Peek Inside the Planner

Every year, with the best of intentions, I start a planner. I've tried the plain old spiral bound kind you buy at Staples, a clunky binder, a bullet journal, a print-your-own planner with a million lists and charts and components.

And they all end up the same--half-filled, neglected, and ultimately thrown in the trash.

Still, I remain dedicated to the planner concept--perhaps naively, but if I could just find the right format for me, I think they could help me with my "discipline" theme this year!

Last year I had seperate planners for personal life and work, and that was just too much to keep track of. So this year, I'm trying a single planner, with seperate planning pages for work and home life. I've selected printable planner pages from a few different planner sets to get exactly what I want. 

I think. 

I'm using an arc planner, which has the physical flexibility of a spiral-bound planner, but you can easily add and subtract pages, like a binder. I even added this pencil pouch insert so I can keep all my pens and stickers handy.

First up are all my home/personal planning pages--monthly calendars and then daily planning. I love this planning printable I snagged from The Scattered Squirrel. I usually put a couple day's worth of stuff on a single page.

The nice thing about the arc planner is that I don't need to have 365 days' worth of daily planning pages stuffed in here--I can print off a couple of weeks' worth, take them out when they're done and add fresh ones.

I have meal planner pages in there, and I've included some goal setting and project planning pages too--there are so many home projects I'd like to tackle (and maybe I willl someday--with more time and money), and this is a great place to sketch out some plans even if I can't get started right away.

Then we're into the work section, starting with monthly calendars with all those submission deadlines, so hopefully I don't miss any!

Then my daily tasks--I've tried assigning different business "maintenance" tasks to different days, but so far . . . 

My planning page for work is pretty similar to the other, only it's weekly, rather than daily--with the kids, I never know how much time I'll have on any given day to devote to work, so it's best to plan things on a weekly basis. 

And lastly, my blog planning pages. I'm using this post planner currently--I particularly like the checklist and space for post brainstorming. I don't really care for the layout or colors, though, so I'm still on the lookout for my perfect post planning page.

How do you keep yourself organized? Do you use a planner to manage your time?