Hooray!! I just couldn’t go out on maternity leave until I shared one of my FAVORITE new updates to the 2015-2016 Simplified Planners (coming May 6 at 10am EST!!). Over the years there’s been something I’ve really missed on our pages, something that didn’t feel quite right. During the Fall of last year I spent hours upon hours reworking the pages in an attempt to bring our two key principles into the pages even more: JOY and SIMPLICITY. The simplicity part was easy – I reworked the layout and moved things around based on how I was using the daily planner and where I felt like I needed more or less space.
- The Schedule section is now smaller and extends from 6am to 9pm. I struggled with this a bit… we had to eliminate our half hour increments in order to extend the hours AND keep it simple AND allow space for other sections. But then I remembered how I’ve been using this section from the get-go. I write (on the nearest hour slot) appointments like this: 2:30 // Dr’s Appt. And I really like it. Now I feel like I’m really using that section rather than letting SO MUCH PAGE to go waste. See below…
- The Dinner section is now underneath the Schedule section (since that’s really how I think of my day… what appointments do I have, where do I need to be and what are we having for dinner…) and a little larger.
- The To Do section is a little larger also
- The quadrant feel makes me SO HAPPY visually. Aesthetically I see my page in four sections now – and nothing else. The “nothing else” part is what fires me up about our Simplified Planner – we don’t put excess in these pages and that helps my mind feel free from a) guilt of not using certain portions and b) helps me see only what I need to see.
The JOY part was where I was stuck. How could I make our pages SIMPLE but HAPPIER. It took me a while to get this right but I about died and made Bryan come in to look at it fifteen times once I did it… we added COLOR to every page. Minimal color. Nothing busy, just color within the flag (the flag will say M, T, W, Th, F, S or Su depending on what day it is — and each day of the week has its own color throughout – so Mondays will all be the same color, etc) and within the section titles. That’s it. Oh be still my color-loving-heart. It’s joyful but still simple. The Weekly will also have this :)
Ok!! Now the fun part. For years we’ve had a Daily Page printable in our Free Printable Library but it wasn’t quite like the planner. NOW, you can download and print this page to see it for yourself! There are SO MANY of you that didn’t get a Simplified Planner and wanted one (determining how many planners to make each year is one of the hardest parts of my job) so I thought you’d love this little treat. Download yours here.
I know you’re going to have lots of questions and I promise we’ll answer them as we get closer to May 6. These are just a FEW of the updates and changes we’ve made to the Simplified Planner to make it more joyful and more simple. I’m seriously over the moon about all of them and can’t wait to share more!
xo,
Emily
PS: This image above is showing you the new page layout inside our Navy Dot Daily. We’ll have three NEW covers with the new editions. Not this one. :) This was just for fun.
PPS: The image above shows the printable. The new pages will all be dated, of course :)