Planner season is here and we all know I love to talk about planners, so I thought it’d be fun to take a look at the planner I’ve been using through 2021, the Clever Fox Undated Weekly Planner! ✨
(I’m not going too in depth, but if you want to see more of the planner you can see this guide on the Clever Fox website)
This is an A5 size planner, and it is THICK! I normally avoid using big planners, but since I’m working from home this year it wasn’t much of an issue. It comes with an elastic closure (you can see I’m hiding it on the back), 3 ribbon bookmarks (nice!), and a pen loop. The pen loop is too small for my Lamy Safari, but I guess if you use gel pens it should fit well…?
The paper is white and thicker than regular copy paper, and it was pretty fountain-pen friendly. There was a little feathering a couple times, but it was rare!
Everything inside the planner is printed in grey in a very minimalistic style, which gives you space to decorate and color it to your liking. It also has lots of prompts and guides to help you plan for the year and reach your goals. I thought this was a fun motivation, but in the end I didn’t use a lot of them. Maybe it’s too many prompts for me?
I liked this section because it’s fun (and important) to think of goals that aren’t only work-oriented!! I really need to catch up with Paper Mario…
There are more prompts like “Top 5 Goals” and a vision board, but I didn’t use any of that. I had a pretty big goal for the year (finish drawing/inking our graphic novel), so I didn’t really have the energy to come up with more goals.
Clever Fox is made in the US, and therefore their calendars start the week On SuNdAy!!!!!!!, but it’s nothing some trusty Poscas can’t fix.
I really liked the bottom sections for monthly goals, wins, and improvements for next month. I also used the space to write a little review of the month. I never used the prompts on the left, though!! I’ve been trying to keep the same habits all year (yoga, healthy snacks, etc) and it felt repetitive to write it down every month. AND there’s not many places to go in 2021, so!! SHRUGS….
Then comes my favorite part of the planner and the one I use the most—the weekly view!
It has just enough space to write my daily tasks on the left side, and a ton of prompts on the right side. I really appreciate the weekly wins and ways to improve next week, they serve as a reminder to check in on what’s working and what’s not. And writing my wins at the end of every week is super motivating!
I wasn’t a fan of the top section with “this week’s main goal” and “this week’s priorities”, but mostly because it got super repetitive for me…90% of the times I filled “this week’s main goal” it’s “INKS!!”, because that’s what I’ve been working on for most of the year. I don’t need to be reminded of how long it takes to make a book, planner!! My weekly priorities were also pretty repetitive, but on extra stressful weeks it was good for reminders to stretch and take breaks.
You can also see that on some weeks I got way more creative with colors and washi tapes, but most of the time I kept it chill.
After the weekly pages there’s a ton of blank pages for notes! Nothing too interesting about it, but here’s a section I made this year that’s been super useful:
is that smart or what
So yeah!! Overall I had a good time with the Clever Fox; it has good paper, it’s simple in design and it’s easy to decorate. It had too many prompts for my taste, but if you’re looking for something more guided then this might be a good fit!
For 2022 I finally took the plunge and bought a Hobonichi Weeks! I’m glad I can move back to a smaller planner (especially now with in-office work making a comeback), and I’m super excited about more fountain-pen friendly paper ✨
