Create the Ultimate Personalized Planner
If you’re like most people, you need a planner to keep your life organized. But standard planners can be pretty boring and uninspiring. Why not personalize your planner to make it more fun and reflect your unique personality? In this blog post, we’ll show you how to customize a personalized organizer for maximum enjoyment!
When you have a working system, a personalized organizer allows you to focus on tasks without the constant reminders and notifications like digital planners. Keep in mind, the idea behind using a planner is to use it so you can plan your days, work, and activities.
After all, you can make your personalized planner whatever and however you want! Having a paper planner won’t do you any good if it doesn’t have the pages you need. Especially if it’s not set up in a way that makes sense for you. Understand your planning technique and personality.
Let’s discuss where to find planner pages (or print your own), the tools we need for the perfect binding, creating or purchasing colorful covers. Not to mention the fun of finding the perfect pens and stickers to express yourself while keeping on track.
This post may contain affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission, at no extra cost to you, if you make a purchase through a link. Please see my full disclosure for further information.
What is a Personalized Planner, and Why Does it Matter?
This type of planner doesn’t have a custom bought design like most. Instead, it is based on the idea of buying or creating different pages and combining them to create your own unique program. Decide which pages you need, for which areas of life. Examples include health and fitness, finance, and budgeting, or just your regular day-to-day family and work planning.
Everyone wants to know where a wonderful product comes from. I remember going to stores and browsing through tons of different planners. Looking for one with a cute plastic cover and lined pages with unobtrusive graphics. Often, when I found the right cover, the layout inside wouldn’t suit my needs. Or the color schemes were just too bland. Then a few years ago, I found Happy Planner.
Nowadays, with customizing your planner, the sky’s the limit. Can’t find the pages you want to buy? You can create them yourself! Companies, such as Happy Planner, even offer expansion packs.
Expansion packs help make the ultimate customizable planner and add even more uniqueness to your customized planner.
Why Make Your Own Personalized Planner?
In today’s world, everyone has a different schedule. Sometimes you work odd hours. You may want to focus more on household schedules and cleaning, while your friend needs to focus more on balancing work and home schedules of an entire family.
Using a paper planner increases the likelihood of remembering what you write. This makes paper planners more effective. Not to mention, it sits quietly on your desk while you enjoy all you’ve accomplished.
Having a personalized planner that fits you is the only way to organize your life. In a style that keeps you engaged and consistently using it.
So why spend the money on a planner that doesn’t fit your style? Create your own design and add it to the covers, or the pages in between.
Making a unique planner could also be a perfect gift, use a photo calendar for birthdays and holidays and make it an extra special thoughtful gift.
Using a Planner can be Therapeutic
In the last couple of years, we have discovered the importance of self-care. So having a planner that has space for you to add self-affirmations and doodles enforces being kind to ourselves. Meeting our needs.
Another benefit of using a time management planner is that activities and categories can be easily color-coded. When creating a personalized planner with color and different inserts, then printing your own custom pages may be the perfect option for you.
For those who are more comfortable writing their plans on paper, we’ll look at printable planners inserts. Simply, these are files you can download, print, and add to your planner. Therefore, in a busy life, you need to choose if you would like to make a detailed plan. Or if you need a planner for just a quick jotting of notes.
In that case, creating a personalized planner of your own might be the best fit for your situation.
Choosing Your Binding
One of the biggest issues I had when switching from a preprint planner to a custom planner is choosing the binding type. The binding is the backbone of the entire method. 😁
The problem with a spiral bound planner is the difficulty of writing detailed notes. Simply because spiral planners have little free space on the spiral bound edge.
For creating a personalized planner, the most popular options are usually a ring bound planner or the disc bound planner. Both come in a variety of sizes to fit your personal needs.
How do you choose which one works best for you?
Ring Bound Planner Systems
The ring binder is a popular choice because it is one of the most flexible types of binder for planners. You can purchase special hole punches that allow you to punch the page to fit the rings. Whether it’s a regular 3-ring binder or a dedicated 5-ring or 7-ring planning binder. You can find a wide variety of binders with different page sizes and covers.
Most office supply stores have a wide range of not only paper-sized paper binders, but various smaller ring binders in the planning section. Most of these stores also offer various systems in a variety of sizes and layouts but can become costly.
