It’s Planner Season. And You Have Some Questions.
It’s that time of year again … the kids are going back to school, the days are getting shorter, and the new planners for next year are popping up everywhere. They’re on the store shelves, all over social media, and every other video seems to be an unboxing of the new line-up of planners for next year.
Are you feeling a little excited? Or are you not sure what planner layout(s) you even want to consider this time around.
We all do the postmortem on our past choices:
- “How long did I actually use that layout before giving it up?”
- “I needed a work planner, and a personal planner. But I also needed somewhere to journal. Why did I think I could juggle 3 binders successfully? Some of the stuff I needed to remember got recorded everywhere and some of it got recorded nowhere.”
- “The planner I bought worked just fine the first month or so. And then life got really busy and it all fell apart. Some weeks there wasn’t enough space to fit everything in (frustrating) and others it was nearly empty (depressing).”
- “It looked like the perfect planner in all the marketing images and plan-with-me videos. I loved the way it looked, but it just didn’t fit the way I plan.”
- “It was the closest thing I could find to what I wanted. I did my best to make it work. It was just so frustrating … no space to put some things and other spaces I didn’t have any use for at all.”
What if next year’s planner didn’t have to be a compromise? Suppose you could build a custom planner that perfectly fits your needs and that you will want to use?
What If Your Planner Could Have Departments?
There are two analogies I use to describe what a good planner can be. The first is mine. The second was given to me — and it stuck.
Planner = Personal Assistant
Imagine you had a personal assistant who could follow you everywhere — every meeting, every phone call, every moment a thought, an appointment, or an idea needed to be captured. And whenever you needed that information again — fifteen minutes later, fifteen days later, fifteen months or even fifteen years later — they could hand it right back to you. That’s what a good planner does.
Now imagine you hired separate personal assistants for different areas of your life — one for work, one for your personal life, one for your projects. Each one is doing their job. But keeping them in sync requires calling “meetings” — which costs you exactly the time a good PA is supposed to save you.
The solution isn’t more assistants. It’s one assistant who has departments.
Planner = Second Brain
The second analogy wasn’t mine. A co-worker looked at my planner one day and said: “That’s Linda’s second brain.” He meant it as a compliment — and he was right.
Here’s a partial list of what my own second brain held at various points over the years:
- Wedding plans and arrangements
- Pregnancy notes/questions/plans/ideas
- Buying a first home
- Info tracker for my son – doctor’s info, questions, weight, height, vaccinations, etc.
- Project details related to different work projects
- How-to’s related to a major computer systems upgrade at work
- Travel planning for big vacations (i.e. Disney World)
- and so much more
He called it my second brain because if I didn’t have the answer in my head, it was in my planner. And when someone needed my handwritten procedure for the new computer system, I could pull that page out and hand it to them on the spot.
Your planner just needs to have departments. They already have dividers for the months. Why not have dividers for the areas of our lives? We could create a custom planner where:
- Divider tabs separate the “departments” and smaller sections within each “department”.
- Each section could have only those pages that it truly needs – no more, no less.
- Each section can have its own calendar layout – monthly, 2-page weekly, or 1- or 2-page daily – or a combination. But only the formats that are needed.
- Instead of juggling multiple planners, you can just jump to the needed section.
- Your planner is organized by purpose, not just by date.
If any of those postmortem questions hit close to home, here’s how a custom planner addresses each one specifically.
Three Reasons People Build a Custom System (And What It Looks Like in Practice)
Let’s examine the reasons to build a custom planner system and how each of these could be addressed.
The Work + Personal Split
“I can’t merge my work and personal life into one layout.”
Whether it is because both your work and personal life are so busy they can’t fit on one layout, the rhythms and way you plan and track for them are different, or that separation is desired to help maintain your work life balance, you can choose the right layout for each separately. You can also manage the information that requires synchronization in a common shared section of your custom planner.
For example:
A vertical layout might be exactly what you need to manage meetings, projects, and deadlines for work. The rows running across the daily columns allow you to organize your entire work day.
Your personal life might fit better in a dashboard or horizontal layout – or it could need its own vertical layout.
Rather than having monthly calendars in both the work and personal life sections, you could create a shared section and keep a single monthly calendar that gives you an overview of both your work and personal life plans.
You would likely have a Notes section, or perhaps 2 – one for work and one for your personal life.
The divider tabs would separate all the work sections from the personal life sections.
