I've burned through a lot of planners in my day, but nothing has changed my scheduling game quite like the Brilliant Weekly Scheduler from Paperian. At first, I thought calling this planner "brilliant" was a little cocky, but when I started using it I realized that "brilliant" was an understatement. This scheduler has a unique shape and format that makes it super useful for keeping track of weekly to-do's, meetings, classes, and whatever other plans you need to make!

One thing I love about this planner is that you get to fill in the dates and times yourself meaning that if you don't have a lot happening on your schedule for a week so you leave it blank, you don't end up wasting pages that have prewritten dates. However, because of this DIY date feature I wouldn't necessarily recommend using this planner to plan too far into the future. 

I typically keep track of my daily to-do items on index cards or in a bullet journal, depending on how much I have my life together at any given moment, so I would use that format to keep track of planning shorter term or further in advance. I never really had success using index cards or my bullet journal to keep track of how I was using my time throughout the day or to keep my schedule organized, so the Brilliant Weekly Scheduler filled that gap for me.

My MO when using this scheduler would be to fill out the meetings and class that I had for the coming week on Sunday night. This worked out especially well in school because my classes met at regular times throughout the week and I had recurring weekly club meetings that I could always count on having to fill in. From there, I would refer to my monthly bullet journal layout (and my email inbox) to see if I had any less predictable events coming up in the week. From there, it made it easy to check out where I had free time at a glance.

This planner is also super useful for keeping track of to-do items that may not have a specific deadline but that have to get done at some point in the week, or as an extra reminder for giving presentations or exams. Flipping back through old weeks I can see that I was reminding myself to declare my minor with increasing urgency until I finally had the last-minute deadline written in on the schedule.

The ability to keep track of my schedule in this simple, somewhat minimalist way my senior year was absolutely indispensable. I was able to keep track of my classes, film screenings, required lectures, club meetings, dance rehearsals, club sport practices, social events, and more. Whenever I had an especially busy week, the Brilliant Weekly Scheduler wouldn't leave my side.

This planner is also pretty bullet proof in terms of quality. You can tell from my picture that some of the pages got slightly water damaged from a day I got stuck walking to the library in the rain, but the only visible damage is the blurred ink on pages I've already used and very slight warping on the card stock page at the front that has my contact info. The spiral binding hasn't bent or unraveled at all and I haven't found any of the pens in my collection to bleed or ghost through the pages. I'm still using my scheduler now that I've graduated to keep track of my work schedule and keep track of things I need to do and I'm certain that I'll pick up another Brilliant Weekly Scheduler once I run out of weeks in this one!