Franklin Planner System

[Enrique Fats]

TheFranklin Planner is a paper-based time management system created by Hyrum W. Smith first sold in 1984 by Franklin International Institute, Inc. [1] The planner itself is the paper component of the time management system developed by Smith. Hyrum Smith in turn based many of his ideas from the teachings of Charles Hobbs who utilized a similar instrument called The Day-Timer, which predated the Franklin Planner.

The planner pages are drilled, loose-leaf style pages in different sizes and formats. Formats have been updated through the years, but most planners contain areas for an appointment schedule, prioritized daily tasks, and notes. A key section at the rear of the planner contains addresses. Other inserts include ledger sheets for tracking finances or vehicle mileage, exercise logs, and other individualized reference materials.

Because of its overall design, the Franklin Planner system lends itself to use as a tickler file, as well as a long-range planner. Most annual versions of the page inserts for the Franklin system include yearly calendars for at least five years; future monthly calendars for at least three years; and then the current year's pages and associated monthly calendars for planning. When used as a total package, the system provides a means of tracking minute details; storage of signed agreements (especially if pages are archived in the archival binders); and tracking of business and personal expenses for taxes.

The Franklin Planner is marketed to consumers through an e-commerce web site, a US-based call center, and a GSA government contract. Marketing channels also exist outside the United States of America.[2]

The Franklin Day Planner was first produced in 1984 by the Franklin International Institute, Inc., which later became Franklin Quest. In 1997, Franklin Quest and the Covey Leadership Center merged to become FranklinCovey. The Franklin Planner has continued to be sold under the FranklinCovey name to this day. However, in 2008, FranklinCovey sold its Consumer Solutions Business Unit, including Franklin Planner, to a private equity firm.[3] The parent company of the Franklin Planner is currently FC Organizational Products, LLC, which is the exclusive worldwide licensee of the FranklinCovey brand.[4]

In addition, they have single month undated packs in a some of the options (found in the forms area of the planner accessories section on their website). These give you the option of trying a single type for a month before purchasing a full system. The single month pack can also be used to bridge the gap to the next quarterly start date.

My current pages are the Blooms two-page-per-day. Back in 2018 when I first wrote this post, I was using the Her Point of View two-page-per-day pages so you can see that I mix it up but usually stay with the same basic format. The left-hand page includes miniature calendars of the current month and the next month, task list, appointment schedule, and daily tracker. On the right-hand page there is a quote and then a daily notes section.

In the Prioritized Daily Task List section (A above), there are three columns. The first column is for marking task completed, forwarded, deleted, delegated or in process. The second column is labeled ABC and is for prioritization using the Franklin ABC-123 system and the final column is for the actual task description.

The Daily Notes page (D in the photo above) provides extreme flexibility. First, this page can be used for an expansion of the task or appointment descriptions. Just put a small number in a circle at the end of a task or appointment on the left page, then put that same number in the first column of the daily notes page with additional information in the other column.

Currently this area has a couple of functions. I still note discussions or phone calls on the page, but I also note accomplishments or challenges. In addition, I recap my day each evening making my planner serve as a journal too. They also have cutaway daily notes pages so you can add a page if your notes for a specific day are lengthy. These pages are a little shorter than the regular pages so the date and calendars still show above them.

I have a perpetual calendar in my planner that has all of the important dates for my family so they can be added to the appropriate days. A blank one comes as part of the Starter Pack and the Occasions Forms Pack.

I also have a section that keeps track of our monthly bills (when I paid them and when the payment posted) as well as our budget and other expenses. I use forms that I created for this but they have a Financial Plans Pack that can be used also.

All Franklin Planners provide quality systems that will work for almost any lifestyle. I would recommend these planners to anyone, especially the two-page-per-day, ring-bound planner system. You can even get 15% off your first order if you use the link below and provide your email address.

Glad you found the review useful. I also began with DayTimer and then switched to the Franklin system after attending one of their training classes. Like you I absolutely love the Frixion pens. They make it so easy to color code everything but still have the convenience of erase-ability.

