When deciding between buying a yearly or a quarterly planner, there are many factors that come to play.
Planner Preference:
Everyone is different, with different personalities, different ways of staying organized, different roles, jobs, and atmospheres. But all of that is to say when deciding between a quarterly and yearly planner, you need to think about what you want. What are you using the planner for?
For some, a planner is a proper way to be able to take notes in public, meetings, or with colleagues without being on one's phone or computer. Others, want to write every action they do throughout the day in the planner, using it as one would use a journal. Yet for others, it's a planning tool, a way of making clear and define actions for each day and thinking about things before you do them.
There is no right or wrong method for use but for each use, there might be a right or wrong planner out there. If you are using a planner for a journal, you may want a yearly planner, to keep your full year together to look back on. Likewise, if one uses this for notes, then a yearly planner might be the right choice in order to keep early meetings together with later meetings. However, one who uses the planner as a planning tool is looking ahead rather than behind. They may prefer the quarterly planner in order to have a fresh start each quarter in order to properly plan and decide on goals and actions they need to do each quarter.
Job Type or Role:
In addition to preference, one's job type or role in life also plays an important factor. Since a father of four that works part-time and a single entrepreneur are obviously going to have different responsibilities in life, job type or role also plays an important factor when choosing. While there are unlimited possibilities of jobs and roles in life we can't go into every type.
A good rule of thumb is that if you have infrequent changes in your schedule or life a yearly planner might be best for you. While if a job frequently changes or personal life consistently calls for changes, then a quarterly planner might be the better approach. This is because with infrequent change it’s better to keep all of your entries in one place, otherwise it is good to have a fresh start with a quarterly planner.
Time allocation:
Another consideration is how much time you want to dedicate to journal entries or writing in a planner. A benefit of the quarterly planner is it is very detailed, marking an available spot for every type of desired entry. However, the yearly Planner will consist of general note-taking capabilities, a schedule, and a few basic time management tools. If you want to be detailed, a quarterly planner may be better for you, otherwise, try the yearly planner.