Template Challenge - Custom Daily/Weekly Planner Sheet (Due 1/15)

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Template Challenge - Custom Daily/Weekly Planner Sheet (Due 1/15)

Hi, ladies and gents! We took a little break from challenges over the holiday season, but it's time to get back to them now.

With the new year, many people make resolutions to get more organized (myself included!), get healthier, drink more water, eat more veggies, etc. For this challenge, I'd like you to make either a daily or weekly planner sheet that can be printed out and used to help keep yourself on track.

This will require a little thought first--what do YOU need to track daily? Multiple rounds of medications? At least 8 glasses of water? 2-3 walks a day for the dog? An entire morning routine? A daily art/design/lettering/drawing practice? Daily meditation? Daily workout? Kids' activities? Church groups? Meal menus? Daily Gratitude? Do you need a reminder to get dishes done or feed the animals?

Once you've made a list of the things you want to include on your planner sheet, it's time to figure out how you want to design it. Do you have few enough things to track that you want to do a weekly sheet, or do you need a page per day? Do you want a pretty design where all you need to do is fill in a few things and check boxes, or do you want something very plain that you decorate up with stickers, colored pens, and washi tape? (Personally, I use a print-and-go design because I find I spend an hour decorating it otherwise! You may not have that issue.) Do you want to make it a little jumbly, or separate everything into its own boxes? Do you want to include a space on the sheet for your daily doodle challenge? Do you want to punch it and put it in a binder, or just keep a stack on a clipboard that hangs by your desk or in the kitchen?

Since this will be designed to be printed out, I recommend sticking with a mostly white background and limiting the amount of color you use--printer ink is more expensive, ounce for ounce, than oil! That said, color is an easy way to delineate areas, and a block with a pale background is a quick way to deal with a space for a menu. Outlined shapes make for interesting checkboxes that don't even need a label, such as water glasses or bottles for hydration tracking.

Sheet size (letter, half-letter, A4, A5 are the common ones) and orientation (vertical/horizontal) are up to you, as is your color scheme. This is a challenge to create something that helps keep YOU organized in YOUR life, and that means it needs to be something you wouldn't mind using daily.

I've finally completed mine. I chose to go with a black and white page to somewhat limit printer ink refills, though I've got some areas with fills that aren't as economical as they could be on ink. Because I want to include so much stuff on mine, I needed to go with a full letter-size 8.5x11 page. It's centered because I'm simply using them unpunched on a clipboard this year--it's far easier for me to remember if it's in front of my face than in a binder I have to get down from the shelf.

I've got a space to track critical tasks, appointments, daily things like meds and cleaning (including my daily creative project, which I'm allowing can be anything from a drawing to a set of layout templates), daily gratitude, meals, 6 short walks for my service dog, and 5 short stretching sessions to help keep me as functional as possible. And if I feel like coloring a little, a bit of colored pencil over the top works like a grayscale coloring book... smiley There's still no space for a doodle, but my neverending list of things I'd like to get done needs to have space for things that I couldn't finish yesterday/last week because of flareups, so having room to track what I still need to catch up on took priority.

I know mine probably won't work for someone who has to track kids, or doesn't take meds multiple times a day, but it's designed for me and my life. It's also a very easy alteration to make those daily tasks into blank lines that are flexible for everyone.

These are quite pretty, Holly! Makes me wish that I used a paper planner rather than digital, lol.

I went digital for a while, but I never could manage to get a great digital system set up for myself, so I've gone back to paper since I'm more productive with something right in my face.

Just because you do digital doesn't mean you couldn't create one for yourself, though--maybe make it a fillable PDF form? smiley I'm thinking of doing that for medical symptoms so that I can print off a set of weekly recaps for the rheumatologist.

I'm a lot happier with Asana and Trello than with anything I've managed to find in paper or create myself. I use Trello as a to-do list and Asana as kind of a workflow for projects. I spent about a year working on my system, getting it the way I want. I was actually thinking I ought to create a Trello board to track Blog Trains and challenges. I guess I could make something that way. Even if I don't use it, it would be cool freebie to offer on my blog.

Nice Holly! I really like the compartment aspects of the page. smiley Looks great!

My planner items are a little different - but I have put them up here just in case anyone might be interested in them. They come in colored and in black and white versions, both in US size printer paper 8.5"x11".

Download Calender

Download Journal Page

Download Weekly

Sunny, the challenge was to make something that works for YOU; these are gorgeous and reflect what personality you've shown us in every bit of their design. I'm certain others will find them just as beautiful, inspiring, and functional. smiley They wouldn't work for me because my memory is so cruddy (go fibro fog!!) that I'd have to write the same 10 lines at the top of the page every day if I were to use a list-type page like yours, but the beauty of creating one for myself is that I can tailor it to counter my lousy memory.

. o (And now that I'm thinking of it, I should totally add a small space for tracking flareups, pain, and ability to walk--just a couple of check-ins a day that can be transcribed for my rheumatologist. Leaving this here as a note to self for tomorrow!)

Also, I'm glad to see you jumping in on a challenge again; I've missed your gorgeous designs and I hope you'll continue to participate occasionally when your other commitments allow.

OMG Holly! This is amazing! Just what I need for my daily planner. I have to take meds, reminder to drink water, top priorities. I have to have this, LOL. This will help me sooooo much!

Andrea, you can simply click the image, then right-click and save as.. smiley

Such a great challenge, Holly! smiley And awsome contributions. So beautiful! smiley
I am afraid I have to offer you another grid. They just work best for me. I worked in some eco option with respective layers. On my blog