The Mudra Life Planner is specifically made for those of us with ADHD but will it really work?
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The Amazon About this Item states:
- Designed with ADHD brains in mind. Our planner features with the ticker cover with the same smooth feel, perforated corners, to easily find your way, professional wire-O binding
- Each weekday has a separate space to record what is important, your schedule, task lists of 6 and any additional notes
- A planner with the structure to help you set priorities and the space you need to note everything that goes through your mind
- Set goals for different aspects of your life, family, friends, romance, fun, recreation, finances, career, environment, physical health and mental health, then every first Monday of the month, you will be reminded to write down your monthly goals, it will allow you to witness your evolution, month by month
- Your entire year laid out over 2 pages, this tool helps you to plan your vacation, days off, special activities and workdays, the yearly perspective is included for 2022 and 2023, each month is designed with different color, which brings a vibrant energy to your day and helps you realize when a new month is about to begin
I ordered the Mudra Planner to review so you won’t have to spend money on yet another planner that will not work for your ADHD brain. We will start with the front cover and work through the book. I’ll give my pros and cons and my final verdict.
First, the planner is 11 x 8.5 inches. It is a landscape, which is different from most planners. When fully open it is almost two feet across (22 inches). It’s not necessarily a bad thing but something to keep in mind if you like to keep your planners open to see the full week. It will take up a lot of real estate on your desk.
The cover is coated plastic (I think?). It is very smooth and feels kind of like a vinyl figurine. It feels like it would hold up for the year and not tear easily. It has a wire-o binding in silver. Opening up the planner, we have the standard nameplate page and a letter from the founder. Each page has a foldable/tearable triangle on the bottom edge. You can easily mark a place you want to refer back to by folding it and once you complete the tasks on the page you can tear it off.
Then we get into the actual planning pages.
First, you get one page for your yearly goals. There are nine goal categories: family & friends, romance, fun & recreation, finances, career, environment, physical health, mental health, and other. This is very similar to many other goal-planning systems. The next two-page spread is for your yearly goals. You get a space for each month.
After the goal pages, we have a two-page future log style calendar. There is a column for each month and a space for every day. The weekends are shaded in the monthly color. After the monthly calendars, we get into the week. Note: the future log style calendar is your only calendar for the months.
The first page in the weekly spreads is also the only one like it. The page has January in the corner, a large box that says “Things to inspire my year” then a box for Sunday, January 1 splits the page with a box for notes.
On the full-week spreads, we have columns for Monday through Friday and one column for Saturday, Sunday, and Notes. The weekdays have three lines for important info for the day, a schedule section, a to do list with six check boxes, and a spot for notes.
Saturday and Sunday have three lines each while the note space is a blank box.
The schedule for each weekday has two columns. The first has your morning hours listed as 7h, 8h, and so on until 12h. The other column has 1h through 6h. Underneath you get two lines for the evening.
The weekly spreads continue for the rest of the year. They do change colors each month, making it easy to see the monthly change within the week.
At the end of the planner, you have a two-page spread for 2024 important notes followed by a two-page future log spread like the one at the beginning but for 2024 so you can start adding ideas, notes, and events for 2024 as they come up.
The paper is very smooth. It doesn’t feel like it has much tooth to it. It does hold up well to a variety of pens. In my pen test, the Zebra Sarasa and mildliners were the best! No ghosting, bleed through, or ridging. An Erin Condren gel pen smeared and had a bit of ridging while the Erin Condren ballpoint had ridges on the other side. The metallic Ohuhu dot pen smeared but did not have any ghosting or bleed through. The regular Ohuhu dot pen did not smear but did have some ghosting. You could use a variety of pens and markers in this planner without much issue.
Pros
- The covers have a nice feel to them and will most likely hold up
- The best part of this planner was the future log style monthly calendars
- The paper held up well to many pens, markers, and highlighters
- There is room on the weekdays for your top 3 (important), appointments, and to do lists
- The color change from month to month is a helpful visual aid
- Plenty of room for planning 2024 at the end
Cons
- Wire-o binding. The absolute worst.
- The landscape size takes up a lot of space on your desk if you leave it fully open
- There is no direction for the annual goals or monthly goals
- There is no dedicated monthly calendar in the weekly spreads
- The circles for the checklist are in the middle of a line, do you write above or below??
- The weekends are virtually zero room to plan
- There is no weekly, monthly, or even quarterly check-in for your goals
Verdict
Personally, this planner would not work for me and my ADHD. I struggle with breaking down my annual goals into monthly goals. I would have liked to have seen the “envision” page split with some info about setting annual and monthly goals.
I don’t mind that there is no monthly calendar between the months but I would like to see a dashboard with a monthly check-in and goal-planning section. For me, with this planner set up how it is currently, I know I would forget to go back and check those annual and monthly goals since there is nothing there to remind me.
Yes, it changes colors from one month to the next but that’s not enough to trigger my memory.
This is why I love MakseLife. It walks you through setting annual goals, and monthly goals, then each week you reflect and set your weekly actions. The reflection and weekly actions are between the weeks and it forces me to flip back to the monthly goals.
I rarely remember on my own to flip back in a planner. I need a trigger, like a review. I try using bookmarks or page clips and it sometimes helps.
ETA: after re-reading the Amazon about this product, it does indicate that your first task on the first Monday of every month is “write down your monthly goals”. So you kind of have a reminder. It’s very vague and the first Monday of the month isn’t when I would be doing my goal planning. I usually do my goal planning the weekend before the next month. I also completely missed that on the video flip-through, my own flip-through, and when setting up photos. Clearly, it was not that obvious. See? This is where some setup guides would be useful!
I also HATE the weekend setup on the weeks. I would never be able to use this planner for this alone. I need way more than three lines for each day! I try not to use planners that split the weekends because that is where I do the bulk of my tasks. I need just as much room for Saturday as I do for Tuesday. At the very least, I would consider using this planner if Saturday and Sunday split the entire last column. Get rid of the blank note box. You don’t really need that as you have notes space on each weekday!
Please, planner designers, consider those of us that use a separate work planner. In our personal lives, we need much more space for Saturday and Sunday! This is the planner hill I will die on!
The size is also a deal breaker for me. I need to have a weekly planner open so I can see the entire week at once. When this is open it is basically two feet wide! It takes up a lot of space on your desk or table. I could fold it in half but then you only see half the week. And I’d get tired of flipping it over to see what I may have coming up.
The Mudra Life Planner is not the worst planner I’ve seen. It has potential but other than saying it’s made for people with ADHD I don’t feel it really is. The letter from the founder speaks about reflecting to help give you direction but there is no place to reflect in this planner.
I think with a few tweaks and changes it could work for someone with ADHD. Add some directions before the goals, throw in a monthly dashboard with room for real reflection and goal check-in, and make the weekends larger. Those three items alone would vastly improve the Mudra Life Planner.
What do you think about the Mudra Life Planner? Would it work for you? What are your pros and cons? Drop ‘em in the comments!
Interested in winning this Mudra planner? Head over to Youtube and let me know your favorite thing about the Mudra Life planner and for a bonus entry, publicly subscribe to my channel. Then head over to my Instagram and find the post for this planner and let me know why you want the Mudra Life Planner. You can get up to three bonus entries on Instagram by following me, liking the Mudra post, sharing the mudra post to your stories, and tagging me!
All instructions are also in the YouTube description and Instagram post so you don’t have to remember all this!