7-minute-life-daily-planner

 

I received a complimentary copy of The 7 Minute Life Daily Planner from The 7 Minute Life in exchange for my thorough and honest review.

The 7 Minute Life is a time management company founded by Allyson Lewis. After surviving a life-altering illness, Allyson set out to create a tool that will allow people to live life to the fullest. Thus,  The 7 Minute Life Daily Planner, was born.  This planner retails for $24.95.

7 Minute Life Daily Planner Review
 

What to Expect

The planner intends to help you fulfill your purpose in life and your most important goals. The way to do this is by prioritizing, organizing, and simplifying.  Allyson Lewis uses the research-based principle of “The Magical Number 7”. This explains that an average adult has an attention span of 7 minutes. So, the planner attempts to make the most of each 7-minute segment throughout an adult’s typical day.

7 Minute Life Daily Planner Review
 

 

The 7 Minute Life Daily Planner is a 7.3″ x 8.5″ spiral book for adults. It walks you through a pre-planning introduction where you are to uncover your top values and purpose in life.  It’s mission is to help you fulfill your goals based on these priorities. The planner helps you learn to avoid interruptions and distractions, master unfinished tasks, and declutter your mind and life.

After the quite extensive reflecting and prioritizing process, you can begin to fill lots of forms:

  • what I love to do
  • strengths
  • highest-value activities
  • rewards
  • mental clutter
  • 90-day personal goals
  • 90-day work goals
  • financial goals
  • life goals
  • unfinished work tasks
  • unfinished home tasks
  • home repair
  • connections
  • annual calendar at a glance
  • annual projects & tasks
  • 90-day calendar worksheets
  • monthly calendar at a glance
  • meeting planner
  • daily progress reports

 

Daily Planning/Accountability

The “Daily Progress Report” makes the bulk of the planner. It’s a two-page spread with the following sections:

  • daily contacts
  • what I will do … 5 before 11 [do your essentials first]
  • 7 minute life connections [connect with essential people in your life today]
  • unfinished tasks
  • what I spent
  • water intake
  • food consumed
  • sleep
  • exercise
  • reflection
  • reading
  • did I do what I said I would do today?
  • appointments
  • thank you notes
  • voice mail
  • notes

These sheets are not dated, so you can use them anytime. You’ll have to jot down your own dates.

 

My Opinion About The 7 Minute Life Daily Planner

I appreciated that The 7 Minute Life Daily Planner walks you through prioritizing your life, and reflecting about your life’s purpose.  It prompts you to choose from a wholesome list of 75 values, such as love, joy, happiness, success, adventure, power, learning, friendship, excitement, security, meaningful work, fun, passion, comfort, trust, wisdom, etc. etc.  I decided I didn’t want to pick just 10. Why must I leave some of these beautiful concepts and ideals out of my life? Or treat them as less important?  I want to believe that it’s possible to have passion, and comfort, and trust, and wisdom, for example, even if they didn’t rank as high.   Once you’ve picked your top 10 –or 20, or 30, or more–  you move on to “Discovering Your Purpose.”  This step invites you to profound reflecting and pondering. It culminates with a specific question: What will you want to have accomplished by the age of 85?

The idea to begin from the grand vision of your life and to schedule your daily tasks based on it, is a noble one.  Naturally, it does take time to go through the initial stages until you have all these pillars set up. Aside from this, there’s a lot of extra materials that need to be filled, clarified or explained before beginning.  Overall, I found all the introductory work rather overwhelming.

The planner is definitely aimed for someone with a more “typical” job. A career professional who works at an office with a 9 to 5 schedule, or some such occupation or timeline.  Life’s top values and purpose applies to everyone. So do identifying unfinished tasks, setting goals and decluttering. The daily nitty gritty, however, is definitely not oriented to either moms or homeschooling.  I needed to be creative in adapting the sections and fields to my own needs. I struggled trying to find how I could make such detailed forms work for my routines. Let’s take the “Daily Contacts”, for example. Here, I am to assign points for each phone call,  face-to-face meeting, or networking event. I failed to recognize how I could use this without some (major) tweaking. The same’s true of the daily “Appointments”, “Voice Mail”, and “Thank You” notes.   I wanted to make the daily planner work for my life as a homeschooling mom. Unfortunately, aside from “5 before 11” and “7 Minute Life Connections”, I couldn’t find a practical adaptation of the “Daily Progress Report”.

 

In a Nutshell

I had high expectations of the 7 Minute Life Daily Planner. It sounded like a miracle solution. When I first visited the 7 Minute Life website and watched the intro video I felt like shouting with joy to Allyson Lewis –”Are you sure? You mean I can get all that’s in my endless to-do list done in 7 minutes? You’re kidding! You’re totally kidding!” Okay, I didn’t actually expect that all was going to get done in 7 minutes a day, but I was excited to learn this productivity tool’s secrets.

I wish I had discovered those secrets! I wish I had found The 7 Minute Planner more approachable. I do appreciate the value it offers with those thoughtful worksheets and forms, yet, it wasn’t a good fit for me. The work required to begin to use it. The vast daily tracking of all I do, from every single telephone conversation, to the dollars I spend, and the snacks I take, make it a real chore.

This planner would make an excellent tool for a career person. It would be suitable for someone who works in the professional world, who needs to meet and network with people. Someone who sells her goods or services the traditional way. I’m confident it would help such a person tremendously.

Still, I am taking away excellent ideas from the 7 Minute Life Daily Planner. I will continue to use and perhaps even refine my more-than-10 list of values, “5 Before 11”, and “7 Minute Life Connections.”

 

What to Learn More?

If you’d like, you can read different experiences and reviews from my fellow Crew mates. Or visit The 7 Minute Life website or social media accounts:

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/The7MinuteLife
Twitter – https://twitter.com/allyson7minutes
Pinterest – http://www.pinterest.com/the7minutelife/
Google+ – https://plus.google.com/+AllysonLewis7/posts
You Tube – https://www.youtube.com/user/AllysonLewis

 

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