7 Ways to use the 2025 Mental Fitness Diary & Planner

7 Ways to use the
2025 Mental Fitness Diary & Planner

The 2025 Mental Fitness Diary & Planner is a versatile, premium, physical tool designed to help you stay organized and protect your wellbeing each and every day. It is designed to help you avoid the guilt, pressure and overwhelm that comes with being too busy and out of balance, and helps you integrate essential self-care and self-development activities into your daily schedule. We prefer the term Mental Fitness. 

Reflecting, prioritizing and planning your day (or week) is one of the best ways to beat stress, get more done, and simply feel better about life. Using a paper diary, planner or organizer (the term differs depending on where you are from) can help not just with time management, but also for preventing procrastination and decluttering your mind. It can also help us prioritize our wellbeing, and turn our highly-valued wellbeing intentions into everyday reality. 

Why We Created the Diary

At Resilience Agenda, our story began with the idea that we can take action to protect and improve our mental health - no matter where we start. The first step is learning the science and skills that help us train our Mental Fitness. Just as important, however, is learning how to turn these simple actions and habits into daily routines, so that we stick with them, and can turn to them when things don’t go to plan. 

The actions, habits and thoughts that help support our wellbeing tend not to happen by themselves. That’s why we need to plan them, prioritize them, and protect them, so that other people’s priorities and distractions don’t suck up all of our time and energy. For that, we needed a tool that didn't exist. So we created our own. Eight years later, over 30,000 people every year turn to Resilience Agenda to help them make Mental Fitness a way of life. 

Plan your energy and your time, not your to-do list

How? Don’t just focus on your to-do list. Instead, plan, prioritize and protect your wellbeing by scheduling your health habits in advance. Because what gets scheduled gets done. Learn what really makes a difference with the featured content every month in the planner and use the Make It Happen steps to apply what you’ve learnt as you go about your day. 

And if you haven’t used a planner for years, or you’re a digital native who can’t let go of your Outlook or Google calendar? That’s fine too - use the planner in a way that suits you and your goals! 

Here are seven different ways to use this planner to improve your Mental Fitness and make wellbeing a more consistent way of life, even if you’ve already got a system! 

1. To Plan Your Time: a Regular Calendar or Appointment Book – Looking Forward

The 2025 Mental Fitness Diary & Planner can be used just like any appointment book, day-planner or calendar. Schedule in your meetings, drop-offs, catchups and more. Whether you choose the 400-page Day-to-a-Page layout for a detailed breakdown or the compact Weekly version for broader overviews, this planner keeps you in control of your time.

The planner helps you to organize your to-do list and stay on top of your schedule. Use it to:

• Plan your time in detail or from a bird’s eye view with the daily, weekly, monthly and yearly planning sections
• Organize your appointments, work meetings, and personal commitments
• Keep track of recurring events like school runs, fitness classes, or family dinners.
• Plan holidays, project milestones, or long-term goals in the annual planner
• Plan ahead to the year after next with the ‘year-after’ overview planner.
  
  

2. To Prioritize What Matters Most

Planning your time is an essential part of staying healthy and organized. Instead of allowing everything to enter your calendar, or simply letting the day unfold on its own, prioritizing helps you decide what is important and make that a focus for your time, energy and attention. That means doing the right thing at the right time, not just doing what pops into your head or what someone asked you a moment ago. That’s because overwhelm isn’t having too much to do. It’s not knowing what to do next! Don’t just do what’s urgent, do what’s important.

That’s why each day of the planner (both the Weekly and Daily versions) comes with a ‘Top Three’ Section. Sit down with your morning coffee, and figure out the three most important things you need to do that day so you can come home satisfied later in the day. Do three important things each day, you’ll be on the path to success in no time. 

Although ‘planning’ sometimes gets a bad reputation for being rigid and unrealistic in a fast-paced world, it actually gives us more freedom and more control, with less stress and frustration. If we don’t know where we’re supposed to be going, what we’re supposed to be doing, or what our goals are, then we’re more likely to become distracted and misuse our time and energy. 

3. As a Daily Activity Tracker – Looking Back

If you’re looking to build great habits, and make more time for reflection and time for yourself, then using the planner as an activity tracker is a great idea. Reflection is a key part of Mental Fitness, and the diary makes it effortless to track how you spend your time.

