For the last several years, I’ve been trying to find the right balance — for me — of compactness and flexibility for my day planner. I also like the idea of leaving some space to play in creatively (art), although that isn’t something I do much. (It’s an area I’m trying to grow in, so having the space allocated is important, even if I don’t use it much.)

In 2023 I tried something new. I did it “rough” because I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it, but I ended up liking it a lot and “stepped it up” a bit for 2024. Some of my “step it up” tweaks have been great; others I’m not loving. I wanted to give you a walk-through of this setup because I find that seeing examples of what others are doing gives me ideas for things that might work for me.

The Basic Concept of This Planner

There were a few things that went into this. I really like all the gorgeous “bullet journal” planners that people are making nowadays. (Check out Jashi Corrin on YouTube if you want to see some stellar ideas!) And I love the compactness of a bound book. But there are some issues (for me and my own needs) with these.

• Those books are expensive. Gorgeous, but expensive. There are benefits to those better-quality books — like that you can use marker in them without having massive bleed-through — but I definitely didn’t want to buy an expensive book if I didn’t even know yet whether I liked this setup!
• Most of them are a little thick. Some of that is because better paper creates thicker books, but some of it is just the sheer length of the books. You can’t readily carry more than one (or you’ve totally lost the compactness factor), but if you keep everything in one it’s harder to break up.
• Rate of turnover is a problem. Because they have no ability to replace pages, you’re stuck with the same book until you’re done with it. And that can become really awkward when you finish with different sets of information at very different rates.
• If they’re dot-grid, all the ones I’ve seen are metric. Which is a relatively minor detail, but I’ve already worked out all my layouts over the years based on quarter-inches.

I determined that the information I need really breaks down into three basic chunks:

1. Information that updates annually, or thereabouts
2. Information that updates daily or at least with a very high frequency
3. Information that rarely changes and just needs to be carried over from planner to planner.

I didn’t have a good solution for #3 at all in 2023. I stumbled across an idea late in the year that I employed for 2024, and it’s decent for this, although not perfect. But essentially I decided that what I need is one (slim) book per year and then one (slim) book for “dailies” (that can be swapped out as it fills up). And I don’t really need a whole book’s worth of anything for the third category, which is why it’s been harder to sort out.

With all that in mind, I determined that if I rubberband two composition books together, they can be readily carried around as one book. The covers are stiff enough that they don’t flop around (although the composition books I used to get were better/firmer), and the books are pretty inexpensive.

I’d love to have dot-grid pages, but those don’t seem to be available, so I’ve been using quad-ruled. It’s not ideal, because it makes the pages “busier” than dot grids do, but it works better than plain ruled. (You could use ruled, too, if that’s all you have/can find/can afford; I just like the grids better.)

Big-Picture Setup

So the basic setup here is that I have two composition books — a “yearly” and a “daily” — and I band the back of the yearly book and the front of the daily book together near the spine with a larger rubber band.

The “dailies” book can be swapped out mid-year. So far, I’ve been getting six months from one, so I use two “daily” books per year. It would also be plausible to use three, each lasting four months at a time, depending on how you set it up and how much you write.

I also have a pen pocket with an elastic band on the front of the book. This holds a Pilot G-2 in 0.7 or 1.0 and another in 0.38. I use the finer point for filling in my individual days’ activities (I can get two rows per “grid”), and the thicker point for everything else. (For “drawing in” the actual pages I use a PaperMate Flair.)

Clabby 4 Pieces Adjustable Pen Holder for Notebook Elastic Strap Band PU LeatherPilot, G2 Premium Gel Roller Pens, Fine Point 0.7 mm, Black, Pack of 5Pilot, G2 Premium Gel Roller Pens, Ultra Fine Point 0.38 mm, Pack of 4, BlackPaper Mate Flair Felt Tip Pens, Medium Point (0.7mm), Black, 2 Count

The “Yearly” Book

The yearly book opens with an index (which, honestly, I rarely use), then contains my monthly calendars and goals, yearly goals, and annual Christmas planning. I’ve added a year-at-a-glance period tracker because I had space for it (you’ll see later) and currently I’m working my way through a 1001 Things in 101 Days challenge, so that list is in here, too.

There’s actually a good deal of extra space in this book, which I’d thought I would journal in as the year goes by, but I didn’t do much of that at all in practice.

In 2023, I set aside three sheets (6 pages, starting on a front) for each month. The front of the first page was for my goals, like so:

On the back side of that page and the front of the next was the calendar.

The remaining sheets were for jotting down notes for things upcoming to those months.  e.g. if I knew I wanted to make plans in October for attending a certain conference, but it wasn’t actually scheduled, I might note that on October’s “notes” page. Then when October rolled around, I’d know I needed to do this. This is kind of like a tickler file, but without the file.

