I used to stick to academic planners (like the Lilly Pulitzer academic planner) since I’m a teacher, but then I switched to the Passion Planner in 2020 after my daughter was born.

She was born right at the beginning of the pandemic, so I was teaching from home, my husband was working from home, and we had a newborn to take care of. That was a crazy time and it is such a blur.

I ordered a Passion Planner because I needed a layout with half-hour increments to figure out who was taking care of the baby at what time. I color-coded each member of the family:

My husband- red

Me- purple

Baby- pink

I used PaperMate Flair Tip pens to draw lines to show who was taking care of our baby at what times (after deciding with my husband how to divide this up based on his meetings and my class schedule). Then I would take a picture and text it to my husband. I used to color-code based on events when I was just planning for me in college/ right out of college with the Lilly planner, using a color per class I was taking, plus orange for any Clemson game I wanted to attend (Go Tigers!).

I loved how detailed I could make plans in the Passion Planner, and I really like the goal-setting pages at the beginning- I still actually use their method for long term goals today. Basically, you make a graphic organizer with the following categories: Lifetime, 3 Years, 1 Year, and 3 months. The Passion Planner encourages you to reach your goals sooner by changing the categories (changing 3 months –> 1 month for example). I missed the bright, happy colors of the Lilly Pulitzer planners, however so I started adding stickers (I really love the Paper Studio stickers from Hobby Lobby), especially when I find them on sale.

I seem to have a pattern of switching my planners when I go through a major life change.

This past summer, our daughter was diagnosed with leukemia. I switched to the Tidbits planner because it has the half-hour increments, but with more space for daily to-dos. This is perfect for writing in medicine doses, PT exercises, and other tasks that had to be done on particular days.

The Passion Planner had a large open space that I used for weekly to-dos. It was supposed to be for work on long-term goals, but this didn’t serve me any longer.

I still use the color-coding system for each individual’s appointments, meetings, events etc. Also, blue is the color for whole-family events.

My husband and I also have a shared Google calendar–I add events that affect him and whole-family events.

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