If you’re like me, your day revolves around a good planning system—a place to keep up with your appointments, children’s activities, and home management. While these planners are beneficial, imagine one that goes beyond keeping up with times and dates to overhauling your life, helping you find balance, pinpointing weak areas, and meeting goals that felt out-of-reach.
The 7 Minute Life™ Daily Planner, a product of The 7 Minute Life, was created around the concept that the average person’s attention span is only 7 minutes long, so let’s make the most of that time, taking bite-size steps towards accomplishing larger goals.
The planner also helps with reminders, such as water, exercise, goal setting, etc., in such a way that they eventually become second nature. Your goals, both personal and business, are together in one place.
What sets The 7 Minute Life™ Planner apart from others is that this isn’t a book in which one opens and writes in appointments and commitments. It’s more of a process, complete with an introduction that helps the user realize their priorities, purpose, and goals and then helps create a strategy to simplify, focus, and eliminate time wasters.
While there are pages that allow the user to see months and even a year-at-a-glance, the actual planner is designed to be used for only 90 days. It feels like a workbook, allowing places to check in with yourself—are you meeting your goals? What changes need to be made in order to do so?
I wear many hats:
- Wife and a homeschool mom to six, including two special needs children and a baby.
- Accounts and HR Manager for my husband’s company.
- Blogger and freelance writer with editors to answer to and deadlines to meet.
- Herbalist studying to eventually be Registered.
And in case that wasn’t enough, our family recently moved for the first time in 13 years.
In fact, when I opened the package, I looked at this pretty green book and asked, “Can you handle my life?”
At first, I was overwhelmed by the introduction. It took about a week to work through it; there were moments when I wondered what I’d gotten myself into and wanted to skip ahead; but I didn’t. I followed the instructions step by step, answered all of the questions, and learned a few things about myself that helped me gain perspective and focus.
I could also relate to the creator of The 7 Minute Life™ Daily Planner, who shared her story of hitting rock bottom with her health as a result of her intense days with no real direction. She needed focus, as do I and many other moms.
Essentially, The 7 Minute Life™ Daily Planner will help you figure out your own personal strategy to streamline your life so that you’re able to fulfill your purpose and to focus only on those things that need to be in your life. As I read through the introduction, the author’s desire to help others have hope, peace, and productivity felt genuine. I envisioned a woman who wants to mentor others to live out their potential, and this is her medium.
Breaking Down the Planner:
As I mentioned earlier, this planner began with an intro which required me to narrow down my priorities, but helped me realize what was most important. I found this experience to be eye-opening as it allowed me to see these things at a glance and enabled me to keep time wasters out of my life and schedule.
After working through a series of questions and lists, other forms included:
- 90 Day Personal Goals
- 90 Day Work Goals
- Financial Goals
- Life Goals
- Unfinished Home Tasks
- Unfinished Work Tasks
- Home Repairs
- An assortment of calendars and worksheets
- Daily Progress Report
- Exercise record
Overall, this planner is designed to help keep work and home in one place. At first I wondered if I could fully appreciate it, but it helped me more than I expected. For example, my unfinished work tasks filled up quickly, since I help my husband with the company. And with the meeting planner pages, I mapped out a meeting with my husband to discuss our homeschool year. Even though we’ve always homeschooled, trying to begin a new year during a major move made me appreciate the smaller details the planner suggested.
Within the Daily Progress Report, which I believe to be the meat of the planner, you’ll find 90 days worth of pages to keep up with:
- Daily Contacts
- What I will do… 5 before 11 (This is great for anyone who needs to get focused)
- Unfinished Tasks
- “7 Minute Life” Connections
- What I Spent
- Food Choices (I used this list to plan out my daily menu, which is very helpful for busy moms)
- Water Intake
- Sleep
- Exercise
- Reflection
- Reading
- The very important question, “Did I do what I said I would do today?” (I usually felt guilty answering this question because many times the answer was no. But it’s a good way to hold myself accountable, especially as I planned out the next day’s activities.)
- An appointment template, broken down by the hour
- Thank-You notes
- Voice Mail (I used this more than I thought I would. While I keep up with voice mail on my cell phone, having this list made it easy for me to remember to check my home voice mail, which helped me stay on top of things)
- Extra lines for general notes
Overall, I was able to see my entire day within a 2 page spread that was a convenient size to carry in arms, as well as lay flat when I needed to flip through it while cradling a baby or toting a toddler on my hip.
My favorite parts of the planner were the intro, the 5 before 11 (my top 5 tasks that I’ll endeavor to accomplish before 11:00 am), and the unfinished tasks. If I couldn’t complete something that day, I moved that task into the 5 before 11 for the next day. The nice thing is that if I only accomplish those 5 tasks, I’m taking baby steps towards a bigger goal. When my 90 days are complete, I know I’ll have reached more than a few goals because of finding and maintaining my focus rather than allowing myself to become distracted by not having a realistic game plan.
A clean view of the right side of the page:
At this point, I see gradual progress, and the planner has helped tremendously during our move. I’m excited to see where I’ll be at the end of the current 90 day cycle, not only with personal and business goals but fitness goals, too.
You can pick up your own planner for $24.95. For more information, there are a variety of ways to keep up with The 7 Minute Life across Social Media:
- Like them on Facebook
- Follow them on Twitter
- Join them on Pinterest
- Follow them on Google+
- Subscribe to their channel on YouTube
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Thank you for a clear and helpful review. I work up this morning praying about how to make sure I get the priorities accomplished day by day…this looks great! Thanks, again, for sharing. 🙂
Thanks for visiting, Serafina!!! And thank you for your sweet comment–it made my morning. 🙂