Named after the famous Benjamin Franklin for his habit of keeping a small pocket journal with him to record events, the Franklin Covey Planner is a system of personal organisation and event tracking for many years. Apart from that it helps in keeping a track of personal, business and tax expenses and any other personal records that we would like to maintain. The system is marketed under the Franklin covey systems and is developed by the co-founder of the company, Hyrum w. Smith and propagated by the other co-founder, Stephen R. Covey who is also the author of the ‘Seven Habits of Highly effective People’.
It is a whole system of personal recording ring binder diary. The pages of this diary are especially designed to accept a great many accessories and inserts. It provides the very useful facility keeping professional appointments, personal records and financial tracks all in one single organised form. The idea is to eliminate “floating pieces of paper”. The brilliant design of the Franklin Covey Planner makes it both a tickler file and a long term planner. It has annual pages for up to five years. Monthly plan pages for up to three years and a whole year’s planner; complete with daily, monthly and weekly record pages. The daily record diary has two pages a day to keep appointments, agenda and timings in them. Apart from that it has a personal diary page to be maintained as a journal. It even has ledger pages to keep finances on track to make sure you know where each of you penny has gone. These ledger pages can be used to keep a track of petrol consumption, weight loss and any other progress that one wishes to keep track of.
The whole package of Franklin Covey Planner helps in not just keeping events on track, but also helps in knowing what agreements have been made and not made. This is facilitated by special archival binder insertions. This planner was launched in 1984 and a workshop on time management followed. Then co-founder Stephen covey launched his book “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”.
The Franklin Covey planner is marketed to a Wide population of corporate and government officials all over the United States. It is available in five different sizes- Monarch, Classic, Compact, Pocket and Micro. The business makes remarkable revenue from diary sales, specialised accessory sales, workshops and insertion pages that can be added to the diary. The Franklin Covey business had made whooping revenues worth $282.6 million in the year 2005. This makes it convenient to be used by everyone, from students, to corporate workers, to teachers to government officials and business men. This system is not based on Stephen Covey’s book. Smith’s ‘The 10 natural laws of successful time and life management’ provide a briefing of the plan. He stresses on prioritising tasks in life and paying adequate attention to each task on the basis of its priority. His technique is based on the first fifteen minutes of the day spent in “solitude and planning”.