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A personal review after one year of using Brendon Burchard's High Performance Planner. Covers what the planner is, why it stands out over other journals, its limitations, and why you should read High Performance Habits first before starting it.
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[00:00] Hi, everyone. This is your host, Syed Irfan Ajmal. I'm here with the first episode of the new season. Today I would like to talk about my experience with using the high-performance planner. Before using this planner, I had tried to use various planners, which were less well-known and less well-organized about that. But I was not able to work really well with them, except with different reasons. One big reason was that they were too small in size to my case. They were like the size of my palm. Even if they were a bit bigger, they were not really that useful.
[00:44] Then again, on top of that, the prompts that were there, in those planners, they were either irrelevant or they were not based in any kind of scientific research or anything like that. So after trying various planners and journals for a bit, I came across the high-performance planner. It's created by Brendan Butcher. I hope I'm not approaching his name, obviously I'll share his name in the show notes as well. So Brendan Butcher is an MIT best-selling author and a high-performance coach.
[01:28] He has actually caused quite a few extremely popular and well-known and successful people. You should just look him up and you will know who those people are. But I will share what I like about this planner. So first of all, it's more of a journal slash planner. So it's not just a planner, it's not just a journal, it's a bit of a quote. Another thing is that whatever prompts are there, the way it is designed to help you plan for the day, plan for the week and the month and so on,
[02:13] It's backed by science. And according to Brendan, there are six key habits which help people to attain peak performance. And all of these findings regarding these six habits and how this planner came to be, all of that is based on a 20-year long study of high peak performance and the study was done by Brendan Butcher and his team. If you want to know more about how the book came to be, if you want to understand more of those habits,
[02:57] In fact, I would strongly suggest that you read the book first because that's how you can know what these six habits mean, that the high-performance planner is based upon. The book, by the way, is called High-Performance Habits. So I will share a link to that as well. I'm not finished reading it yet, which I feel bad about, but I should finish it soon. And I would say the biggest benefit that this planner has had for me is that it has helped me get more clarity. So one of my daily prayers has been for a very long time
[03:40] Is that I asked God to darken your clarity. And the way this planner is designed and the way it asks you the questions like what is the one thing that you are excited about today or who needs you on your A game today? What are your toxic goals or priorities for the day? So these are all things that helps you get more clarity. And then there's the planning part, right? And then there is the evening journal part. Once you're back from work and everything, and you're ready to sort of relax,
[04:22] You can go through the evening journal and record what you learned today, what you could have maybe done a bit better. So I would say that these are some really good things which help a lot. And also, by the way, the size. You see, this is the size. This is the size of the planner. So you can see it's pretty large. I believe it's like A4 or A5 size. Or in other words, it's about 8 inches long and 4 inches wide. And you can read more about it on obviously the blog
[04:58] And also you can look at it on the read space. You can see other people's reviews about the planner. And I will also share the Amazon link. And what you can do is that you can go through the version that you want. So when I say the version, I mean, there is, you know, like this one is the two months version, right? So it can help you. You can use it for two months. But then this one actually costs a bit more, I believe, if I'm not wrong.
[05:32] Maybe they have removed the discount or whatever. But when I purchase it, yeah, I think it's much cheaper, right? This one is actually 12 months of pages for you, right? So it's like six planners like this. And you know, they become different pages about that. One of the... I went through my supply of the first few planners pretty quickly because I was doing it, you know, quite regularly. But now when I received the recent planners, what I noticed was that some of the pages that I was very used to
[06:14] In the previous planners, they were missing. So I'm talking about, I believe, the weekly review pages are still there, as in the pages will do the previous review. But the pages for the next week where I would plan them, they were missing. So what I did was that I basically noted it down on an Excel sheet and I basically printed it. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to do that or not. I mean, I'm not selling it. I'm not sharing it with anyone else. I'm just doing it for my personal reasons.
