I have been obsessed with planners and organization for a few years now. For the longest time, I could not afford any of the fancy planners out there and chose to make my own by taking inspiration from the most popular international brands out there. More on that, later.
This year I decided to do some research and found a bunch of great Indian planner options you can try. I will list out all the features, the major inserts, type of stickers, and price of the planners and also the links to them so you can have a look for yourself. These are planners I was genuinely considering for my 2021 planning and I will look at it from a very functional perspective. In the past, I have faced planner FOMO and bought something which I ended up ignoring pretty much completely after February. All the planners and the creators are linked, just hover on the names to have a closer look.
Now let's get into the planners!
This one goes first because she is one of my favorite designers currently. Her focus on self-improvement and self-care is so relevant in today’s day and age. And that is clearly visible in this planner. Sprinkled throughout this planner are helpful tips regarding finance, planning, and consistency. She provides a spacious monthly view to plan out all your events and appointments, weekly views in a horizontal layout in addition to monthly goals and habit tracker pages. The biggest USP of this planner is the beautiful designs and the tips she has created for the users.
My Take: It is best suited for people who don’t have a timebound schedule or people who don’t like to have too many items on their daily agenda. The horizontal layout makes it more suited for fewer to-dos or a free-flowing rapid logging style. That aside, it has so many beautifully designed pages that make you think deeply about all of your goals and make detailed plans on how to achieve them and at the same time make some space in your life to really stop and smell the roses.
Price: Rs. 1100
This one is a whole kit and not just a single planner book. It includes a weekly planner, a day scheduler, 3 notebooks, a pen, sticker book, bookmarks, and a box to store all of that in. The design looks very clean and professional. It includes the usual collection of planner pages everyone wants these days - the goals, habit trackers, weekly layouts, savings tracker, meal plan, etc. This is a pretty minimalistic planner. Completely focussed on functional planning. It is a system that needs to be used together, with the daily scheduler for all of your appointments and the main planner to keep track of all of your lifestyle habits, goals, and events.
My Take: I think this is a perfect system for someone who has a lot of projects and appointments throughout the day, probably someone self-employed would find a lot of use for it. It is good to keep you focused on your goals and action items. This is more of a life planner, so it looks into all aspects of your personal and professional life.
Price: Rs.1799
This one is an undated, minimalist, and super functional planner. Saloni is a very successful Youtuber, business coach, and just an all-around boss. She makes very useful content and her coaching business, the Hustlepost Academy has been helping hundreds of people kickstart their side hustles/ business ventures during the lockdown.
After the chaos that was 2020, we all need a perfectly planned 2021 and that is what this planner tries to achieve. It is a beautiful pastel pink A5 planner that is very organized and effective. Multiple trackers, activities, and questions make the process of planning very engaging and action-oriented rather than passively just writing pages after pages of to-do lists.
My Take: The most unique thing I found in this planner is the monthly layout which is rotated 90 degrees anticlockwise unlike the usual vertical ones. I found the mood trackers and habit trackers really cute. The meal planner is really pretty as well but personally, I would not use that space, I would probably plan out my workouts/ content calendar in that area. The monthly goals area has lots of space to list all your goals and also the action steps for each. The reading list is a great addition! This planner really keeps you focused on your habits and goals to make sure you are on track the whole year. The fact that it is undated reduces the anxiety around blank pages that exists in the planner community. You can totally use this at your own pace and when you are ready, it has all the tools you need for a perfectly planned 2021.
Price: Rs.1199
This is one of the most beautiful planners out there. The designs are all made by the creator, Vidhi by hand. Florals are her specialty and the hand-painted floral designs are surely going to brighten up your day. The stickers are bright and beautiful as well. The monthly layout is wide enough to accommodate your monthly events and appointments. Every month has a spread about setting goals and intentions for the month, noting down expenses, tracking habits, and also a space to doodle in. The weekly layouts also have a lot of space to list your daily to-dos and every weekly spread ends with a weekly reflections page and goal setting area for the next week. This planner gives you a lot of space to express yourself creatively and also take note of all of your goals and making sure that you are pushed towards taking small action steps every week.
My Take: Okay, spoiler alert! This is the one that I got for myself. I absolutely loved the functional nature of the planner and the focus on each of your goals. The vision board spread is very unique and I have not seen this in most planners. There is also a yearly highlight section and a 2020 review section. I am a very visual person and I really love to keep track of all of my goals and how much progress I make throughout the year. So I would say this is the ideal planner for someone who likes a structured system but also wants some elements of design and creativity in their daily planning routine. The Inkbucket 2021 planner will definitely help you take stock of your life goals and help you achieve them.
Price: Rs 1899
This planner is more of an activity book. It comes as a bundle with a sticker book, pop socket, a couple of bookmarks, Ikigai worksheets, postcards, and a box to keep it all in. The variety of spreads this planner offers is unmatched. It has the more popular Year at a glance page, birthday lists, and bucket lists but it also has a bunch of unique inserts with a heavy focus on self-care. It also has a few pages which would be very relevant for social media creators. The monthly layout has the usual trackers and also gives a lot of focus on health metrics. Through the various spreads, this planner is a very interactive experience and it will make the user think deeply about their habits, goals, uses, and mental health practices, gratitude, and affirmation.
