My 2019 Planner

After I published my 2018-2019 planner post, I shared with you all that I was going to be using a Happy Planner. I had a lot of fun decorating and using the accessories that The Happy Planner sold and thought it was working really well for me. Until it wasn’t. I was missing a lot of the things my Mia Ellsworth Co planner had and they are no longer producing planners (bummer, I know!)

Before I even started blogging, I was using a Plum Paper Planner. I’m talking back in 2013-2015. I left Plum Paper in favor of The Day Designer (which I used and loved for my senior year of undergrad and throughout the grad school application process). It was the perfect planner for me at the time. When I realized The Happy Planner wasn’t working for me anymore, I decided I’d go back to my roots — to the Plum Paper Planner.

There are so many amazing things I can say about this company and these planners. The best part is that they are TOTALLY customizable and affordable. If you like Erin Condren, you would LOVE Plum Paper because they’re essentially the same but SOOO different. In the best way. You can customize headings, add-ons, and the covers are able to be designed and are interchangeable whenever you get bored. AND you can choose your start month. So if you aren’t loving your current planner and want something new partway through the year, you can get a new one and you can actually use it for a full 12 months!

ANYWAY I always get questions from grad students and undergrads about how I use my planner and which one I have… so this post is meant to show y’all how I use my planner and what sorts of things I keep track of. Make sure you follow me on Instagram to see more sneak peeks on stories and in my feed. I did a plan with me on IG a few weeks ago!

Word/Mantra of the Year + Goals.

The first thing I did when I got my planner was customize it and, since it was a new year, set goals and my mantra for the year. These stickers are all from The Happy Planner. I found this quote in one of the sticker books I had and it was PERFECT for me this year. I jazzed up the title page with some flower stickers and letter stickers that I used to spell out my name.

I sat down and determined what I wanted to accomplish this year. I wrote down my goals on a blank page near the front of my planner so I could always reference them.

Monthly Goals.

Each month, I revisit my yearly goals and try to incorporate them into my monthly goals. Sometimes, my monthly goals have nothing to do with my yearly goals but most of the time at least one goal corresponds with my yearly plan! I love sitting down at the start of a new month and figuring out what I want to accomplish in the next 30/31 days.

I have also been writing down a list of people I want to hang out with that month (this has been great for keeping me accountable to reach out to people I haven’t seen in a while!) and books I want to read. I typically don’t plan out my TBR each month but in March I did and I actually ended up reading almost all of the books I planned to! I also list out important dates and reminders for each month on this dashboard page.

Monthly View.

Some people do special things with their monthly view but I don’t really. I put a few long term things but I hardly look at the monthly view in my planner. I have a large desk calendar I use for my monthly look-ahead things! Everything is also in my planner, though.

Weekly View.

My favorite thing about this planner is this layout. It’s one of their new layouts called “Vertical Priorities”. I love that there is a place to write down high-priority things for each day (you can customize the titles of those boxes too on the website!) and that there’s a built in habit tracker.

I use the habit tracker to stay on top of the things I want to try to do every day/multiple times per week such as: reading for pleasure, exercise, journaling and/or using my 1 Second Everyday app, drinking 64 oz of water per day, and working on my capstone project!

There isn’t much of a rhyme or reason to where I place things within my daily column. I will usually put big events or things that are due in the “priorities” section and any other pertinent to-do list things under “to-do today”. I use the lined space below to write myself reminders, make longer to-do lists, etc.

After I write down what I need to do, I highlight it in the appropriate category’s color. It makes it a lot easier for me to see my week at a glance and determine what I need to get done when and what needs to be done first. These are the categories I use: school/capstone related is purple, practicum is dark blue, workouts are gray, personal reminders/to-dos are hot pink, SoulBeat things are yellow, and my brother’s baseball schedule is teal.

If you would’ve asked me last year, I had a different highlight color for each class. Since this year I only have class once a week and less assignments to keep track, they’re all one color now!

What Pens & Highlighters I Use.

When I shared my highlighters on IG you guys went crazy over them! They’re my absolute favorite. I bought them off of Amazon when I started grad school and almost all of them are still going strong (my favorites from last year like the purple and the pink are starting to die). Excited to let y’all know that you can get them at Target now also!

They sell a giant pack of all the colors in their pen/stationery section. They’re Zebra Pen Mildliner highlighters. Here’s an affiliate link to them on Amazon!

Speaking of writing utensils, you guys also always ask what my favorite pens are. I swear by Pilot G2 pens! The ones I use are always black ink. I was a huge fan of the 0.7 size until last year but now I pretty much only use 0.5 or 0.38. The thinner size just makes my handwriting look so much cleaner and neater!

Tracking my Reading.

I repurposed a space in my planner to track what books I’ve read this year including the author and my star rating! I also taped the POPSUGAR Reading Challenge into the back pages. I’ve used that to cross off prompts as I go. This planner was a ready-to-ship planner so I didn’t have any customization on it. If you were customizing your own, you could probably add extra pages to the end to track anything you want.

The Last Time I… Tracker

I had this in my Happy Planner and I really loved it so I transferred it over to my Plum Paper planner! There are these boxes after the months-at-a-glance section and I thought it was perfect for this purpose! It’s so nice to have all these things in one place and never have to question when the last time we did something was. Sometimes I forget to write things down so it looks like there are a lot of gaps… I try not to beat myself up about it but it’s nice when I remember to record it!

That’s pretty much everything! I try to give peeks into my planner as often as I can because I know y’all love it. It’s one of my favorite things to see on other people’s blogs/Instagrams! Let me know what planner you use in the comments and how you like it. I’m always looking for new planners to review in my annual planner post!

PS: If you’re considering a Plum Paper planner let me know in the comments and I can send you a coupon code!!