WeekDate 2018-2019 Academic Year Planner

Anyone who has been reading my blog for awhile knows I love WeekDate planners and their Only Write It Once method! Kay Odell, the creator of WeekDate planners, is a genius. She came up with a paper planner that captures all of your recurring events in one spot so you only write them once, yet can still see them every week with no rewriting! How did she accomplish such an amazing feat you ask? Hang on and I'll show you in a sec. Let me walk you through the planner.

The academic year WeekDate planners have a slightly different layout than the calendar year ones, but the Only Write It Once concept is the same. The academic year planners measure 6.75 by 8.75 inches closed, which gives you a nice big page size but the book itself is slim and very light, much lighter than other planners of this size, so you can very easily carry it with you everywhere.

You can see lots of details and specs of the academic year WeekDate planners here. I'll also show you photos of these details too.

The outer cover is lightweight chipboard to give you a firm writing surface no matter where you are.

The inside cover comes in 6 different colors. This year's colors are black Exec, blue Breathe, green Between The Lines, pink Fizzy, orange Brazen, and (my favorite) purple Vigor, shown below!

When you open the inside cover, this is what you see: a space to write your personal details, and a welcome page:

Then! You open up to the weekly pages and see the setup in all its gloriousness (below). There are timed daily columns where you write specifics like doctor's appointments and deadlines. There's a lined area to the right of each weekly spread for lists and notes. The pagemarker flap is lined on the inside, making it the perfect space to keep things visible all the time like your year's goals, quotes, vision board, or a place to create a sticky-note dashboard:

AT THE BOTTOM is where the real magic happens. Below the days is a space that you see all the time, every week, even when you turn the pages. This space is actually the inside surface of the colored cover I showed you a minute ago. Here's a closeup:

This is where you write recurring events (in pencil obviously so you can change them when you need to). This is where you write your class schedule, after school activities, recurring meetings, trash day, rotating weekly menus, anything that happens every week. You can also write things that happen every other week and still keep track of them because the week number is printed on each week. So for example I write on Wednesdays to put out the trash on even weeks and the recycling on odd weeks.

Each day you just look up and down the column to see everything going on that day, whether they happen just on a specific day or on that day every week. So simple! So brilliant!

Each day's space is divided into 3 blocks you can use for morning/ afternoon/ evening; parents can use them for work/ personal/ family or for different family members; you can use them for school/ work/ social; or in any way that works for you.

SO. For example, say you (or your kid if you are a parent) has an activity that is on Tuesday evenings from 4-6 pm from August 14th until November 13th. On the Tuesday spot you can write the name of the activity, time, start and end dates. Now EVERY WEEK that will be visible! You don't need to rewrite it each week! When the activity comes to an end, you just erase it. And if for some reason the date changes, for example it switches to Wednesdays instead, you don't need to erase and rewrite it each week! You erase it ONCE and write it on the new day ONCE and you are done! Wow! I just love the elegant simplicity of this method. It really does make your life so much easier.

Side note: each WeekDate planner comes with a pencil and eraser. Somehow I failed to get a photo of the pencil, but the WeekDate pencils and erasers are my crazy-favorite. The pencils write so nicely, and the erasers erase so well. I hoard them. I hide them from other people. Seriously, they are great.

Look again at the right side of the bottom area and you'll see a lined space that also stays visible all the time. This is where you write things that happen on a specific date each month. This is where you write, for example, rent due on the 1st each month, etc.

Here are some other awesome features of this planner:

There's a tracker page where you can fill in the dates for each day you, for example: exercise, write pages of your dissertation, don't spend any money, or anything else you want to track. Or you can fill in each day to see your progress through your year, or days leading up to the big day (graduation, wedding, moving, starting a new job). This visual is very powerful in getting your brain to face up to reality and keep you on track!

Monthly pages! There are monthly calendars and notes pages embedded in the weeks to give you an overview of your month and a space to write your montly goals.

There are year overview calendars for 2018:

And 2019:

Here's a closeup of the pagemarker flap, with an overview reference calendar of the entire school year:

Another wonderful thing about the WeekDate Academic planners is you can cut out the pages and hole punch them to fit into a Filofax or similar brand A5 ring binder, or a Franklin Covey Classic size ring binder. The holes will go into the writing space on the pages just a little bit, but not too much. Make sure to get the colored cover punched and put in there too, so you can write your recurring events on the inside bottom of the cover. But yes it works just as well punched and put into a ring binder. I've done this in the past and love it. I haven't tried cutting out the pages to use a discbound system with it but it's a similar idea and I don't know why that wouldn't work too.

WeekDate planners are great for folks with ADHD, people juggling multiple roles, parents, students, and anyone with a busy schedule because you see everything in front of you all the time and nothing slips through the cracks!

WeekDate planners are printed in the USA and the WeekDate offices are run on solar power. 

WeekDate planners are only available at WeekDate.com and they ship worldwide! Go check them out and see all their products.

The planners have only one print run all year, and once they are sold out, they are gone for the year! Some colors sell out very fast too. For example as I write this the blue Breathe covers are already almost gone. So don't wait to grab the planner you want! These planners also make wonderful gifts. Anyone would love the gift of organization all year!

Find all the answers on their FAQs page. And be sure to find them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest!

Many thanks to WeekDate for providing me with this planner as a sample to review! All opinions are my own. I love everything about this planner and the small, family-run company.