Lifestyle | The Imperfect Life Planner 2019 Unboxing & First Impressions
The Imperfect Life Planner is the brainchild of Kerry Lyons, who took to Kickstarter to launch her 2018 Imperfect Life Planner in August 2017. I ordered one, and am planning on trying it out for the next few months, to see if a planner can benefit someone as disorganised as me!
Preface
I’m a very disorganised person who procrastinates way more than I should. Heck, I’m procrastinating by writing this blog post right now, so you get the idea. I’m in medical school, so I thought perhaps trying a planner this year (a somewhat resolution to be more organised) would be a good way to keep on top of things and reflect (something I’m trying to do a lot more) on how things are going.
I’ll be doing a review perhaps after a month or two, talking about my experiences of using the planner and the nuances behind using it.
Ordering & Delivery
So, The Imperfect Life Planner can be ordered in this link right here, and the cost of the planner itself is a pretty heft £34.99 pounds. Maybe not sure about the standard around the rest of the world, but in Malaysia, that’s quite a bit for a planner. The shipping for me (International) was £15, so you might personally want to check that for yourself depending on where you are in the world.
Payment was pretty easy, I paid through paypal, so everything went through quite smoothly. I ordered on the 25th of December 2018, and the e-mail telling me when it was dispatched came through on the 27th of December, and I guess I just waited patiently for it to arrive. The website states 1-10 days for International deliveries, and mine was collected on the 14th of January 2019 (I think the note was that it was first sent out for dispatch on the 10th of January 2019, so perhaps just a tad longer than the stated 1-10 days on the website, but I’ll consider the fact that Malaysia isn’t the most convenient place in the world to send to, especially from the UK.
The Packaging
One creative thing that they did was that they made the box that it comes in essentially act as the packaging, with the details on top. I expected to open a few layers worth of boxes, but it was basically just the one. It is a pretty nice box with a nice interior, the outside might not be the nicest thing to look at after the tape and all, but the inside has some nice details. Not really saying that it is worth keeping or anything, but you guys might be interested.
Bubble wrapped and all, the Imperfect Life Planner 2019 comes in pristine condition, ready for you to open and use!
The Planner
To be fair, from pictures I didn’t actually expect it to be that thick or bulky. I’ve previously used a few planners, and none were more thick than this, so I was pretty surprised as I hadn’t thought it was that thick from the pictures alone.
But you open it up, and in the sleeve you have some stickers that you can use! These are suitable to be used as how you would like, whether it be in the planner itself or even elsewhere in your daily living. I personally had a bit of trouble taking one of the sticker templates out (I’m still a bit scared of spoiling the sleeve, so I haven’t taken it out yet, but the other one comes out fine.
You have stickers that basically either motivate you, or maybe turn a negative experience into something that you can remember, so I think it is a pretty nice touch, and something different from a lot of planners out there.
You open it and you have a 6 month snapshot page (Jan-June, July-December) just for the rough dates of important events that you want to keep track of. Then, you have the master plan, something that Kerry talks about a lot. The master plan is basically your year divided into 4, and you setting up goals and strategies in order to accomplish the goals. It is the planner’s way to keep you accountable for your goals throughout the year.
Then, you have a short reflection on 2018, and what you want to achieve for 2019 page. Then, you have basically the planner aspect, and it is a bit more comprehensive than most other planners in the sense that you have a monthly layout, then the weekly and then the daily, with review pages for you to reflect on the month.
But I will say that the paper quality and the quality of the tabs is REALLY good. They even have nice corners on the cover in order for it to not be so sharp and retain the shape, so I quite appreciate that little touch.
I think there are a few differences between this year and last year’s version. First would be clearly the fact that last year’s edition was using a binder, whereas this year’s is like your average hardcover storybook. In addition, last year had tabs both on the sides and the top side of the planner, whilst this year it is only on the sides. They removed the Fear Journal and the Thrive Manual, and I guess they wanted to make it more planner-centric, which is why I was a bit surprised that there was a bit less than I expected towards the start of the planner.
Overall Thoughts
As I mentioned before, haven’t really been motivated and organised enough to follow through with using a planner, so I think this one is worth a shot. It looks beautiful, but costs a bomb - I would say you can definitely get A LOT MORE bang for your buck buying another planner, but I guess this has its perks in the sense that it feels very personalised and almost focusing more about your wellbeing.
I’ll be back with a full review in a few months, and I guess talking about my general thoughts of using a planner.