The Seasonal Switch
“My layout worked great until my life changed.”
What we need in a planner changes over time. We change over time, our personal life changes, and our work life changes. So naturally, our planner may need to change. This need for a different layout rarely happens in late December or just before you purchase next year’s planner. And while we may need a vertical layout for most of the year, there may be times when a horizontal or dashboard fits better. Perhaps you work in a field with seasonal highs and lows, or you have kids who take you through different sports seasons.
With a custom planner and multiple formats available to you, you can easily switch out a months worth of pages. It’s even possible, with a little more setup with printing, to switch out layouts in the middle of a month.
The Multi-Purpose System
“I want to use my planner for more than just scheduling.”
A personal assistant can manage more than your planning information – calendar, task lists, etc.
The information and how you capture and/or use it, determines the format of the pages in that section. It can be possible to print a horizontal layout without the monthly sections … so you can have a continuous diary for capturing daily reflections, devotions, or gratitude. A dashboard spread could be perfect for planning and tracking health and fitness information. Even a simple set of monthly pages could be all you need for meal planning or even budget tracking. It all depends on your needs.
Building a Custom Planner — Where to Start
Are you ready yet to build your own custom planner? Here’s exactly how I would go about it.
Step 1: Decide what binder/page size and the sections you will need.
List your major areas of life: work, family/home, personal, goals, projects, journaling, etc. Prioritize your list so you can start with the most important 2-3 sections to start with. You can keep adding and changing your custom planner later.
Step 2: Choose a layout for each section.
Think about what each section actually needs:
- Are there lots of tasks and appointments needing some structure to the page to allow you to organize it? A vertical layout might be the right choice.
- Do you need a weekly overview, but not as much daily space? A dashboard layout could be the right choice.
- Do you really just need to be able to make simple daily plans or capture information? Consider a horizontal layout.
- Do you need the usual planner pages – year calendar, monthly calendars, monthly planning/review, weekly spreads and/or daily pages in each section and in the typical order? If you don’t use a particular page type, it is possible to print without them.
If you’re not sure about a particular layout, you’ll be able to print one for a week or two and the another layout to try and see which one works best for you. If it’s not a good fit, you can easily try a different layout.
Step 3: Choose your printable planner PDF file(s).
You’ll need to identify the printable planner file(s) that contains all of the layouts you identified in step 2. The files should, at a minimum, be designed to fit your planner size and set-up for 2-sided printing (page images align front to back). For more on how to evaluate and choose printable planner files, see: How to Evaluate a Printable Planner PDF Before You Buy.
Supplies needed:
- A planner binder or appropriate number of discs for the size planner you wish to create
- A hole punch for your binder or disc system
- Printable planner files for the layouts you wish to use. (Bonus points if they match aesthetically.)
- Paper and printer
Step 4: Get familiar with the page ordering in your printable planner file(s).
You need to become familiar with the page order of your printable planner PDF file and map what content is on what page. Create a table listing what is on each page or range of pages. Here is an example from one of my own planners:
And here is a blank copy that you can use with your printable planner PDF file(s).
This table is how we will determine what page numbers to enter in the page range for printing each section (or sub-section) of our custom planner. Identify any pages that can be used as “filler” pages at the start or end of our custom prints and note if they are left (even-numbered pages) or right-hand (odd-numbered pages) – as I did for the blank side of my cover page and the dot-grid pages (3 and 8) that provide a buffer to keep my yearly pages (4 – 7) as spreads facing one another.
Step 5: Set Up Your Binder
Set up your binder with tabs for the major sections and additional tabs for any sub-sections within each section. Include a tab for “Notes” or “Blanks” for keeping your preferred format(s) of notes pages handy.
Step 6: Print as you go.
One of the reasons you likely chose to build a custom planner was flexibility. Add to that the possibility that you will have multiple weekly layouts to manage different areas of life cleanly. Obviously, you can’t put a whole years worth of pages in your custom planner binder. So print just a month or two at a time – I tend to keep 3-4 months of “calendar” type pages in my own planner. This allows you to change things up as you move forward without feeling the guilt over wasted pages.
I highly recommend you open notepad or any document file where you can create the page range and review it before copying and pasting it into the page range field in the Acrobat Reader print dialog.