This year I didn’t tab the months ahead of time. This wasn’t really intentional; I just didn’t get around to it. I ended up tabbing (most of) the months as I went along, using “found” items (like candy wrappers) that I traced a storebought tab onto (and gluing them in). While it was a little bit annoying not having tabs on all the upcoming months, I also kind of like the “junk journal”/”collage” effect these contributed.

(Maybe a “compromise” option would be to use clear insertable tabs and then insert the found items as the year progresses?)

I don’t have pictures of the rest of this from 2023, but you’ll see it when I get to the 2024 update. After all of the monthly sections, I have another tab. Here I put my annual goals, followed by my 101 Things in 1001 Days list.

Then Christmas plans and the period tracker — and then another tab, which separates all of these from the remainder of the book, which is blank and can be used throughout the year because it’s not pre-established pages.

The “Daily” Book

Most of the daily book uses a layout I’d previously been using in a comb-bound planner. I didn’t scale them up to fit the book, because this way I have extra-large margins that I could decorate. (I typically don’t, but I could.)  Or write Scripture in. Or something.

I usually draw these in a week at a time, on Sunday evening (or on Monday if I don’t get around to it sooner), with my PaperMate Flair pen. That might sound like a lot, but it’s pretty quick. After the first one, I don’t even measure/count them, I just flip the existing pages up and use them to make dots to mark where on the page I want my lines to be for the coming days.

This layout can also have hours written in along the “stripe” (I number it 1-12, and then 1-12 again), which is helpful for appointments, or for marking things like medicine dosages (times), newborn feedings, etc., but I don’t have a lot of appointments in this season of life, so I often just don’t bother writing them in because it takes more time and doesn’t have a lot of pay-off.

There are a few other things in this book, though.

At the very front of the book, I include a year-at-glance calendar, accompanied by dates-at-a-glance: our family birthdays and anniversaries, as well as other holidays and major events. For the first book of the year, I include the whole year (3 months per page), but for the second book of the year I don’t bother with January-June, and only include July-December.

At roughly the start of each quarter (I don’t break up my weekly spreads for this, but just go with the closest week break to the start of the quarter), I also include a page like this. It includes this “level 10 life” graph, and can include other information I want to pay attention to as I plan for the coming quarter, which may vary by season of life.

I don’t feel like trying to figure out how to draw these things, so I just printed the mini calendars and the level 10 graphs on sticker paper and cut them out to stick onto the pages.

I count off how many pages I should need for the months I plan to include (usually includng a couple extras in case I loused up the math), and then I put my ongoing to-do lists/task lists. This page is marked off with a washi tape tab and has washi tape along the edge so it’s not overly fussy, but this section is also easy to locate and flip to.

2024 Update – the Yearly Book

When I decided this was going well and I wanted to keep this method up, I dressed up my 2024 notebook a bit more. I decorated the notebook itself in advance, in part using a tutorial I found on YouTube, and because I added decorative paper to the month dividers, I moved the monthly goals back. While I like the overall additions of the decorative elements, I did not like having my monthly goals moved. It seems silly, because they’re now just in the back of the monthly section rather than the front, and it’s only a couple pages’ difference — but I just don’t find it as user-friendly, so next year I’ll probably go back to having it in the front. Maybe I’ll add an extra page for just the divider and then set up the monthly area the way I had it in 2023.

This is what my “yearly” book looks like for 2024, on the inside front:

The words here I did not add when I decorated the notebook; I printed them later on clear sticker paper and added them over top of what I’d already done.

The inside cover is just covered with decorative paper from Scrapbook.com. (I tried decorating the outside of the cover last year, and I had some trouble with things being smudgeproof enough. I also wanted to free up the option of maybe making a fabric or leather cover that the whole book can slip into, and not be covering up all my work!)

The slash pocket on the right is merely the first couple of pages folded over, decorated with decorative paper, and then washi-taped around the edges.

This clear pocket on the left is one of my favorite additions. One of the issues I had with my 2023 setup that I was just trying out, is that it didn’t have any means of holding anything. This is a self-adhesive pocket. I bought an assortment pack so I could learn what I wanted to use, and I like this size. I think this must be the 3.14 x 4 inch. It’s holding postage stamps, my “milk” and “paycheck” stickers for my monthly calendars, and the tab I’ve been tracing to make my own tabs. (If you’re using a pocket like this and also using a pen pocket with a band like this, make sure you attach the pocket far enough over to allow for the band!)

This next page is what I call the “INBOX” of my planner.

You know when you have random piddly notes to make, and they go somewhere, but you don’t have time right now to put them where they go, or you aren’t at home and they go at home, etc.? This enables me to write them all right here. It’s a large sticky note, so when it gets too full/messy, I can replace it, since nothing on it is really meant to be permanent to my planner anyway.

Then we have the months section. This time, I tabbed them all ahead of time, using my decorative paper, adhesive sheets, and a tab die. They’re okay, and I like having them all tabbed, but I don’t love these super-narrow tabs; next year I’ll probably go back to the wider ones.

