Daily Planners vs. Weekly Planners vs. Monthly Planners

What is the best way to organize your to-do list? What type of planner should you choose?

Daily Planners

Most To-Do list apps and planners use due dates as their primary function. Urgency is given to the tasks that are due today, and tasks must be assigned to specific dates.

Pros: Daily planners show you what you need to do each day. They require assigning a due date (and sometimes a due time) to each task. They allow you to quickly see what is due each day. Most let you easily reschedule to a later date. Daily planners are often the best choice when you have a lot of specific, small tasks to get done, but don't have any overarching priorities.

Cons: Where daily planners really fall behind is prioritization. Your "due today" list quickly gets really long and overwhelming. Unless you have a specific due date in mind, most of your tasks will end up in your Today page, where they'll either end up overdue, or keep getting pushed back forever.

Weekly Planners

Weekly planners are less focused on individual dates (though you usually have plenty of space for that) and more focused on giving you a high-level view of your week. Most weekly planners will give you a space to record your high-level priorities for the week, as well as individual daily tasks.

Pros: If you're a procrastinator, you have a hectic schedule, or you just have an overwhelming amount to do, weekly planners are almost always the best option. A week is often just the right amount of time. It's a lot less stressful and overwhelming to think about what you need to get done this week than thinking about what you've got to get done today (too much) or altogether (way too much).

Cons: There are very few cons to weekly planners. However, the one downside is that (up until Strongweek), most mobile apps, like Apple Reminders, didn't let users categorize tasks by week.

Monthly Planners (and Desk Calendars)

True monthly planners are rare. Most monthly planners are really just weekly or daily planners with a few extra pages thrown in. However, some apps and planners, like Strongweek, give users the option to categorize tasks by month, or not their high-level priorities for each month.

Pros: Monthly planners help people identify and focus on their monthly priorities. Especially for entrepreneurs and busy professionals, identifying the most important tasks in your to-do list can be difficult. Monthly planners let you tackle one project at a time.

Cons: Very few to-do list apps are built around monthly priorities. In addition, most monthly planners need to be paired with weekly or daily planners in order to be most effective.

Bonus: Strongweek

There's one more option: Strongweek. If you want the best of all three types of planners rolled into one, try Strongweek.