I finally found the time to make my own much-needed personal planner – a place for everything I regularly need to work with on paper, from weekly appointments to blog post ideas, from systematic to-do lists to figuring out the actual steps needed for my goals, plus the layout and space to put it all into practice throughout the week. Because plans are nothing if you do not manage to act on them, for whatever reason, right?
I spent a while browsing stores and the internet for purchasable folder planners before, but all the nice ones are grossly overpriced. I would have felt stupid to buy one. Besides, a creative DIY project is always fun!
So when a post from odernichtoderdoch online magazine (in German) offered tips for how to make one, and I stumbled over the perfect weekly layout in the form of the free pdf for the epic America-based passion planner, I decided to craft my own lovely planner. And I am soooo very happy with how it has turned out!
I aimed at a combination between an individualistic and pretty planner and a clean practical style, letting the planner feel personal but well-suited for the actual grown-up life of a somewhat scatterbrained person with many ideas, dreams, and goals. The layout of the passion planners is perfect for that; and it comes with a system of developing for yourself your dreams and goals and what matters – and suggestions for how to break them down into manageable steps that you can insert into your everyday life in the weekly layouts.
And for me the planner has already worked, because while developing my goal of finishing up my Master’s degree, I realised I finally need to hand in this quite finished but long overdue paper that has been sitting in my computer (and in my head) for way too long. And I did hand it in this week! Wooooo!
So on the whole, I think the planner is quite ready for more heavy and regular usage. And while I would hate for it to feel cramped with useless knick-knack, I think I may yet add an elastic to keep the folder closed, and more of the registers to quickly jump to my systematic to do lists. Maybe a bookmark for the current week, too.
My warmest thanks go to Angelia Trinidad of passion planner for investing so much love and thoughtfulness into making the layouts, and then putting up the planner pdf for free (for overseas students living on a tight budget like me, for example) on the passion planner website, where you are also offered the option to donate a small amount instead which will go to a charity – how lovely is that? – and to Jessi of odernichtoderdoch online magazine for inspiring me with handy tips to just make a planner myself! All my gratefulness and all the power to you, ladies 🙂
Do you have a planner? How do you like its style, and do you actually use it for anything? If you have any tips for other tweaks or proposals, please let me know!