I’ve always been a huge fan of planning. Since I was in middle school, I have used both a school and personal planners. Nowadays, I don’t use a typical yearly planner. On the days I didn’t plan in a yearly planner, I often found it as wasted paper. Through bullet journaling, I’ve learned to plan my tasks on a monthly, weekly, and daily basis, as well as identifying uncompleted tasks that I just won’t complete in the near future. I currently use Leuchtturm 1917 squared medium notebooks to plan out my days, take notes, and jot work or personal ideas. I’ve also used goal setting techniques from Kate Matsudaira for almost two years now. Though I feel like these have been helpful techniques, I’m always looking for new ways to improve my workflow.

I came across Project Evo on Kickstarter. I loved the idea that a planner was custom made for your specific brain type. There are 4 brain types: Oracle, Alchemist, Explorer, Architect. Based on the assessment, the planner was laid out to focus on areas that worked with your brain type to help you achieve your goals.

I finally received my planner. It came in a nice presentable box. The pages looked like great layouts to truly help plan my day to achieve my goals. I tried it out for a few days. These are my thoughts on the daily pages:

Pros

• reflecting on positivity daily (with gratitude and favorite thing)
• defining daily focus
• identifying highest priority task
• listing out tasks for the day with estimations
• planning for self-care tasks
• tracking planning
• being mindful of your day overall

Cons

• how you fill it out for the day is out of order
• MIT is repeated on both pages
• icons are not consistent
  • self-care (heart) with wellness and fun listed (no icons)
  • wellness as a checkbox
  • health as a favorite thing with a wellness icon (sprout)
  • relationships with a self-care icon (heart)
• favorite thing should be lines then the icon selections underneath

Order of Operations

The order of the daily planing pages could be more efficient. Currently, all the information you’d fill out for the beginning of the day is at the top of both pages, whereas, the bottom pages are more for throughout/end of the day. First thing a person would do is enter in the date, which automatically skips the helpful tip of the day. If the date was on the left or top of the page, the order in which the person would do is write the date and read the helpful tip.

Grateful, Focus, and Most Important Task (MIT) can be one liners. Short and to the point to move along with the day. MIT only needs to be listed once between two pages so I left it in the same position but with the added Time slot. Today’s Priorities would be listed next after MIT along with the Time estimates.

On the right page, it can start with the Notes & Ideas. I would probably add Ritual to the mix to reflect on the Evo App Ritual of the Month. If necessary, Ritual can be a block under Notes & Ideas.

For Favorite Things about Today, the lines for the description should come first and the radio buttons for the categories should go underneath. That way, a person can utilize all lines rather than just the line associated with the category, as it appears.

Icons

The icons are a little inconsistent in naming conventions. There’s a heart that’s listed next to Self-Care and Relationships. In this case, I would remove the heart but leave the Self-Care heading. Add the icons for Wellness and Fun underneath Self-Care. Rename Health as Wellness underneath Favorite Thing.

Documenting Workflow

When a person is filling out the scannable portion, the options should be self-explanatory. I would move the smiley faces outside of the circle. The order would be smiley, number, and radio button. For the completed items, I would make them checkboxes since you can select more than one.

Overall

I like the planner so far. It just needs a few workflow tweaks. I like the idea of having focus but making sure to take care of myself. I often find myself buried in To Dos that I forget to plan/do the fun stuff. The planner is also just for 90 days. I believe they come as 90 days per planner but you can buy a set of planners for the year. It would have been nice to have a pre-planner page to list out the main goal you’d like to accomplish in 90 days. That way, the month/week/day can be planned out to work towards that goal.