As I was preparing for the first week of school, I knew that I was not going to find the perfect planner. 

I go through Target, Barnes and Noble, and Walmart every year, but usually walk home with nothing. 

I’m picky with my planners. I hate anything with times or dates because I’m not consistent and I hate wasting the pages. I hate anything that is blank lines, no prompts. I hate anything with cheesy, motivational quotes. Also, I hate anything over $25 (I’ve seen planners run as high as $80!!)

I also don’t need my planner to be a calendar. I need a cross between a daily journal, a habit tracker and a  to-do list.

I designed my own online planner on Canva. It was a pretty start forward process (albeit time-consuming). 

I use my planner to decide what I want to do with my day and check-in with myself. I also like to examine the week as a whole on Sunday evenings– which helps me stick to those New Year’s resolutions. 

With school starting today, here is my perfect planner, free to download for you or anyone that has the planner pickiness problem.  

How to Use It

First, the weekly planner is meant to be filled out on Sunday or at the start of your week. There is no daily planner for Sunday if you print out the one-week PDF. 

Monday through Saturday are the same daily planner. But, let’s start by planning out our week. 

Weekly Planner

The weekly planner includes habits, personal goals, 3 separate to-do lists and a work-out plan. 

The section on habits is a great chance to remember your New Year’s resolutions and write what habits you want to stick to that week. Every Sunday is an opportunity for a reset. So, Sunday’s I look back to what I want to do that year and put in the weekly plan. It helps us continue to practice what we set out to do. 

 I like to refocus on my most important habits at the beginning of each week, which helps keep you a little extra focused and remember what you want to accomplish. 

Habits

My habits are small actionable things that I can do every day. I gave you room to write 4, but I only wrote three! Standing on one leg while brushing my teeth was one I wrote this week (trying this for running!) 

Goals

My goals are the top 2-4 things I want to accomplish this week. It could be work-related, personal, or school-related. My goal could be to finish x project or schedule 2 blog posts for the week. 

Personal to-do, work to-do and _____ to-do 

• Personal to-do 

This list is for you to write the top 7 things (one per day) that you want done this week pertaining to your personal life. My personal to-do would include this blog, household chores, self-care, etc. It’s a broad category. 

• Work to-do 

It’s the top few work tasks for the week. Top priority tasks should be written on the weekly planner. I would make these tasks that aren’t recurring and more likely to forget. You can’t write everything here. 

Imagine you can only accomplish 1 or maybe 2 things per day. What would those be? Write those on your work to-do. 

• ______ to-do 

So this for students to put their school to-do on or working people to put their side-gig on. If you have a blog, this is a great place to put your top tasks. 

Workouts 

Finally, I left a section for workouts because I like to write what kind of movement I want to do for the week. 

This weekly planner is meant to be written on Sunday morning or night and should take about 10-15 minutes. 

Daily Planner

The Daily Planner is a 10-minute planner for you to get a holistic look of your day at the beginning and end of it. 

Morning Thoughts

Start with a morning check-in. This is simply a little space to journal for non-journalers. I like to take this time to just jot down a quick thought, how I’m feeling. I’ll post some prompts to the website soon! 

Goals for the day

Then, I like to write 2-4 things that are of top importance. The things that gotta get done! I don’t like to write 4 things unless they are really small. Usually, these should relate to a weekly goal or something important from your weekly to-do list.

To-do list

Your to-do list can be anything that should be done for this day. A great place to start is carrying over the to-do list from the day before. I like to write these in order of importance so you don’t get caught up doing tasks that don’t matter as much. 

Appointments 

You need to know what time slots are taken up. While this planner is not a calendar, you still need to know when and where you need to be. I like to write my appointments down so I know where I should be and when. 

I either close or start with the next three sections. 

Gratitude: I like to write down three things I’m grateful for. I’m trying to practice gratitude in the big and little things. Obviously, I could write way more than three things but I’m keeping the planner to three things. We can explore gratitude more later. 

Verse of the day: I take my verse of the day from the chapter of the bible that I read that morning. If you don’t read scripture in the morning, you could use this as extra journal space or a quote, but it really helps me center myself when I write scripture down. 

Big win: I return to the big win at the end of the day. It’s the most important thing I accomplished that day.

And that’s it! 

It’s a fairly self-explanatory planner, but as I use it, I plan to write more about it and how to use it most efficiently. I’ll make edits as I use it to help come up with the best planner for those of us that don’t like rigidity in our daily planning. 

Let me know how it works for you! Download the weekly and daily 7-day planner here!