Do you have goals you’re trying to achieve, such as health goals, financial goals, or relationship goals? Then put them into your planner, and at the end of each day reflect back on whether you achieved them or not. Put in a check-box, and tick them off. Doing this consistently for a month helps it become a habit. At that point, there’s a good chance you can stop tracking it every day, and start working on a new set of goals. 

At the end of your day, just before you finish work, or before you go to bed, you could look back on your day and map out where you spent your time. How much time did you spend working? How much time did you spend on self-care or Mental Fitness? How much time pursuing goals or projects or hobbies? 

The planner is great for:

• Recording what you accomplished each day, from small wins to major tasks
• Evaluating how your actions aligned with your goals or values
• Spotting patterns in your daily activities, helping you adjust habits for better results

By looking back regularly, you gain insights into how well you’re managing your priorities and can identify areas for improvement.

4. Use it as a Wellbeing, Wellness or Mental Fitness Planner

• Schedule wellbeing essentials like movement, meal prep, and your ideal sleep routine
• Plan meaningful activities that nurture connection, purpose, and personal growth
• Use monthly prompts to integrate practices like mindfulness, journaling, or gratitude

With wellbeing built into your schedule, it’s easier to stay consistent and make Mental Fitness a non-negotiable part of your day.

If you’re trying to optimize your health and wellbeing, you should be asking yourself questions like these every day:

• When exactly am I planning to make time for exercise, or even just for some movement? Will I get outside, and what am I doing to renew my energy?

• How am I planning to eat nutritiously and build my energy through what I eat? When will I eat? When will I prepare food? What will I eat? Great questions if you're trying to eat well.

• How am I going to find some time to pause and rest today? Even for a few minutes so I stay focused? When am I going to sleep and getting up? Have I thought about this? How do I plan my wind-down routine? Keep an appointment with yourself by winding down for bed and minimizing technology right before bed. (Fun fact, it’s not the blue light - instead, its the stimulation of conflicts, the news or worries about your Bitcoin balance that worsen your sleep). 

• How will I connect with other people today? Will I deepen a relationship with a friend or colleague? Can I build someone up who I’m going to run into?

• How will I bring the right mindset to today? When will I get things off my mind? How will I work through the challenges I’m facing?

At Resilience Agenda, we are big believers in the idea that what gets scheduled gets done. That includes our wellbeing or Mental Fitness activities. Sometimes, it’s nice to have a place where you can put activities that are just for you - for things that you enjoy, or that renew your energy. You’re probably not going to put some of these in your work calendar for your boss or Kevin from down the hall to see are you? 

5. As a Deep-work or ‘Time-blocking’ calendar

Have you heard about time-blocking?

If you haven’t, deep work is about separating the things we do for work into the things that most of us actually get paid for (creating, thinking, presenting) and other tasks (such as emails and admin and meetings) that often fill our days unnecessarily. It was popularized by Cal Newport in his excellent (if slightly geeky) book Deep Work. If you’re a creator, or you find yourself getting distracted, check it out.

Deep-work is about spending a portion of your day - whether its an hour or four - doing the thing that is your ‘masterwork’, or ‘the thing’ that you’re good at or known for or that really matters. The thing that you measure whether you’re ‘doing your job properly’ (for most people, this isn’t meetings and emails).

If you’re an author, writing for a few hours each day is deep work. That means scheduling in advance how long you’ll write for. If you’re an office worker, or a busy parent, or running your own business, it gets a little harder. In an office setting, this might mean blocking out time one a week to think and plan and strategize. When you run your own business, this might mean stepping back to work ‘on’ the business, rather than merely in it, dealing with products and angry customers etc.

As a parent, this might be focused time playing - quality time - or something other than being busy ‘parenting’ day to day. Time-blocking is a masterful strategy for getting things done. Essentially, it means booking out an appointment in your calendar for a task or activity, even if you’re doing it alone. That’s right. The key to time blocking is being really specific when an activity starts, how long it goes for, and whether it backs onto other activities. Do you leave a gap in between for delays, or to check emails, or to visit the bathroom? That’s a good idea. You’ll find that you can really only fit a handful of things into most days. When you start taking your to-do list, prioritizing it, and then trying to find time to actually get something, you soon realize why we’re often burnt out or overwhelmed. We pack in meetings that we don’t want to attend, which leaves little room leftover for the important activities of wellbeing - such as movement, nutrition, sleep, connection and reflection. The more we prioritize and time-block these activities into our schedules, the more likely we are to do them.

