Straightforward And Honest Review Of The Effici Planner

I’m a planner addict, I admit it, I’m not ashamed that I like to look at, feel, touch and find the perfect planner and planning system there is!

To be fair I’ve looked at a lot of planners, I’ve even created my own because nothing seems to fit perfectly, however, have you considered the concept to planning to succeed with your goals and dreams?

Yes, there is a planner for that! The concept is different you are looking to work the time into your day where you focus on the goals and dreams and not just the day to day stuff that you have to do!

This article is sponsored and product gifted by Effici Planner, they provided me with an Effici Planner to try, but the opinions are 100% my own!

Quarterly Planning Goals

There is a big difference between a planner and a quarterly planning system that is designed to help you take your goals and run with them and take action to actually achieve them!

I was honored to be gifted one of the first versions of the Effici Productivity Planners, this is an honest review and the thoughts and opinions are all my own!

I love to get my hands on something new so I can see first hand how it works!

The Effici Planner

On first impression I fell in love, it was beautiful and simple a real classy looking planner!

This always impresses me, but it’s the actual insides that become the important part, I just had to get over the touchy, feely stage!

The size is A4 and I did feel this was large, normally I work with planners that are smaller than this, about A5 size so for me this felt very big and slightly intimidating!

I think I would like to see a smaller size because I did feel that with this open it took up a lot of space, something smaller can fit easier with the other essential office equipment!

The Design Of The Planner

The planner’s format is simple and pleasing to the eye!

It covers just 3 months at a time.

You have the monthly page where you can set a plan for the next month and highlight the goals that you want to achieve!

This is followed by the weekly planner, this is so you can break things down into the week that you are tackling the goal and you can focus on the smaller details.

There are 5 of these pages in each section, so you have enough for a complete month.

Finally, there are the daily pages, you have a double page per day one side you can break down the day, the other is for notes or information that you need to remember to do!

There are 3 complete copies of these pages, so you have enough for a quarter of the year!

Also, in the package you get a daily habit tracker, this isn’t in the planner and is a few loose pages, where you can track your habits that you want to build!

Making It Work For You

How does this all work?  

What’s great they’ve included some pre-filled-in examples at the very front highlighting how to use each page and there is a great video section on the website that allows you to look in detail at how to implement this planner into your everyday life!

If you are a procrastinator then this video is certainly for you!

Effici from Vision Productions on Vimeo.

I like to see how the planner is intended to be used, this brings the planner, in my opinion, to life. It’s no longer just a notebook, each page and each section has a task to perform!

The pages have specific tasks, it’s just changing what you are doing, or not doing and trying out something completely new!

How The Planner Looks

The design: I love the look of the planner how it feels, but the question is does it live up to its image? I’ve been working with the planner for a little over a month, so I wanted to give my honest feelings about the planner!

One thing to remember, my planner lives on my desk and I work from home, so it hasn’t had to deal with being moved around much and thrown in a bag, so, I haven’t been able to test its durability in that way!

I think the pages are thick and don’t bleed the ink through from one side to the other! I use a fountain pen and highlighters and I haven’t seen any bleeding with the ink, which is amazing, often planners come with such thin paper which bleeds a lot making it difficult to write on the next page!

It’s certainly well made, the binding is stiff and in my own opinion, a little too stiff as I’ve been having issues with the pages staying open! The further into the planner I’m getting the better it is, but I think it took time to ‘break the spine’ a bit!

It comes with only one ribbon page marker, I would like to see at least 2 if not 3 in different colours so you can mark the different sections that you are using, i.e. month, week and day pages!

The habit tracker pages are great, but I would like to see them incorporated into the planner as I kept miss-placing them. They would fall out or get in the way and I would then have to hunt them down when I needed to use them rather than them being attached in the planner.

I did speak to the designer about this and he was unsure at the time if they would be going into the next version of the planner, or if they were still going to be separate.

What I felt was missing was a page to help pull together the goals and targets for the entire quarter in one place! This would make it easier to see the goals for 3 months in one place so you could then break them down into the different months easier.

How I Used The Planner

Using the Planner: I’m about halfway through the planner and I’m liking it!

I think I would like to see the pages moving more so I could open the book easier and to have the page markers and I think this would be nearly perfect.

What it isn’t is a daily planner, it’s about making your goals work for you and to break down your goals so that you can tackle them. It’s not so much about doing your daily tasks and noting when your next meeting is.

This means that for this to work for me I need two planners, I like a paper planner so I can plan meetings and appointments and because the Effici is only a 3-month plan it’s not suitable to use as your only planner, it’s not really designed for that purpose.

As I wanted to give the Effici Planning system a fair shot, I’ve been using it for my social media planning and growth and I’ve actually seen a great increase in these areas because I have one place where I’m able to focus on this one area of my business and it’s been great.

I get the chance to make goals and plans just for this one area of my business and I think its working and I’m loving it! I can’t wait to see where it takes me in the next month.

The Planner And The Future

Moving forward: How will I continue to use the planner? I do intend to continue with the planner, I’ve been gifted this first version of the planner, it’s a one-off purchase or subscription-based, meaning you get a new planner each quarter. But a one-off planner is just under £20 which I think is good value for money.

After speaking to the designer this last week, he is also thinking about adding in a personal Facebook group so that we can build and support each other during our journeys, he is also thinking about doing a possible mentorship at some point in the future which I think is a fantastic idea.

There are so many planners out there that just push their planners at you without that detailed thought into how to make it work, they know how it’s intended to work but they need to pass on this information to the user too. I think the Effici Planner and the team behind it does a great job!  

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

I thought it would be a good idea to put my thoughts of the planner into a bullet point list for what I like and dislike.

This way it highlights all the features that I think are important!

What I love about the planner:

• The colour
• The quality of the paper
• Simplistic design
• How it works
• The system it helps creates

What I want to change about the planner:

• The way it doesn’t want to open and stay open
• More than one ribbon to make the pages
• A place to plan for the entire quarter
• For the tracking pages to be included in the planner so I don’t keep losing them
• Size options, I would like something smaller to fit on my desk better

So, while there are still some things that I would change, no system is ever going to be perfect as we are all individuals, I think this first version is amazing and I really can’t wait to see where it will go in the future!

I think you need to watch this space!