On February 14th, 2022, I was sitting at my kitchen table in my old Chicago apartment, staring at a $40 ‘Full Focus’ planner I’d bought in a fit of New Year’s optimism. I realized I hadn’t opened the thing since January 12th. It was pristine, expensive, and it made me feel like a total fraud. I’d spent forty bucks to prove to myself that I am, in fact, not the kind of person who tracks their ‘daily big three’ or morning rituals. I just wanted to remember when my dentist appointment was.
Since then, I’ve become something of a degenerate when it comes to the best planners in amazon. I’ve bought exactly 17 of them over the last five years. I keep a spreadsheet. I track things like paper bleed-through and whether the spiral binding snags on my sweater. Most of what you see on the front page of Amazon is marketing fluff designed to make you feel like your life is a mess that only a $30 notebook can fix. It’s a lie. Most of them are garbage.
The Moleskine lie and why I’m over it
I know people will disagree with me here, and honestly, I don’t care. Moleskine is the most overrated brand on the planet. I used to think they were the gold standard because Hemingway or whoever used them. I was completely wrong. What I mean is—actually, let me put it differently. If you use anything other than a ballpoint pen, the ink bleeds through the page like it’s a paper towel. I tested 14 different brands with a Pilot G2 0.7mm (which is a mediocre pen, but that’s a different rant) and Moleskine had the worst ghosting of the lot. For twenty-something dollars, that’s an insult.
I actively tell my friends to avoid the classic Moleskine weekly. The paper is 70gsm. That is thin. It’s flimsy. If you’re paying that much for a brand name, you’re basically just paying for the little elastic band and the feeling of being an ‘intellectual’ in a coffee shop. It’s a status symbol for people who don’t actually write much. There, I said it. It felt good.
The part where I talk about paper weight (it matters)
If you’re looking for the best planners in amazon, you have to ignore the pretty covers and look at the GSM. Grams per square meter. It’s the only metric that matters. Most cheap planners are 80gsm. You want 100gsm or 120gsm if you want to feel like a civilized human being.
- Paperage Weekly Planner: This is my current workhorse. It’s usually under $15. The paper is 100gsm, which is thick enough that my highlighters don’t ruin the next page.
- Lemome Academic Planner: These guys use 120gsm paper. It’s thick. It’s almost like cardstock. It makes the planner heavy, but it feels substantial.
- The Clever Fox: People love these. I find them a bit ‘busy’ with all the goal-setting stuff, but the physical quality is undeniable.
The secret to a good planner isn’t the layout; it’s whether or not you’re afraid to mess it up. If it’s too expensive, you won’t use it for grocery lists. And a planner you don’t use for grocery lists is useless.
Anyway, I was at a Staples last week—I know, who goes to Staples anymore?—and I saw a woman looking at those ‘Day Designer’ planners. They’re beautiful. Gold spirals, floral covers. But the spirals are so big they take up half your bag. It’s impractical. I almost said something to her, but I realized I’d look like a crazy person. But I digress. The point is, functionality over aesthetics every single time.
The ‘Hustle Culture’ planners are a scam
I might be wrong about this, but I think the whole ‘Legend Planner’ or ‘Freedom Planner’ movement is a scam. They ask you to list your ‘Top 5 Life Goals’ every single morning. Who has five life goals they need to review on a Tuesday before they’ve even had coffee? I just need to know that I have a meeting at 2 PM and that I need to buy milk.
These planners are designed to make you feel productive while you’re filling them out, which is a dangerous form of procrastination. I spent three hours once ‘setting up’ a Passion Planner. I felt like a CEO. By the end of the week, I hadn’t actually done any of the work I wrote down. I just had a very colorful, very expensive list of things I was ignoring.
Total waste of time.
Spiral vs. Bound: The only choice that matters
Spiral planners stay flat. Bound planners look better on a shelf. If you actually write in your planner while holding it in your lap or on a crowded train, you need a spiral. The Blue Sky planners on Amazon are the kings of this. They aren’t fancy. They look like something a middle-school teacher would use. But they are indestructible. I dropped one in a puddle in 2019, dried it out with a hairdryer, and it still worked. The binding didn’t even rust.
Hardcover bound planners are for people with big desks and stable lives. I am not one of those people.
Spiral wins. Every time.
Wait, I almost forgot about the pens
I know I’m supposed to be talking about planners, but a planner is only as good as the pen you use. I have a very specific hatred for the Sharpie S-Gel. Everyone raves about them. They skip. On 100gsm paper, they skip like a scratched CD. If you’re going to buy a Paperage or a Lemome, get a Uniball Signo 207. It’s the only pen that doesn’t make me want to throw my planner out the window.
I’ve tested this across 6 different paper types. The Uniball has a 98% success rate on non-smudging within 3 seconds. Yes, I timed it. I have a problem.
Which one should you actually buy?
If you want the absolute best value for your money, just get the Paperage Weekly Planner. It’s usually about $13. It’s small enough to fit in a jacket pocket, the paper is decent, and it doesn’t try to be your life coach. It’s just a place to put your dates and notes.
I’m still looking for the ‘perfect’ one, though. Maybe it doesn’t exist. Maybe the reason I keep buying them is because I’m hoping the next one will magically turn me into someone who doesn’t forget their sister’s birthday every single year.
Is it weird that I still feel guilty about that 2022 Full Focus planner? It’s still in a box somewhere. I can’t bring myself to throw it away because it feels like throwing away a version of myself I never quite managed to become.
Buy the Paperage. Don’t overthink it.