Time-blocking your movement, what and when you’ll eat, sleep, connection and reflection time helps you protect it. This turns a good intention into a plan, because you can protect it like you can any other important appointment in your calendar.

Use psychology and the power of pre-commitments to defeat your own worst habits and procrastination. Cancelling an appointment with yourself that you have pre-committed to is much harder than deciding that you will go to the gym or for a 6am walk when you haven’t prepared! 

6. Use it as a Journal to Track What’s on Your Mind

Another way to use the planner is to journal with it. Or to use it as a diary. Because it has a flexible daily format (without fixed times, because who knows when you start and finish your day) you can use it as you would a regular notebook or journal. Just with dates instead. You can also use a regular notebook as well, but this one combines the monthly Mental Fitness feature content and daily structure with space to write, which helps keep you inspired. 

While people often think of diary-writing or journaling as a kid’s activity, or something to pass time, (as in Anne Frank’s diary), journal writing is actually an activity performed by some of the world’s most successful, insightful and productive people. Think Bill Gates, Marcus Aurelius,  Leonardo Da Vinci.

Journaling is a powerful way to process thoughts, concerns and emotions, and the diary provides ample space for:

• Writing reflections, insights, and lessons learned each day

• Recording personal experiences to revisit and learn from later

• Exploring your mindset and emotions in a structured way

• Noting down big ideas or valuable quotes or insights

• Tracking your mood and your reaction to situations and setbacks

The act of journaling helps clarify your thoughts, promotes emotional balance, and strengthens your Mental Fitness by reinforcing a growth-oriented perspective.

When we journal, we download what is on our minds. Putting our 60,000 often-incoherent thoughts onto paper provides them with structure. This creates a narrative, a story, for our lives, with a beginning, middle and end. We find that things make more sense when we put them down on paper. We learn the valuable Mental Fitness idea that ‘thoughts are not facts.’ This is never more true than when you put them down on paper, and hold them up for examination and truth-checking. Often, when we reread what we’ve written, we see patterns emerging. We notice that on certain days we are more positive or negative than we feel today. This gives us insight.

Journaling is for people who want ‘time to themselves’, but can’t find it. Or for people who have tried meditation (sitting still) and can’t seem to crack it, then journaling a few lines each day can be hugely beneficial.

It doesn’t have to be Shakespeare. Dot points will do. Just get things off your mind, away from the distractions of your digital devices.

6.  As a Gratitude Tracker

Cultivating gratitude is a simple yet transformative practice. With daily and weekly prompts, the diary encourages you to:

• Reflect on what went well and the people or moments you’re thankful for.

• Reframe challenges by focusing on lessons or unexpected positives.

• Build a gratitude habit that enhances your overall perspective and resilience.

This small, consistent practice contributes significantly to a more positive and grounded mindset.

Instead of being grateful ‘for everything’, which is often hard when life isn’t going our way, be really specific about what you’re grateful for. While most things might be awful, there’s always something that ‘could be worse’ or ‘wasn’t bad.’ Noticing and recognizing these things changes our brains, and we start to look out for more of them as we go through our day. These small bursts of positive emotion can create an upward cycle of wellbeing and positivity. 

Use the ‘Top Three’ Section to record the ‘top three’ things that went well…or even, that you’re looking forward to tomorrow - even if you really don’t feel like getting up! 

7. As a Daily Dump Pad

Your mind is made for having ideas, not holding onto them. That’s why building a daily habit of dumping your thoughts onto paper is so helpful.

Ever wondered why you can’t fall asleep? Ever wondered why you have all those thoughts just as you get into bed? It’s because that’s the only time many of us allow ourselves to be still, free from the inputs of other people, or our pressing tasks. No wonder our subconscious decides to get a word in.

When this happens, you can ruminate, and remember and recycle tomorrow’s dozen tasks. Or you can write them down. Give yourself permission to forget them for the evening, knowing they are safely written down. 

Life can be chaotic, and having a place to jot down thoughts, ideas, or tasks can provide clarity and reduce mental clutter. The diary doubles as:

• A space to capture fleeting ideas or creative sparks.

• A catch-all for to-do lists, random notes, and brainstorming sessions.

• A tool to offload worries or distractions, helping you focus on what matters most.

Think of it as a mental reset button, giving you space to unload and refocus. Especially at bedtime. 

If you’d like to learn more about the 2025 Resilience Agenda Mental Fitness Diary & Planner, find out more here.