Review: How to Get the Most Out of Rachel Hollis’s Priority Planner

Update (September 28, 2020): Target has just released the Q3 edition of Rachel Hollis’s Priority Planner and Start Today Journals, featuring designs inspired by Austin, TX (the previous editions featured LA and Mexico City). The jackets are all new, but the content remains the same, so my review stands. If you’re curious about her Start Today Journals, we have a breakdown of those, too!

As much as I love the idea of bullet journaling, I know my life: It’s not going to happen. Not right now, anyway. I love seeing how people have hand-drawn their calendars and sketched their goals, creating to-do lists that practically double as works of art. It’s just that right now, I can barely get out the door with my hair brushed, let alone watercolor my intentions for the week.

But still, I wanted something to get me back on track. Something a little more in-depth than your typical planner or to-do list, so I could gradually become a person who feels like she has her life (somewhat) together. (That’s how disorganized life with a baby has seemed this past year.) Wandering Target, I came across the Priority Planner by Rachel Hollis. Hollis’s name has been everywhere the past few years, after her book Girl, Wash Your Face became a New York Times bestseller—and wouldn’t leave the charts. It details the limiting beliefs she’s worked on over the years as she went from building an events company to a lifestyle empire, spanning multiple books, self-growth conferences, a clothing line, and a series of planners and journals, like the one I held in my hands.

At $23, it was more than the typical spiral-bound notebook I’d been using, but I loved how structured it was: It’s designed to last you three months, requiring you to set an intention for the book (aka your primary goal for the next quarter), then set a quarterly review to see what steps you’d taken in the past three months to get closer to that goal. There are monthly calendars to see a stretch of time at a glance, weekly reviews that guide you through what you’ve accomplished (and where you could improve), and daily pages with a series of prompts to focus your day.

The Priority Planner’s Best Features:

By far, the daily prompts were the most eye-opening. The first page has you identify three tasks you really want to complete that day, rather than getting mired in a lengthy to-do list pushing you in a million directions. It also has you list an achievement (no matter how small) that’d make you feel proud of yourself that day and one thing you think might throw you off track, so you can prepare accordingly.

My favorite feature was on page two, which requires you to block out your day, hour by hour: all appointments and demands, so you see where every minute of your waking time is going. Getting ready and commuting to work, for example, is a huge chunk of my day. There’s not much I can do about it, but I’ve realized that listening to a podcast or energizing music while I drive in, then using my train ride to draft a blog post, read or take some small action toward my goals makes a huge difference in how productive I feel at the end of the day. (It also revealed how much time I spend doing dishes and laundry, making me start to strongly consider a Roomba. Hah.)

Using the Planner: Expectations vs. Reality

If all of that sounds like a lot of work, it is. And honestly, most days this first month I haven’t taken the 5-7 minutes in the morning to fill out my Daily Pages. But I sneak it in when I can, and just having clarity on what I want to achieve that month—and where my time is going—has helped me make strides toward my goals that I hadn’t made at all in the three months prior. That’s the biggest thing I’m learning right now: Progress, no matter how small, adds up.

You can buy a Priority Planner at Target.