Setting Up My New Planner System: How I Use My Planners
Hi my name is Albie and I am high key obsessed with planners & all things planner'ing.
After years of on again off again using planners, buying up every pretty planner I could get my hands on in, I finally feel like I'm at a place where my planners are actually going to be serving me... not just a bad shopping habit and a procrastination distraction.
My love of using planners stems from my love of writing - I sincerely believe in the power of putting pen to paper! And while I have always been this way, in my big age, I have accepted that if I don't write something down, it's likely not gonna get done. Because of this, I love me some planners, notebooks, notepads, post-its, and calendars!
Getting to this new planner system took A LOT of trial & error, but I love it just in the same ways (and for many of the same reasons) that I love organizing my home so it was worth all the effort to find a system that works.
Current Planner System
For the longest I was convinced that I needed to compartmentalize my planners - having multiple planners for multiple things, versus one planner for all the things. I always resisted going this route though because my life never felt "complex" enough to need all em moving parts - I want a planner system that'll simplify my life & improve my productivity, not further complicate things... in addition to the fact that I still use digital tools.
I kept trying to find a system that was already ready to use, when really what I needed was to customize a system that was best suited for me.
If you've been following along with my IG stories in recent weeks then you know I decided to do a complete overhaul of my planner system and start from scratch to create something new and something that aligned with my current lifestyle... not just with what's pretty or popular.
Disc Bound Planners
Last year (or maybe two years ago because... what is time) I bought a classic happy planner to use as my main planner, alongside my weekly planner pad. After falling off this year, I realized that my happy planner was the best planner system I'd adopted... I just needed to change how I was using it.
The me & my BIG ideas The Happy Planner System is a disc bound planner system.
Disc bound planners are exactly how they sound - bound by discs. This makes em easy to take apart & put back together (vs. a ring bound planner) so that they can be customized over and over... and over again.
My classic planner was an undated vertical hourly layout (similar). I prefer undated planners so there's no pressure if/when I miss days/weeks/months, and at the time I lead a life that had a lot of schedules. I decided to use the vertical hourly layout to time block my days. Over time, this stopped working for me because time blocking stopped working for me. As my life changed - and became less regimented - time blocking became a fruitless task. But instead of completely starting from scratch, it hit me that I could use this as my frankenplanner for personal & work.
“frankenplanning: mixing and matching different planner types & their inserts to create one custom planner.”
I fell in love with the happy planner system because I could purchase inserts a la carte & structure my planner any way I'd like. Because it's disc bound, removing & placing inserts is super quick & easy. In the past, if the format of a planner didn't work for me, I end up having to ditch the whole thing all together - my pile of half to three-quarter used planners is low key a disaster lol.
To create my new frankenplanner, I am using...
undated dashboard layout inserts from another planner for my day to day planning
undated subject layout inserts from Fancy Plans Co. for social media planning
guided journal inserts for intentionally checking in with myself every week & every month (something I adopted from having used PowerSheets) from happy notes
my unused hourly vertical layout - waste not, want not - for daily to do lists (once these inserts are done, I'll go back to my weekly planner pad for daily to do's)
home project planner inserts from Poi & Hun for sponsored content & brand collaborations
Because I don't have a ton of different planner types - ie. faith, finance, fitness, etc. - my new frankenplanner is pretty streamlined, with a monthly calendar in the front for daily gratitude, followed by everything I just mentioned for an entire quarter. After a year of keeping all 12 months in my planner, I realized keeping a quarter at a time (with a year at a glance insert) made way more sense for me... plus it frees up a lot of space!
All my unused inserts live in a transformer planner - a combination of planners, unlike a frankenplanner, with covers & all.
While my frankenplanner will be my primary planner, it won't be my only planner.
Because of how easy-to-customize disc bound systems are, I decided to construct a second one, mirroring mini happy planners, which are smaller in height & width than the classic size. Instead of buying a whole mini planner, I used a combination of covers, dashboards, and inserts from Cloth & Paper, Fancy Plans Co, and Happy Planner to create my own. This binder will serve as our home binder - garden planning, budget planning, project planning, and maintenance planning. These are activities that need monitoring, not scheduling, so there is no reason for me to jam em all in my big planner.
To create my new home planner, I am using...
crystal clear disc bound covers from Cloth & Paper
gantt chart inserts from Cloth & Paper
year at a glance inserts from Fancy Plans Co
weekday block inserts with folder from The Happy Planner Wild Styled collection
blank refills for printing additional info from AMW Planner
With this combination of inserts, in addition to different dashboards & inserts, this planner is a reference, as needed, for our household.
Customizing With Inserts
The Happy Planner sells its fair share of inserts, accessories, and extensions. For the mini planner, I chose disc bound inserts from small businesses... and almost all owned & operated by women of color!
P.S. stay tuned for a haul and/or flip through illustrating how I use em all.
For both frankenplanners, I got top and side tabs to make navigating between sections & quarters easier; and I got blank tabs so that I could label them myself and change them as needed.
I also use stickers to customize - really, to decorate - my planner but that's done on a week to week basic, and not always every week... some week's, it's just the ink.
The different inserts are what truly make the planners functional.
While I have lots of digital resources at my disposal for keeping my plans and things in order, there really is nothing like putting pen to paper & writing things out to mentally cement them in. The tactile method of putting things into a planner helps keep me consistent with my digital tools, which are a more compact & convenient way of tracking everything (I have no need to carry my planners around with me).
Since I am new to setting up both of these planners - and this system altogether - I'll be testing it out for the last quarter of 2021 to see how it does... and more importantly, to see if it's a sustainable companion to my digital tools.
If it doesn't work, I can just tweak & repeat.
From 2020 to 2021, I learned the value of structure but also gained an appreciation for agility. I'm excited to finally have planners that give me both structure and agility.