My Take: This planner can be a bit much for someone who is a veteran in the planner world and has strong preferences regarding some inserts and layouts. But for a beginner, this might be a very good way to get initiated into the world of planning since there are so many pages to fill that they will keep coming back to the planner and make a habit. I think this would be great for any kind of content creator, there are trackers to take an account of your growth across platforms which I think is very thoughtful. The graphics in the planner have a very doodly feel about them, it looks hand-drawn and it can also be a nice transition from a bullet journal to an actual planner if that is what you are looking for.
Price: Rs.1675
6. Factor Notes
This planner is an all-rounder. Like most planners, it helps you track your habits and keep up with your goals and daily to-dos. There are also a bunch of activities that prompt you to delve deeper and discover more about yourself in addition to that there are also puzzles and brain teaser at the beginning of every month that will make your planning routine more fun. The beginning of the planner has a lot of questions for the user to introspect and really understand what yourself and what it is that you want to achieve over the year.
My Take: In my opinion, this planner is the perfect size to carry around in your bag. The little comics at the end and the sticker sheets are really fun and cute. All the activities will definitely make you smile even in the middle of a crazy week. It looks like a well thought out planner and it is designed to keep you coming back to it. It is great for beginners or maybe for students. The weekly planning area is too narrow for the daily to-do lists. For students, it might be useful to keep track of exams or assignments and have overall weekly priority lists and have the space to track habits and goals every week. I think if you supplement this with a daily to-dos notepad it would be the most adaptable planning system. If you’re new to planning, this is your go-to. The cover options are beautiful. This planner had the most cover options amongst all the ones mentioned on this list. I love the graphics on this, the pastel shades are everyone’s favorite.
Price: Rs.990
A few years ago this brand was all over Instagram however lately many newcomers have entered the planner space to take its place. However it still is one of the most beautifully designed planners available in the market, it also is one of the most expensive ones out there. The look and feel of the planner are very luxurious and elegant, especially with the gold rings and accents. The inside of the planner is beautifully designed in pastel colors and floral designs and there are monthly tabs! Any planner nerd will tell you how rare and coveted these monthly tabs are. There are multiple detailed self-reflection pages at the start of this planner. The monthly views are spacious with a dedicated notes section and the weekly pages are divided into quarters with a water tracker for each day.
My Take: Honestly, If you have the budget for it, you should get this one. If you have tried out a bunch of planners before and everything else seemed to have either too much space or too little, this should be just the right fit for you. This allows you to make your daily plans and enough prompts to reflect and realign every month on your goals. I’m not too crazy about the self-reflection pages, I feel like Ink bucket or Factor Notes have done a better job there but the weekly section is perfect! The quarterly set up gives you enough space to accommodate multiple todos without being cramped. That is what I have done in my bullet journals for the longest time. If you don’t know what a bullet journal is, don’t worry I will write a post explaining all about it next week. Subscribe to the newsletter to be notified when it's up!
Price: Rs.2100
Alicia is an illustrator who has the most adorable designs. She keeps illustrating her daily life on Instagram and that personality has sort of translated into this planner. The cover is a very beautiful navy blue with a gold strap and pen loop. Like the Artchetype planner, she also uses monthly tabs which are very useful. Each of the monthly dividers has really cute illustrations. Each month gets its own habit tracker, meal planner, monthly goals, and to-do page which is a lot of space to plan effectively. The weekly layouts are horizontal and have a small dot grid area at the end of the page to doodle in. This planner comes with a wide collection of adorable, functional, and very relatable stickers.
My Take: Full disclosure, this is the planner I had for 2020, and as cute as it was just not convenient. The big gold rings make it too bulky to lug around with you and it used to get caught between my notebooks in my bag all the time. The paper quality is amazing and the habit tracker is very colorful and it also has a space for tracking your period which is very helpful. If you want a desk buddy or if you work from home then this is a good choice. To me, it seems more like a creative planner than a functional planner. At least that's how I ended up using mine, like a memory keeping planner. The pocket planner that comes with it, however, is perfect for your bag and you can use that to track any urgent appointments and get a look at the month at a glance.
Price: Rs. 1899
via This is an undated planner so you can start using it at any point in time in the year without worrying about wasting pages. It has the space to plan out 6 months because from an undated planner that is what you expect. The structure of the planner is very simple: monthly layout, weekly layout followed by daily pages. There is space to note down daily gratitude and affirmations to start the day off right.
My Take: This is a very well laid out planner with spacious monthly, weekly, and daily layouts for a busy professional. This is really focused on positivity and productivity. If you get daunted by the elaborate decorative planning pages you find on Instagram and Pinterest, this is a great start to just being organized and keeping track of your goals and projects. If you have never had a planning system and barely have any time in the day to set up a bullet journal or understand which planner works for you this is a very affordable introductory planner.
Price: Rs 519
10. Odd Giraffe 2021
This planner has a lot of features like the monthly and weekly views, goals tracker, monthly reflections page, and a focus of the month page. The bright and colorful designs mixed with the random compliments spread across the planner make it a very unique planner. There are weekend tasks and doodle sections for each month which add to the fun planning experience.
My Take: They have really tried to make the planner a fun activity book and at the same time give the user enough room the plan out all their daily tasks. Another one with monthly tabs and it really makes me happy to see that the tabs and months are of the same colors. The artwork is very cool and so are the stickers. Even though this planner has horizontal weekly layouts, there is ample space for todos and notes.
Price: Rs 1399
While this list is not in any order of preference and my personal planner for 2021 is the Inkbucket one, there are some I like better than others. That totally depends on my preference for dated planners and pretty designs. Here is my order for these 10 planners :
Let me know what is your favorite!
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