This type of planning system is the simplest method in some regards. Especially if you use a regular 3-ring binder. Printing the planner page will need no modifications or adjustments and all you need to do is punch the holes and add them to your planner.
However, I found that when making notes; it was difficult to write on both sides of the page because of the rings getting in my way. As well as the fact it had to lie completely open to be of benefit when using. With my limited desk space, it just didn’t work for me. In addition, it was bulky for me to carry with me to appointments.
Disc-Bound Planner Systems
Another type of scheduler uses a disc-bound planner system. This type of personalized planner has been around for quite a while, but I’ve just discovered it within the last couple of years.
The disc system planners and accessories used to be hard to find locally. However, they are more available lately. This is my favorite binding system.
Disc bound planners combine some of the most desirable features of many other methods. Like snapping inserts into a ring. You can easily add or remove or reorder pages. Move them around and organize exactly how you need to be productive. Allowing you to customize and personalize your planner.
Plastic Comb Binding
Earlier I referenced spiral binders, plastic comb binders are similar. But they don’t bend out of shape easily and offer more writing room. If you like spiral binders, you may find a plastic comb binding a better option.
Comb binding is great for documents that may need to be added later, as plastic combs can be opened, and new pages added. However, moving pages is more difficult. The best way is to have all pages in order before adding the binding.
The binding comb requires a bit of extra space to keep the pages from coming off the comb, but not as much as discs or rings. Comb bound books stay flat when opened but cannot fold. Especially with thicker books.
Binding combs and spines hold pages tightly together for easy flipping, while binding covers add a clean, finished look. This type of binding allows the book to be fully opened without compromising its integrity.
You can send your journal or planner to a printer service. Or if you have a machine at home or work, you can add a comb binding yourself.
If you don’t want to invest in special binding equipment, take the finished planning page to an office supply store for punching and binding.
Selecting Personalized Planner Sizes
Another aspect to consider is the page size of your custom planner. Because you’ll want a planner that you will use. One that helps organize and reduce frustration in your busy life.
Everyone has different requirements for their planner. You may need a full page to have enough room to write detailed notes or special note pages. You could be someone who needs something smaller to make it easy to carry with you. But do you need space for information and notes or to jot quick reminders?
No matter what you need, you can purchase or create a size that works for you. However, always pay attention to size when buying or printing.
Full Size or Letter Size Planner
Just as it sounds, dimensions are 8 ½ inches by 11 inches or size A4. A full sheet of printer paper. This size allows you to write comfortably in-depth notes. It is beneficial for adding handouts that are standard size. Not to mention, this is the easiest size to print without modifications.
A few drawbacks are with this size it takes up a lot of real estate on your desk. Also, this size planner could be heavy to carry with you. Because it is hard to tuck in your purse or even a bag.
Half Sheet Size
Again, a self-explanatory size. Half of the letter size planner is the half sheet. The size is 5 ½ inches by 8 ½ inches. Another name for this sizing is an A5.
The pros of this size are that it can easily fit in a purse or bag. Perfect for on the go planning! However, being the opposite of a full page, writing may be more difficult. This results in brevity of notations and having to write less than you normally would.
Not to mention, if you are adding a lot of pages, it may be too thick and heavy to handle easily.
Pocket Planner
The pocket planner is exactly that. The perfect planner to tuck in a pocket and take anywhere. At 3 ¼ inches by 4 ¾ inches, it is easy to grab and go. Easy for quick reference notes. However, at this size, reading and writing may be difficult.
Popular Personalized Planners
There are two popular disc-bound planners that come in three sizes each. It is important to note that even though the planners may use the same number of discs, they do not transfer from one to the other.
Talia Disc-Bound Planner
The first and least expensive option is Talia Planners. You can find these on their website and on Amazon. Letter size is 8.5in x 11in and takes 11 discs. The letter size is compatible with the Happy Planner counterpart. Junior size is 5.5in x 8.5in and takes 8 discs.
The midsize 7.5in x 9.75in is the perfect size for a personal planner to tuck in a bag and take with you. This size takes 9 discs but is not the same size as a Happy Planner Classic size. Even though they both use 9 discs.