[06:45] And I believe that I'm not being unfair, right? But if they think that I did it wrong, then they should let me know. Okay, so I will not show you my old planners' pages, but I will go through the images that are here on Amazon. So let's go through some of these pages. So these are your daily pages, right? So you will answer these questions here and you will write down your top three priorities here. So goals and tasks are different. So goal is like, let's say I have to reduce 5 kg of weight in two months, right?
[07:35] So that's your goal. The task would be like, okay, I will take my protein and I will go to work out five times a week and I will reduce my junk food intake and so on, right? So that's tasks, okay? And then you also have the calendar here. To be honest, I've not really gotten used to the calendar here. I don't know if I should call it the calendar. I think it's not a calendar, but you have time slots, like 6 a.m., 6.30 a.m., 7 a.m., up until 7.30 p.m., right?
[08:10] So you have all of those and then you have questions here, right? And by the way, you also have a lot of space here in the bottom 25% area where you can add any initial ideas, okay? And then in the evening, you can answer some of the prompts about your day and you can also score yourself as per the six habits, okay? So there is the habit of clarity, there is the habit of productivity, energy, influence, influence as in when you're able to guide someone or treat someone when to do it, right?
[08:53] Necessity, courage, all right? But again, you know, this might not mean a lot to you. This might sound very much like key shading. Unless and until you have gone through the high performance habits both to see what these six habits mean, clarity, productivity, energy, influence, necessity and courage and how you can get better at using these habits and building these habits, all right? Then you also have, let's see, you also have the weekly review pages. Yeah, so these are the weekly review pages and you note down some of the things that you really enjoyed during the last week
[09:38] And anything that was a huge milestone for you, your company or your family or anything like that. Then you also mention any of the struggles that you have gone through, any of the problems and you also, you know, you also sort of, you know, score your weekly life over things like health, mental, slash emotional state, family, friends, learning, finances, spirit, experiences, mission, right? And I believe something that I have to get better at is that if I'm scoring, if I'm getting a very low score in the friends column, which I usually do,
[10:24] Then you know maybe I need to work on that and get some friends, right? Which is very hard for me, something that I have to work on. Similarly, experiences or spirit or, you know, things like that that I think I struggle with. The next steps for me should be to work on that. So, you know, you need to work on that. And then again, the six habits that I mentioned, you score yourself for the last entire week of those habits rather than just a single day, right?
[10:59] Mathi pages, it says upcoming here, yeah, so what it means is that you plan your entire next month, right? So, a crazy story long, long ago when I was studying in Sweden and then later on, I was working in Sweden and then I was working in Denmark, I would usually take the metro or I would take the bus to go to the office or come back from the office, and what I realized was that most of the people were, you know, had like diaries, not necessarily the high-performance planner.
[11:34] That's not what I'm saying, but they had some kind of planner or a diary or a notebook and most of the people would be writing something, right? I was not in the habit of planning back then, which I knew was not very smart of me perhaps, but I was very curious like why is it that every one of them is using this notebook while commuting to the office or coming back from the office, right? But now when I go through this whole planning slash journaling thing with high-performance planner,
[12:11] I am able to see the benefits of it, right? It has helped me in terms of planning, in terms of productivity, in terms of motivation, in terms of learning from my mistakes, right? One thing that I've not done too well is studying my planner slash journal from the past month or the past quarter or something. I recently came across some of those insights and I couldn't even... Like it was very foreign for me in a sense, like what I had written there, right?
[12:56] So it helped me learn a few new things about myself, which I did not know I was experiencing at that time, right? So I think that I should be doing that more often as well, because I think that in order to become better people, better employers, better employees, better human beings, we need to be able to spend time in solitude and do focused self-reflection, right? So when I say focused self-reflection, what I mean is that I'm not just sort of daydreaming about whatever. I'm focusing that quote-unquote free time on thinking about a particular matter or a particular problem
[13:47] Or a particular behavior that I exhibited in the recent past or long, long time ago. So with that kind of focused self-reflection, you can gain a lot of value with insights. You know, obviously Brendan talks a lot about some of the science behind all of this in his blog, his YouTube channel, his podcast, which I will link to by the way. But all of that self-reflection, it gets way better when you are able to write whatever is going through your mind and whatever it is that you have to do and what you're planning to do and whatever it is that you are experiencing in your business, in your personal life model.
