Notability added their first planner in October this year. We felt it made no sense to review the planner during that time of the year, but it’s the end of the year now and they have added a 2021 planner in their Notability shop.
We’ve been going through some Get Thing Done apps lately. To-do and Calendar apps are great alternatives to planners. The new planner in the Notability shop is the 2021 Dash Portrait Planner from Dash Planner. It costs $19.99 with a 7-day trial.
Some of you guys have complained about the price of the planners in the Notability Shop. Planners generally cost around that price and Notability doesn’t own the planners. They are just a platform for planner creators to sell their products.
Downloading the planner from the Notability shop
The planner has eight covers to choose from when downloading it from the Notability Shop. All of them are dull colours and professional looking. You have to decide when your week starts; Monday or Sunday. This planner is a portrait planner, it looks and works better with your iPad in portrait mode.
To navigate your planner it’s best to use your fingers otherwise make sure to select the scrolling mode to use your Apple Pencil. The landing page of the Dash planner is the Index Page, which summarises all the page templates in your planner. You have:
- Calendars
- Notepaper
- Page Templates
- Sections
Orientation
All the pages in your planner have tabs on your right for navigating to the first page of the planner, the year’s calendar and all the months of the year. At the bottom, all your pages have links to the Pages templates, Notepaper and the sections in your planner.
This planner is clean and modern, which is quite refreshing. It also comes with stickers in six different colours whose names we don’t quite agree with. But, that doesn’t really matter because you can choose a colour that you like from the options you see. The app doesn’t have a lot of stickers; decorating enthusiasts will need to supplement them. These are the colours you get:
- Blue
- Orange
- Gray
- Purple
- Green
- Pink
Calendars
The planner has three calendars:
- 2021 Calendar
- Key dates: Jan – Jun
- Key dates: Jul- Dec
2021 Calendar
The 2021 calendar links to weekly spreads when you tap the week numbers on the left side of a month. Each date of the year is linked to a daily spread.
Key Dates Calendars
Your key dates calendar is for noting any important events, anniversaries and birthdays, for example. It gives you an overview of what matters that year and each page has 6 months on it: Jan-Jun and Jul-Dec.
Monthly Spread
Your monthly spread looks like the months on the year calendar: week numbers on the left and hyperlinked dates. At the bottom of the page, you can highlight this month’s tasks and write some notes.
Weekly Spread
Your weekly spread shows you an overview of your week. You have the days of the week on the left side of the page. The other half, from the top, has sections for top priorities, tasks and notes. Each day is hyperlinked to its daily spread.
Daily Spread
Your daily schedule is on the left half of your daily spread. You can plan your day for any time between 6 am and 11 pm. Let’s hope in the future the planner will support 24hr notation. It’s my personal preferred time notation, even though it doesn’t seem very popular. The other half of your planner has sections for:
- Focus
- Tasks
- Errands & Communication
- Meal, Exercise, Self-care
- Notes
And you can go back to the week view when you tap View Week at the bottom of the notes tab (about the hyperlinks to your sections).
Sections
Sections are free to use for different aspects of your life: goals for the year, meeting notes, projects, finances and workouts. Anything you can think of, really. On the first page of the planner, you can label your sections so you always know what you’re using them for.
Page Templates
The page templates in the app can be used in your sections. The planner has twenty-page templates:
- Year overview
- Quarterly overview
- Monthly overview
- Monthly finances
- Weekly check-in to evaluate your work on a weekly basis.
- Project manager
- Workout log
- Mind map if you’re a visual person, it helps to mind map ideas.
- Brain dump
- Master List
- Schedule Planner
- Routine planner with a weekly and daily routine.
- Habit tracker
- Goal tracker
- Meeting notes
- Meal Plan & Groceries
- Recipe card
- Around the house
- Event Planner
- Travel Planner
Notepaper
For your Notepaper you have lined, grid, dotted, half lined half blank, column and blank. Everything in this planner is hyperlinked intuitively, which gives a great user experience.