Disc-bound Happy Planner
Of course, Happy Planner is quite the name in personalized planner systems. Their Big Happy Planner is 8.5in x 11in and uses 11 discs. The Mini Happy Planner is 4.625in x 7in and uses 7 discs.
The Classic Happy Planner, like they say, it’s a Classic for a reason. Simply because it’s a delightful combination of space for notes and size for traveling. The Classic size is 7in x 9.25in and uses 9 discs. Again, this size is not compatible with Talia’s covers.
My two favorites are no doubt the Midsize Talia Planner and the Classic Happy Planner. I have and use both! You can find a lot online for both these disc-bound planners.
What layout do you need?
Honestly, the layout depends on your productivity requirements. Will a regular monthly planner get the job done? Or perhaps a monthly list format, where you can write events on each line. Maybe you only want the monthly with the holidays and special or important dates already listed. It’s all up to you.
Weekly planners or pages are more detailed and come in a variety of formats, like in the image above. I love the dashboard layout. Where on one page I list calls, emails, and other priorities. Then, on the other page, document what I need to do each day.
Weekly layout and daily planner pages come in so many formats that you will just need to find what works best for you. Some questions to consider when choosing are:
- Do I need 1 page or 2 pages?
- Will I need hourly appointment schedules?
- How many specialized areas do I require? Notes, Priorities, To-Do List?
- Bright, Bold colors or a simple gray-scale approach?
No matter what planner layout you decide on, just remember you can always change your mind. Or simply add additional pages to meet your needs. Use dividers to separate the areas of your planner – make it yours.
Additional Planner pages
Once you’ve determined your layout, next you’ll want to figure out exactly what you want in your planner and add your personal touch. For a busy woman on the go, having everything in one organized planner makes life easier. Besides the standard monthly planners, weekly planner, or daily planner pages, you may be able to track other areas.
Some popular personalized planner pages are:
- Health/fitness tracking
- Habit trackers
- Meal planning & shopping lists
- A chore list or
- Schedule for TV/game time
- Finance and/or Budgeting
- Project Plan Pages
- Extensive Task Lists
- Kids School lists
- Events or Parties
- Holidays
Using these pages can help plan family vacations, summer travel plans or even simple birthday parties. Not to mention, the all-important events in the day-to-day life of a busy woman!
Customizing Your Personalized Planner
If you are going to be customizing your own paper planner, there are some tools that you may want to consider investing in. Of course, a hole or disc punch so that you can add pages to your binding.
Paper cutter, or at least a sharp pair of scissors and a ruler. Cardstock or a minimum weight of 32lb printer paper. This makes the pages sturdier than regular printer paper.
And it is obvious that you will need a decent printer and extra ink. 😉
Personalized Planner Accessories
There really is no limit to the customization you can do to your day planner. Simply using different colored pens for coding or categorizing can be enough to keep you on track. However, if you have a creative spirit, why not a bit more?
Add stickers to make reminders stand out. Make doodles, or if you are a bit OCD (like me) purchase some planner stencils. You can use them to create different shape check boxes!
You could even use Washi tape or sticky notes to create colorful sections in your planner. Do whatever will keep you engaged and get back to your planner. If you open it every day, you will create good habits and productivity.
And if you are really into the personalization of your planner…why not use accessories planners to document and store all your additional stickers and stencils? The best planner is the one you will use.
Creativity Equals Productivity
It’s simple to see that if you create a beautiful planner or bullet journal, you will be more involved. You get to choose between daily layouts, weekly view, or monthly view page structure. The decision of ring or disc bound pages is entirely yours.
And this will work for teacher planners, wedding planner, or a life planner with all the information you need. Even an academic planner.
What day of the week is YOUR beginning of the week? Want to include moon phases every day? Color, tape, stickers, small post-it notes. All decided by you. One thing I learned quickly is that no matter which binding system you decide to use. Making it fun will engage you, encourage you each day.
So, get ready to make your planner work for you and reflect your unique personality. It’s easy to find pages that fit your needs if you know where to look (or print them yourself) and with a little creativity, it’s simple to bind them together in a way that works well for you.
Don’t forget the fun stickers and pens either! And if you need some help getting started, we’ve got free printable planner pages for all areas of life. Just sign up below and they will be delivered right to your inbox.