[14:31] And you know, a planner like this, I think it helps a lot, right? There might be better planners out there, I don't know. Feel free to let me know. If you know of any other planners, I also ordered a planner by the way, which I have not used, called the Panda. I think it's the Panda planner, right? The reason, I guess, I mean, I just ordered it, but one thing that I think I'm not able to do really well with the high-performance planner is, I would say, getting a more long-term view of things, right?
[15:09] So I do have some other resources for that that I use that I have been spoken about in some other videos. There is the EOS system, the entrepreneurial organization system that we use at our work in our agency, which has been of a lot of help. But I think that there is still something missing in there that I need to incorporate in my life. One thing that I want to do right now is to write down everything that I do or everything that I need to do or all the problems and demands and expectations and everything on different sticky notes.
[15:51] And then to sort of, you know, organize them across different days and different months and figure out what do I have to delegate and what do I have to schedule for later and what do I have to say no to. So, you know, I need to do that, but when it comes to daily planning and weekly planning and monthly planning, I would say that high-performance planner, it's a pretty good asset for that, right? So that's it for today's video. By the way, one more thing is that you may also want to go through a random charts website.
[16:34] I mean, it surely has more than one website, I think. But for instance, you know, you can do this sort of quiz or assessment, which will help you know, which will basically help you know, okay, let me remind myself. Okay, I guess what it helps you to do is to sort of, I don't know, to get more serious when it comes to taking action or learning something new or something like that. I've not done this for a long time, so I should be doing, I believe it's the same one that's right in the front of the planner as well.
[17:12] So, in every single copy of the planner, I think it's pretty much the same thing like whole life assessment and high-performance assessment. And basically, you get an overall score and then you can, you know, when you do the next planner, when you go through this one, a two-month planner, and you start choosing the next one, then you can do this again and sort of compare the scores and see if you're improving or if you're not improving at all, right? One-page productivity planner, I don't think I have used it because I have the proper sort of planner. The meditation guide, yes, this one I have used and I think I need to start using it again.
[17:52] It's very simple and it's quite useful and it's something that I should be using. This one I have not used but maybe I should be using. I've not joined their academy but, you know, you can look it up and I've not known any of these other courses and things like that, right? But I would say that definitely, you know, read the book first and, you know, if you like the book, go through the high-performance planner and other than that, try the meditation as well and maybe try some of these other resources as well.
[18:32] And by the way, obviously, Brendan has a podcast as well as I mentioned earlier and he's on YouTube as well. So if you don't want to go through the high-performance, have its book, just go through a key or someone else is talking about it. Maybe I will do a separate video of that and I can finish the book. But give it a try. I think the ability to be mindful of our actions and our goals and desires and problems and using writing as a tool to help us.
[19:02] To be more self-reflective, to plan them, I think that's a very useful thing that we should all do. I hope this helps you. If you have any tips or any questions or critiques or anything like that, feel free to share. And obviously, if you like this podcast, please share it with your friends. And one thing that I want to do from this seat, which is almost hopefully, is to keep on reminding whoever is listening to my very small, limited and very little-known podcast show to leave a review.
[19:39] So I mean, if you're listening to this, if you have a couple of minutes, please do leave us a review of iTunes or Apple podcasts or YouTube or wherever you are listening to this. So please do that so that we get some motivation to continue to do this podcast. I speak more about marketing and SEO in particular, but I also talk about productivity and entrepreneurship in general and things like that as well. So thank you so much. Take care and goodbye.