January 2017 Planner Situation

**Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with The Happy Planner and have not been compensated with free product for this post. These items have been purchased by me and this is my personal opinion on these items.**

Seeing that January is almost over, it might be a little late to post the 2017 planner situation. BUT it's never too late for planners in my book!

I've changed up things a lot since last year. There are just too many things to try out and sometimes when life changes, you have to change too. And as long as it works, that's what matters.

Back in 2015, I was SUPER into bullet journaling. You can check that out here.

Then beginning in 2016, it modified to this.

And later last year, I discovered the ring binders from Michael's Recollections line and things changed again to this.

As you can tell, there's always planners happening in my life in some way, shape, or form.

2017 has brought changes again.

The opening picture shows my two main planners - the large Happy Planner and the classic Happy Planner are my baes this year.

The classic is my personal planner. I keep up with my to-dos, events, appointments, and play around with decorating in it.

I'll let you have a peek inside.

I posted these pics in the last post about goals, but here they are again because they live right inside the front cover.

I like them right there so they're the first thing I see in the morning. Nothing like a good goal reminder each day. 

Now to see some spreads.

Here's how I've been having fun. 

Here's a half-week look.

Here's last week - AKA: When my FitBit gave up the ghost. RIP, Charge. You served me well. *sob* 

Here's a peek at the monthly spread for February. I'm still filling it out as things come up, so it's a work in progress.

And a "before the pen" shot. Y'ALL. I can't even express how hard it is for me to NOT write on a week to take one of these blank shots. This is where my obscene stash of page flags and post-it notes comes in handy. This was so monumental, I had to document it on Instagram.

Before you go all Sweet Brown on me and say, "Whoa. All those stickers?? Seriously?"

via GIPHY

That's perfectly fine. You don't HAVE to decorate your planner. It's not mandatory. I personally do it to relax. I love stickers, color, and little things that express my personality as well as inspire me to do all the adulting I've written down. Here's what a virgin weekly spread looks like.

It's still cute. There are more minimal versions of The Happy Planner out there, but y'all, I gots ta have some color in my life. GOTS TA!


Now I don't make my work planner all cute. It's strictly for getting stuff done.

I've looked and looked for examples of how The Happy Planner can be used as a work planner, but I came up empty-handed. Or empty-search engined might actually be a better way to word that.

SOOOOOOO

I thought I would show you how I use the same style of layout to work for my entrepreneur life.

Here's a monthly view. I'll be adding my monthly goals along the left sidebar so they're easy to find and glance at when I need to kick my booty in gear. The things that are concrete are already added. Impromptu events, conference calls, product release dates, etc. will be added as they come up.

This is how I've modified the weekly view.

If you're new to the planner realm and wondering why the days are split up into 3 separate sections, that's for Morning, Afternoon, Evening. Some companies actually label them as such, but I just washi taped over it. I like skipping that step. DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!! YOU'RE NOT MY MOM!!

So on my weekly layout, I use the top section for daily to-dos. Basically, my daily action items. That can be posting on FB or IG, writing a blog post, recording a video, sending out a newsletter about new product info, emailing... all that good stuff. I sectioned the bottom of that area off to track new social media followers for each day.

The middle section is devoted to calls. Conference calls, following up with customers, calls with my leader or team. Then any new team members we add goes by the purple arrow. The green exclamation points are to track daily sales and website traffic.

That bottom section is for keeping track of who I contacted that day.

Simple, but takes care of so much on two pages. I like simple.

NOW I know you're wondering, "Did you just turn your back on bullet journaling?"

Nope. I just do it in a different way.

"Enlighten me!"


via GIPHY


As my kids would say when they were smaller, "Prepare to be DA-MAZED!"

I no longer bullet journal on a daily basis. I save that for the unholy busy days where I need my own clone army. That's when I pull out the fantasmaglorious Happy Planner insert pages.

VOILA!

Here's where it gets a little weird. I like to use the insert sheets for the Mini HP instead of the Classic size.

WHY?

Because I like to see my weekly page behind the list. Yeah, I'm a weirdo. You guys HAVE read this blog before, right??

So here are the inserts. They're all pre-punched so you can just pop them right on the rings when you're ready. There's regular lined paper. It's lined on both sides. I like these for longer lists. This is also what I have my goals written on in the picture up there. **Points back up**

 These little dudes are the coolest little inserts. These are sectioned out for hourly things and a checklist with pre-made boxes to check. I'm a sucker for check boxes. The Brain Dump side is what the back looks like. Super cute.

These also come in the Classic size. The hourly/checklist ones are slightly different, I believe.

And here's what it looks like using Mini paper with a Classic.

I love how easy it is to pull it out and add it back in. I've never liked disc-bound planners until this year. I guess I've matured. Good grief. Don't let that get around. *shudders*

So that is what is going on in my planner world. If you made it to the end of this post, you get a sticker. You don't have to put it in your planner if you don't want to.