Several months ago I wrote a review on the High Performance Habits by Brendon Burchard. It is no secret that I adore this book. I have reread it and lent it to multiple people since. Coming 2021, after the terrible situation we all went through last year (and still going through), I was excited to start using the High Performance Planner, to get my life together. I have been using Burchard's planner for 6 months and I decided it was about time to stop.
So after 6 months of planning with the world's only planner based on science (or whatever the marketing scheme says) I thought this was a good time to write a review on it.
On January 1st I began obsessing over the planner and used it most of the days. The weekends were more free or filled with chores, which I didn't want to write down in a planner. It was a good way to ease myself back into a routine, but I don't know if its something I would want to use daily for years to come.
Each notebook contains two months worth of planning. The main focus of this planner is not the planning itself, but the assessing. So in the beginning of the day, you write down your main goals for the day, as well as how you want to feel and more. Some of these sentences I felt were unnecessary, like "Someone I could surprise with a note, gift, or sign of appreciation is..." At first I came up with people to surprise, but then, being in lockdown, I found it hard to surprise the only person I saw daily. It's impossible to gift the same person everyday. And when you do it everyday, I kind of feel like it loses its point.
There's an assessment section at the end of each day, each week and each month. I found these assessments important for my overall progress as well as my wellbeing. I appreciated statements like "3 great things that happened to me last week were..." since they forced me to think back the entire week and remember the good things. Especially during stressful times like a pandemic, when we tend to have more negative thoughts, recalling everything good that happens to us is important.
The formatting of the planner was one thing I couldn't get in terms with. I found the formatting quite inflexible, and difficult to adapt to. For instance, the monthly layouts were pre-designed and pre-printed to contain 5 weeks. But January, for instance, and May, happened to take up days from a 6th week. January started on a Friday, so we needed 6 vertical blocks to complete the days of the month, but we were only given 5. Same goes with the hours. Burchard gives us a range of a standard 6AM-8PM for each day. In January and February, however, I often had meetings scheduled after 8PM, which I had to squeeze below the last line of the planner. It would have been easier, for instance, if the time-stamps were left to be written by the user.
So there you have it, the good, the bad and the ugly. The High Performance Planner helped me get my life back on track and helped me get my mind clear and strong. I appreciate how much it helped me and I have also gifted this planner to my significant other and to my sister to help them jump start their lives after the lockdown. But after six months of using it, it has served its purpose and I would like to have more flexibility in regards to the design. Since I've gained disciplined journaling with this planner, starting July I will be using a bullet journal for the first time.
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