a result, she has offered the full pdf version of her planners for free since I became a fan in 2016! That means you can either print the pages you need and stick it in a binder, or have it printed and bound or use it in an app like goodnotes on your iphone or ipad.

Pictured below is the Passion Planner Daily bound version that I have so you can see the inside one day per 2 pages layout. There are 93 daily pages like the ones pictured and additional pages like the Passion Planner roadmap, self check ins, reflections since starting the planner, dot grid pages and more free downloads you can grab from their site.

If you purchase the bound version of the daily planner, the Passion Planner covers are soft vegan leather, each one has an artistic theme and purchase benefits a different charity. The paper is 120 gsm, thick high quality paper. These are beautiful bound planners and look great on my bookshelves!

The Passion Planner daily PDF is the version I used to test out digital planning since I had never done it before. Which brings me to…

7. Best Daily Planner for Digital Planning: PlanningtoProsper’s Deluxe Prosper Planner

I tried out digital planning late last year. I downloaded the Goodnotes app on my iphone and my son’s 4th generation (old) ipad mini to see how I liked it. I tested it out with the Passion Planner daily free pdf i mentioned in #5 above.

There is definitely a learning curve with Goodnotes like any new platform or technology. I love that the digital format allows you to change headings for sections as needed pretty easily and that you can type information into the pdf to keep it neat, especially if you don’t have an Apple Pencil or similar stylus to write with like I didn’t.

If you are looking for an all in one digital planner, then Stephanie at PlanningtoProsper on Etsy has some incredible digital planners available. I think the Deluxe Prosper Planner hourly traditional planner I ordered was retired but she has other amazing options for 2022 worth checking out, including simple daily planner page spreads.

Let me tell you, Stephanie has thought of everything to put in this planner. If I was using an ipad for planning, this would be what I would use. I have an ipad and Apple Pencil on my wish list and if I get them, I’ll be moving to this.

There are sections for goals, meals (with an amazing recipe keeper), health, finances, and memories!! They are all things I try to track and she has it all in one planner. It’s like she read my mind with all the sections I want and put it in a digital planner. Her digital sticker kits are gorgeous and you can collect as many digital sticker kits as you want because they are reusable and don’t add bulk/clutter to your planner.

I have seriously been trying to declutter and my plan is to make going digital more of a focus next year. I think getting my planner digital would be a step in the right direction. What I love about Goodnotes is that the entire pdf is searchable which makes finding information when I need it easier. You can also copy and send the info from the planner in a text. How handy is that? The more I talk about it, the more I want to switch to digital planning.

8. Best Daily Planner for Goals – Full Focus Planner

If you already know what goals you want to pursue AND you want a daily planner to achieve them, then the Full Focus Planner by Michael Hyatt is the one I would use (and I probably will get it in the future). I chose the word “FREEDOM” for 2021 and I read a lot about productivity and time management, so reading Free to Focus: A Total Productivity System to Achieve More by Doing Less by Michael Hyatt was a logical choice for my first book of 2021.

I remember gaining a few tidbits I had not seen before but what I really loved were the worksheets and “tools” that came with the book. I took notes, completed the worksheets and implemented his 4 effective routines and his weekly preview and review process in my Franklin Planner. I still use those routines and processes and if you know me, it’s hard for me to stick with anything for an entire year but his productivity system totally works for me.

The Full Focus Planner is a 90 day planner where you identify your annual goals, break them down and schedule them into your day. Goal detail pages help you figure out what motivates you, rewards, the first few steps to help you get unstuck and take action and a streak tracker because chipping away at those goals everyday, even if they are small steps, helps you keep it in the front of your mind and achieve it. Weekly Previews and reviews help you reflect and make progress on those goals. Finally, the day on 2 pages for every day reminds you to work on those effective routines, has a priority space for your big 3 tasks of the day, space for other tasks that come up, an hourly schedule and then a full page for notes. The format is simple and effective.

(if you don’t know what goals you want to pursue or need encouragement to find the goals that matter to you, then I wholeheartedly recommend the Powersheets goal planner . You may still need another planner or notepad to work those goals but it is a goal planner like no other for digging deep into what you want and making it happen.)

Bonus: best daily planner with Japanese style paper (lightweight!!!) – Hobonichi or Wonderland222

I call it Japanese style paper because I purchased 3 different notebooks/planners, 2 had Tomoe River Paper and 1 was a similar style but not Tomoe River paper exactly. I wanted to test out the Japanese paper before I invested in paying shipping from Japan. I hear that Tomoe River paper works wonderfully for fountain pens, but lately I’m a grab the nearest pen even if it’s a ballpoint (gasp!). So I need paper that can handle whatever pen I throw at it.

I bought a Hobonichi notebook (Tomoe River paper – TRP), Wonderland222 planner (TRP) and a Stalogy notebook (not TRP but still thin) to test out the paper for each brand. There are different things I liked about each one. Please know that you do have to be careful with what types of pens to use on this kind of paper. Very inky pens may smear, so test your pens out in the back and allow for drying time or use a blotter.

If you want a dated page per day, then I recommend The Hobonichi Techo Cousin (the whole year in one book) or Hobonichi Techo Avecs (two books containing 6 months each). These planners have monthly, weekly and a dated page for each day! The A5 Cousin is 544 whopping pages and only weighs a little over a pound. That’s amazingly light for the chunkiness of this planner. If you want your entire year in one book and need portability, this is definitely a great choice! The Hobonichis come in different sizes. Here’s a sample daily page in the Hobonichi Techo Cousin:

If you don’t mind a bullet journal style and creating your own daily layouts when you need them, then I recommend the Wonderland222 planner. It’s the one I’m using for 2022 because I love that the Tomoe River paper is white (Hobonichi appears more cream colored). The Wonderland222 has monthly calendars, weekly layouts, an abundance of trackers (perfect for lazy bullet journalers like me who like bullet journaling but don’t want to draw them out) and hourly gridded pages you can use for daily layouts or for bullet journal collections/notes. The Wonderland planners also come in various sizes and they also have a notebook that just has the undated daily pages in it that’s great for bullet journaling.

Check out how I’ve used all these various planner over on my Instagram. I love trying out different planners and designing my own so I can test it for you and help you objectively decide which is best for you!

With all the planners on the market, I know it can be overwhelming to decide what will work for you. I hope this roundup of the best daily planners will help you get your life organized! Don’t forget to put those fun things in your planner too! Let me know if you have any questions and I’ll be glad to help!