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Do planners help? Well, they do. The only condition is that the planner should enable you to organize your work and personal life rather than becoming one more uphill task that needs to be taken care of. For me, a good planner should be minimal, and helpful but it should cover almost every area that needs a planned approach. TinyChange 2023 Pro Planner ticks all the boxes for me and over-delivers.
I used Classic Planner of TinyChange in 2021 and I liked them a lot. After a break of one year, I am back to planners and got my hands on this TinyChange 2023 Pro Planner. So, here’s my brief review of the same…
What’s Inside the Box?
The box of TinyChange 2023 Pro Planner contains quite a few well-thought items inside it. The first thing to grab my attention was a wall poster that reads “life is a journey, not a destination”. The kit also has a B6-size to-do list with tearable pages and a dot-grid notebook of the same size. The box also brought a really big (A2 size) wall planner, but I couldn’t figure out any practical way of using it. And then, there’s the hero product, the 2023 Pro Planner itself. I will talk about it later.
Overall, it is genuinely a minimalist approach while the industry is flooded with planners that include dozens of different things, no matter whether they’re useful or not. There’s no separate sheet for stickers as all stickers are attached at the end of the planner, which is a more practical approach.
TinyChange 2023 Pro Planner – First Impressions
The first impression that I had while browsing through the planner was too good. All appreciation for the team TinyChange for incorporating a tiny amount of motivating and confidence-building writing throughout the planner. Let’s check some key sections of the planner according to me:
Life Compass:
This section gives an overview of what we are at the beginning of 2023. I liked this section because it gives a clear picture of where we are starting. “My True Self” is my pick out of the whole section because it helps in understanding my own self with much-needed clarity. It is followed by “My core values” and “10 rules I live by”. The “Quality of Life” page is divided into four categories as health, wealth, happiness, and wisdom. This whole section is brief and precise.
Goals and Roadmap:
Honestly, I was not expecting this section to be so good and thought-provoking. It starts with “20 steps to achieve any life goal” and “40 key habits”. It felt as if I am seeing everything, I needed in life right on the two pages. They are followed by the standard pages such as “Big 3 goals for 2023”, “2023 calendar” and “Quality of life enhancement plan”. In the end, it has a vision board, but I rarely use it. This part also has “idea week design” and “ideal day design” sections, which are not for someone like me who prefers flexibility over compulsion.
Planning Pages:
Well, this section is the very reason one buys a planner. The section starts straight with the monthly plan and weekly plan segments. I like the way they have designed the weekly pages with three tasks on priority every day and below that are hour-by-hour rows for task allocation. The weekly challenge part on each week is still there, just like the 2021 planner I used. Every month ends with a month overview page where you can track your progress, note down your hits and misses, and prepare for the upcoming month.
Life Dashboard:
This segment is towards the end of the planner. The “2023 day effectiveness” section is designed very creatively and it covers almost all the essential parameters to track the effectiveness of every day. The “finance dashboard” is distributed into quarters, which I prefer over monthly budgeting. The same section also has a page dedicated to all subscriptions to track all the subscriptions you are paying for (and may never be used).
Lifekit Lists
For my use-case, this segment has an extremely useful addition this year, named “100-day project”. I liked it because it can help achieve things you have been procrastinating on for months. There are more pages in this segment for people who have bucket lists like travel goals, reading goals, or goals to acquire different skills, etc.
The Review: TinyChange 2023 Pro Planner
I am liking almost everything about this planner. The thought process that has gone behind making this is commendable. Priced at INR 1899 (while I am writing this blog), the planner is designed for those who are serious about optimum utilization of time and who have some goals to achieve in the 365 days of 2023.
I wish there were more color options available other than black or some level of customization could be provided to have an individualized touch. Also, they have not included any bookmarks this time.
For beginners, I will still suggest TinyChange Classic Planner which costs half of this but has most of the things covered to build a habit of planning and tracking.
