Planner set up for 2020

For a while now, I have used my own system and set up for my planning system. It went from Hobonichi’s with a Chronodex, to a weekly Chronodex set up, to a daily outline on notecard style system to a daily notebook and notes system. What has always worked for me is to tailor a particular system to the job at hand and the most optimal method will vary based on requirements.

For 2019, my system was a bit all over the place, trying to work out the best system for what I am currently doing and in the latter half of 2019, I think I finally worked out what was best for my needs. So I’ll be using what I learnt from 2019 and adapting it to a full year in 2020.

My basic requirements for my planner are:

• A yearly view to help plan product launches, events, promotions, holidays etc
• A monthly view where I can set up goals for each month, reminders, list out due dates (of bills etc), notifications and events. This list must be chronological.
• A weekly view where I can list out daily to do’s, reminders, bills, menu plan and so forth.

For the yearly view, I have this listed on the front page of my planner. As the planning done on this page is at a very high level, not a lot of room is required for this and the detailed planning is done elsewhere.

The monthly view, in 2019 I ruled out a calendar layout to date each day and week and have the events, reminders and so forth dotted around the page. One good thing about this layout was that each day and each week was easily visible and it was really clear, but it was a pain having to rule out the calendar view and I felt it was very untidy to have the goals, reminders dotted around the page.

For 2020, I’m going to simplify the set-up of the monthly page – this layout shows me an easy way of visually weeks, a way to chronologically list reminders, due dates etc and another area to list out goals, reminders (undated) etc, which I feel is a little bit more organised than my previous set up.

My weekly view is something I have been using for about 6 months, so I’m pretty happy with this set up. The top right hand corner will show any weekly goals or reminders that I have. I start each week with the Saturday, for menu planning purposes. The top of each column will show reminders and the very bottom will show menu planning. Previously I had quite a large portion allocated for “Home” items. This didn’t work for me because I wouldn’t automatically see the bottom parts as things that I need to do, so for now, I’ll keep it flexible and I can allocate space down the track if I need to. 

And that’s it. This is all housed in an A5 Cahier Tomoe River Notebook and I typically use a medium/fine nib filled with Pilot Namiki Black ink.