📌 Thinking Through Your Page Range
Start with spreads. Every two-page weekly spread is a left-hand page and a right-hand page — a pair that prints on the front and back of one sheet. Single pages — like a Monthly Planning or Monthly Review page — are one half of a spread: either a left (even) or a right (odd) standing on its own. As you decide which sections to include, think in those terms: which spreads do I want, and which single pages?
Your page range list needs to alternate odd and even. The first number in your list should be a right-hand (odd) page. The last number should be a left-hand (even) page. Every number or range in between should follow that same alternating rhythm — odd opening, even closing, every time. This is what tells your printer that every sheet has both a front and a back accounted for.
Filler pages fill the gaps. When the section you want to print doesn’t naturally start on a right-hand page or end on a left-hand page — or when you’re leaving out a section in the middle that breaks the alternating rhythm — you need to add a filler page to complete the pair. A filler page is any non-dated page in your file that can be added to either end, or dropped into a gap, without disrupting your planner content. A dot grid, a blank page, or a notes page all work. Check your file’s page map to find your candidates and note which side of a sheet each one prints on.
A note if your file starts on a left-hand page. Not all planner files begin on a right-hand page — many start with a cover or blank on the left. That page is still a left-hand page regardless of what number it carries. The same spread logic applies; you’re just starting your alternating count from where the file actually begins.
Why odd and even? Those terms match the way Adobe Acrobat and your printer driver see pages during printing. They don’t read your file’s actual page numbers — they renumber from 1 internally. Odd and even in your page range list refers to the position in the print sequence, which is why getting the alternation right matters more than the actual numbers on the pages.
The companion video will walk through this in print preview — including how Acrobat shows you the page renumbering and how to verify you have the right count before you print a single sheet.
Here are some examples using my planner and the What’s on What Page table shown above:
| What you want to print | Page range |
| All yearly pages (as laid out) | 3–8 |
| 2027 and 2028 Yearly Calendars only — each right-hand page backed with the dot-grid filler | 5, 8, 7–8 |
| Dot-grid pages only | 3, 8 |
| Monthly Planning & Review only — Jan through Mar | 9,22–23,34–35,46 |
| Monthly Calendars only — all 12 + filler pages – 12 spreads with dot-grid filler at the front and back of the section | 3,10–11,24–25, ,36–37,48–49,62–63,74–75,86–87,100–101,112–113,126–127,138–139,150–151, 8 |
| Monthly Calendars — first quarter + filler pages – 3 spreads with dot-grid filler at the front and back of the section | 3,10–11,24–25,36–37, 8 |
| Monthly Plan + Calendar + Review — Jan through Mar | 9–11,22–25,34–37,46 |
| Weekly spreads with Planning/Review as dividers — Jan through Mar | 9,12–23,26–35,38–46 |
| Weekly spreads with dot-grid as dividers — Jan through Mar | 3,12–21,8,3,26–33,8,3,38–45,8 |
| Weekly spreads continuous — first quarter | 3,12–21,26–33,38–45,8 |
| Weekly spreads continuous — all 12 months | 3,12–21,26–33,38–45,50–59,64–71,76–83,88–97,102–109,114–123,128–135,140-147, 152–161,8 |
Step 7: Trim, punch and add the pages to the binder.
Start small – just the key sections: personal, work, and the overview section, if you have a combined/shared view. Adding a notes section will give you a place for additional information and help you determine exactly what other sections or sub-sections to add and what format(s) you need for them.
Think outside the box. A horizontal layout printed continuously feels a little like a diary and could be perfect for daily reflections, habit tracking, wellness/health, or a light journal. Monthly calendars can be using for meal planning, fitness, gratitude, reflection, memory keeping … I could go on and on.
Your Planner, Your Rules
It is possible to create the planner you’ve been searching for but haven’t yet found. You can add in all the sections you need filled with layouts that work for your needs and leave out the pages that aren’t of use. Nothing will need to be written in three different planners, just one … the one that keeps all the important information together for you.
If you’re new to using printable planner PDF files, or even if you’re no, it might seem like something too hard to tackle. But once you get started, it will all come together. And if you have questions, I’m here to help. Let me know in the comments if you are planning to make your own custom planner for the coming year, the page size and layouts you are using, and how the process went for you.
There will be a video soon, so check back or follow me on social media where you’ll see when it’s posted.
If you are interested in the planners pictured in the example photos, they are available in my Etsy shop and include “What’s on What Page” files: SweetGingerDesignsUS
I can’t wait to hear about your custom planners!
Happy Planning,
Linda
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