Mossery Academic Planner | Thoughts & Review

It has become very obvious to me is that I need to be organised if I want to get all my university work finished. This is something I find difficult doing if I have lots of projects on the go at the same time. As much as I love my bullet journal it isn’t helpful all the time. So I decided to take the plunge and try a Mossery Academic Planner. 

I’ve used a number of different Mossery products in the past and have always been impressed by the high quality of their stationery. Over the summer of 2019, I decided to try out one of their Academic Planners. Mossery was running a promotion at the time where you got a planner along with some extra goodies. But in this specific post, I will only be talking about the Mossery Academic Planner. 

Mossery Academic Planner Review

About Mossery

Mossery is a Malaysian based company which originally started out on Etsy. Their whole ethos is about creating well-made products to help you maximise your potential. Whether this is while using a planner or sketchbook. 

Mossery makes all sorts of different notebooks and sketchbooks. I’ve reviewed a few of these in the past. One of the things I love about Mossery is how customisable their notebooks are. You can choose the artwork you want on the cover, you also have lots of choices when it comes to paper. You can choose between ruled, plain and dotted paper. They also have a few different types of mixed media papers if you buy a sketchbook. 

Paper is one of the things Mossery does really well. If you’re wanting to create art the mixed media paper is fantastic. Holding up well to watercolour and other wet media. Their regular notebook paper is also really nice to write on. Mossery used a 100gsm paper. It gives a really smooth surface and will even hold up to calligraphy using a dip pen with no visible bleed through. 

Mossery has been making academic planners for a few years now. I’ve always wanted to try one but never quite found a good enough reason. Especially when my bullet journal was working so well. But over the summer of 2019 Mossery announced an undated version of their Academic Planners. I love undated planners because I’m not constrained to using the planner within a specific year. So I finally decided to try one.

The Planner

I really liked how much I was able to customise the Mossery Academic Planner. Mossery has its own range of covers, but will also occasionally have artists create a few special covers. The cover I chose was made by an artist called mcmintea who I have been following on Instagram for a while. 

Mossery will also give you the option to have a custom phrase added onto the cover. Usually, I would just leave this blank because I like adding stickers to the cover of my notebooks. But in this case, the cover design was so nice I didn’t want to ruin it with a sticker. Instead, I decided to add the academic year that I intended on using the planner. 

One of the things I really love about Mossery is the covers of their notebooks. They use a super thick cardstock which means you don’t need to worry about the cover being bent or damaged. You can buy an additional plastic sleeve from Mossery for $4 but I don’t like these sleeves as they prevent you from folding the notebook in half. I also had a traveller’s journal which would fit my planner which made an extra sleeve unnecessary. 

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Mossery uses a ring binding on its Academic Planners. They have started introducing thread-bound notebooks but haven’t extended this to their planner range yet. The way the rings hold the planner together is slightly strange. The cover is one piece which extends around the whole planner. Rather than having separate front and back covers you would typically see on a sketchbook. But this alternate design works really well. You don’t need to worry about the metal rings becoming bent and planner pages starting to fall out. 

I use so many sketchbooks at university that this is a legitimate thing I need to worry about on lower quality sketchbooks. I can’t be losing weeks of work just because a sketchbook won’t stay together. 

Goals & Habit Tracker

The Mossery Academic Planner starts out with a goals section. This is the exact same as what you will find in any Mossery product. There is space to write down your favourite films, books and places. You also have space to figure out your priorities along with goals and values. 

Mossery then has a 12-month habit tracker over two spreads. I used to love using a habit tracker. In the past I have found it to be a good way to keep track of my health. Eventually I stopped using it because it was such a hassle creating a habit tracker spread in my bullet journal. I love that this has already been set out for you in the Mossery Academic Planner. 

There is space for you to track 4 habits each month. And you can also note down a specific goal for each tracker. For example, if you want to do an activity a certain number of times over the month. 

Monthly Spread

The Mossery Academic Planner has 12 monthly calendar spreads. I really like the design of these monthly calendars. They use up almost the entire space on the double-page spread which gives you a good amount of space for each day. I’ve tried to use calendars in the past which were far too small and hard to use. 

The calendar spreads start on a Monday and end on a Sunday. Currently, there is no option for a calendar which begins on a Sunday. There is also some space on the calendar for you to write down tasks. Along with a small section at the start of each week where you could note down events happening in that week. I use this section to note down the current week’s blog post. 

Weekly Spread

The specific planner I chose uses a vertical weekly layout on two pages. I’m going to be totally honest here, it took me a really long time to get used to this. I bought the planner in July and didn’t start properly using it till October. This was entirely down to the weekly layout. 

I’m not saying there was anything wrong with the planner. But a vertical layout is something I haven’t really used before. I should also note that Mossery makes a horizontal version of their Academic Planner. As much as I now love the vertical layout I would choose the horizontal version if I bought another because it works better with how I use a planner. 

The vertical layout is split into two sections. The top half of the page has each day laid out in a vertical orientation with lines going down the column that mark out times during the day. This gives you space for 14 hours over a specific day. These types of planners are really made more for event planning. So if you have meetings or appointments on during the day. Yes, there is space for notes and tasks at the bottom of the page but I didn’t use this quite as much. 

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I feel like I’m being more critical of this vertical layout than I really should be. It’s not a bad layout, it just took me a while to get used to. It doesn’t help that I had a quick look on Instagram to see how other people use their Academic Planners and they all had incredible weekly spreads that I could never hope to replicate. 

But I did end up figuring out a system which worked for me. This involved noting down and time-specific events. Such as tutorial and lectures. Then using the rest of the space to write down any tasks. These were placed onto the timeline in vaguely the area of the day that I wanted to do the tasks. 

My Thoughts On The Mossery Academic Planner

I love this planner. But one of the things I have never quite got is what makes this an Academic Planner. Mossery advertised it as an Academic Planner but there aren’t any special pages within the planner which would work specifically if you were at school or university. Some academic planners I’ve bought in the past have had space to write down timetables and other events. 

This Mossery planner had nothing like that. In fact, I would say you could use it as a totally normal planner and you would have no idea it was branded as an academic planner. 

Despite all that I really do love using this planner. All the issues I’ve had with it come more from me getting used to using the planner rather than there being any actual problems with the planner. I’ve got a good system figured out now where I used the weekly spreads to note down tasks and events. Then use the dotted paper at the start of the planner almost like a bullet journal. 

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I love that the planner is undated. I will always recommend choosing an undated planner over a dated version. This way you have the freedom to use the planner whenever you want. If you have a week where you don’t have anything on you just don’t use a weekly spread. 

The Mossery Academic Planner retails for $28 USD, this works out as £21. This is quite expensive compared to some of the other planners I’ve used in the past. Especially when you account for shipping which was around £10. But I really like the Mossery Planners and I think the little extra you pay is worth it for a quality product. Obviously, though this all depends on how much you’re willing to pay for a planner and how much use you will get out of it. 

Finally

I’ve loved using my Mossery Academic Planner over the last few months. Like I said it took me a good while to get used to it. But once I figured out a system which worked for me I found it to be a really good tool which helped me stay organised at university. I love that I was able to use this as a combined planner and bullet journal. Before now I’ve never been able to figure out a system I like which combines a planner and bullet journal. 

Obviously, some people may think this planner is very expensive compared to other planners available. And I would agree with that. But Mossery has put a lot of time and effort into creating a product which is well made and will help you work at your best.