These sticky notes are how I originally planned out the book. I counted off the number of pages I needed for each thing and then put a small sticky note to designate where each new section started. (I also then added the number of days in each month here so I didn’t have to try to shift my thinking from month to month as I drew the calendars. Just easier to prevent mistakes that way.)

I have two colors of highlighting here; one is for birthdays and one is for anniversaries. (I’ve blurred out the names here.) The pay day sticker indicates the week our “grocery paycheck,” as I call it, comes. (My husband gets paid biweekly, but we only do groceries every other paycheck.) The milk bottles indicate the weeks our raw milk group gets together to drive to the farm for milk.

The totally blank calendar looks something like this. (Obviously this is a different month.)

Then we have goals:

As you can (kind of) see, this page of January goals was the last thing before the February divider. I don’t know why I don’t like this, but I don’t, and next year I’ll go back to having them at the front of the month.

The top sticky note on this page (below) is a pretty standard type of note for me. This is the kind of thing I might jot down before the month rolls around: something I plan to add to the grovery list that month. The bottom sticky note is part of my planning process and it’s a reminder for myself of something I’m wanting to track.

Speaking of tracking, this is a page I implemented this year, in each of my monthly sections. It’s a compact way to track a lot of different things. I don’t always use everything here (it’s a lot!), but I like that there is a way to track all of these things, without creating (and trying to keep up with) a bunch of separate trackers.

It would probably be even better if I made a little flip-out with the icons on it so I only have to draw them once a year. But these aren’t too bad, time-wise. (Whether or not they’re bad in terms of being recognizable is a whole other question!)

Then we have my annual goals, and this page gets a tab because it starts the next section.

It’s followed by my 101 Things in 1001 Days list, which I haven’t gotten around to labeling at the top yet.

This spans multiple pages, as you could probably tell. This is probably the most annoying thing of the whole book to copy in, because 1001 days is something like 2-2/3 years, so the same list spans multiple years — and it’s a long list.

Then there’s my Christmas list. I fold this page in half, because that way someone casually flipping through my planner — or walking by while I’m flipping through my planner — is not going to accidentally see what I’ve planned to get them for Christmas. The washi tape makes it easier to find the edge, and also helps keep the edge from getting beat up with frequent folding and unfolding.

The actual list is inside the fold:

At the beginning of the year I write in all the names, and then as I find items or come up with ideas throughout the year I write them in beside the names.

On the back of this folded page I’ve created a year-at-a-glance period tracker because the space is there, so why not?

(This one is newly-created at the start of the year, but I would just circle the appropriate dates.) I leave a couple extra pages in case I forgot something that should be an annual plan or tracker, and then another tab separates this from the rest of the book.

Because this book tends to have so many unused pages, toward the back of this book is also where I decided to add in my removable booklet (Click that link to read a tutorial for how I made this.) with the kind of permanent or semi-permanent information that I just keep carrying over.

(Currently, this contains my measurements from Fashion Fit Formula — these are lengths, not diameters; a Brewer diet food list; and the color codes for my websites.)

The back of the book has a pocket much like the front:

And then is rubberbanded to the front of the Daily book:

2024 Update – the Daily Book

My 2024 daily book is fully of these “tabs” made from sticky notes torn in half. My original plan was to allow for a glued-together page at the start of each quarter, and another at the start of each month, which I could decorate and fill with stats. So I counted off the pages to see how many months I could fit — hence the sticky tabs. But I seem to have counted something wrong, because the end of the quarter and the end of the pages I filled for the quarter didn’t correspond, so I gave up on this idea.

The year-at-a-glance pages are just like the ones from 2023, except the actual calendars are created in Affinity Designer and printed on clear sticker paper rather than white.

The daily spreads also look the same. Then we have the “ongoing to-do’s,” or next-action context lists. As before, this section is marked off with a washi tape tab, and also washi-taped down the edge so it’s easy to find.

After my context lists (Click that link to see what contexts I’m using that work for me with chronic illness) and my overview of projects, I have project notes. And because I suspect some of these may need to either be changed out more regularly, or, alternatively, be carried over to the next book, I used a combination here of writing things directly into the book, using sticky notes, and washi-taping things in.

This is my breakdown for an ongoing, whole-house cleaning/tidying/re-organization project. It’s a challenge because of my health, so I’m breaking it down to small segments like a drawer, a shelf, or a particular segment of a room.

And on the back of this page I have a running list of tangible things I’ve determined I need, as well as tasks I’ve determined I need someone else to help with.

My blog “to-do list” is printed off and stuck in with washi tape. (This is actually an old one, but I didn’t have a newer one ready yet when I took these pictures and wanted to be sure to show it.)

Blog post ideas are on a sticky note (so it can be rotated out as it gets used up, much like the “INBOX,” since I mostly keep this list on the computer):

And I don’t have a picture of it, but I have a lengthy list of recipes that need to be tested for various cookbooks, etc. I expect it will take me a long time to get through all of these recipes, so I printed them off and taped the lists in with washi tape.