FranklinCovey Day Planner

Do you remember the Franklin Day Planner System? It was a class you took where they told you how to organize “not just your business life” using the consumables and binders they provided (for a remarkable cost). It was a pretty good (still is I think) system, but if you ask me; it focused on addicting people to expensive tools as its main objective.

OK, this may be unfair, cause the system did help, so let’s forget the cost factor and focus on the process. Why did people get addicted? Because they were shown a mechanism with tailored tools and shown that it could really help them in their lives. It could help them attain a personal return on investment (roi – all lower case). When people find value in a process, they tend to stick to it. Clearly there are ways to follow the FDP process with out the expensive products, but the pre-printed and punched forms are convenient and act as reminders. Think about it this way – if I go on vacation (and choose not to schedule out my recreation time with the FDP), I may forget the nuances during my time away from it. The templates act as memory joggers to gently return me from muscle memory to conscious activity and ensure I do not start sliding back into sub-optimal behavior.

So, what is the process? Basically, you define personal values, create long term objectives, establish short term goals, create a master list of tasks, and assign yourself the highest priority ones each day, updating the list by removing completed ones and adding new, high priority ones as you go. Sound familiar?