The Franklin Covey System was inspired by Benjamin Franklin and popularized by Stephen Covey in principle #3 of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. In a nutshell this system is about being very clear on your goals and then ensuring that you spend much of your time on these priorities.

In practice, it is quite difficult to spend much of your time in quadrant 2 of the matrix as many people's work lives are very busy dealing with day-to-day urgency. This is why I suggest that you schedule one or two activities in quadrant 2 into your weekly planner or calendar in advance and then reviewing on a daily basis that you have spent enough time on these things.

I tried using my own set of tools, namely calendar, goal planning sheet, and notebook but I found it difficult to do. When I brought their signature Franklin Covey Planners it came with a number of important planning tools such as a master task list, the monthly index, and the weekly compass - which made it more easy for me to follow the process.

Again, like the GTD system, there did not appear to be much call for how to deal with procrastination,. While the GTD system gave me a framework to deal with my actions (which actually reduced my procrastination) this was lacking in this system.

In working as a time management coach with many people across different work environments it was apparent that this system would work well with a high level of organizational support or a high level of support from the team. It would suit also suit those people who are disciplined to check in on their priorities, on a daily and weekly basis.

This system requires you to step back from the day-to-day and to consider the bigger picture of your life and overall mission. Incredibly important but for those people who struggle to do this then this would be a sticking point.

I struggled using my own tools with the Franklin Covey system. As soon as I started to use their Franklin Covey Planner and other tools it became easier to adopt. For those people who want a system that is tool agnostic then this system would be tough to master.

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From the late 1990s - mid-2000s, I faithfully used the Franklin-Covey "Classic" planner. It lacked digital integration (except for a brief span when you could print F-C pages from Outlook), but my meetings were not so crazy then, so this worked. Mostly. Note: I also kept a "family" calendar in the kitchen at home for kiddo's doctor appointments, soccer games, and scout meetings.

For about a year, I tried a Personal Kanban board. That worked OK, but it was not portable, lacked the capability to plan forward, and the sticky notes would often fall off. Plus, there was no way (on a bad day) to flip through and see that - yes, you HAVE accomplished things! It was very "now". Note: I tried keeping a stack of completed sticky notes, but they didn't stick in their stack over the longer term, so I trashed them.

While I don't like to spend a lot of my time with my head in the clouds, I can see that there is sense in visualizing oneself as you wish to be in the future. After all, if you have no charted course, any ship will take you there! Yes, my Franklin-Covey training ca. 1999 also taught me this, but ...

This lack in my then-current personal system was highlighted for me when I came across the Dragontree's wonderful Dreambook planner. I have tried the bound & dated, bound & undated, and digital versions of this resource. I even took one of the bound ones apart, and reworked it so it would fit my F-C "Classic" binder. But as much as I loved the ethos of the Dreambook, I found I was doing the top-down visioning part, but I wasn't USING the planner, daily. So, things would get written down ... and forgotten. Incomplete tasks haunted me!

About 10 years ago, during a business trip where I was the only person with a physical planner (BTW I had by far the best meeting notes of the sessions thanks to the Notes section!), a colleague challenged me to "go paperless" with my planning. I tried. I really did. I put everything into my Outlook calendar (a hybrid of the Calendar for appointments and time-blocking), and tried really REALLY hard to not write things on paper. But I don't have JUST a work life to plan, I didn't want to populate my work calendar with personal stuff, and we had outgrown the kitchen wall calendar at home, so in the end I abandoned that option. However, the notion of digitally tracking the pieces that make sense has stuck with me.

I am now testing the Premium version of a tool called ToDoIst which seems to fit well with my overall way of functioning. I can create Tasks from Gmail (for personal stuff), Outlook (for work stuff), any web site (because random stuff), from either my work or personal cell phone/laptop, etc. This puts all my recurring and one-off tasks in an easy-to-manage platform which is device agnostic/pervasive, and enables me to quickly create & move around (to new "buckets" or new times) any tasks, as needed.

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