Category: plans

In 2024, I finally saw the light where a disc-bound planner system is concerned. As a writer, using a disc-bound notebook and/or planner, where you can easily take pages in and out, without the hassle of ring-bound binders (I always have issues with rings in school-type binders, which is what I used for my writing in the past.). I have a disc planner paper punch, so I can use whatever I want paper-wise.

At some point in 2024, sometime before October when my local Joann store ticked me off to the point where I no longer do business with Joann unless I am spending someone else’s money (that means if someone gives me a gift card), I found a 2025 Happy Planner on clearance. I bought it. I don’t know what made me buy it. It is nothing fancy. The cover isn’t all that remarkable. I basically brought it home and stuck it on my shelf with other notebooks and planners.

Happy Planner had a sale on their website so I bought all the Alice In Wonderland stuff I could afford. I believe I got a notebook with the Alice In Wonderland cover. And I got three sticker books, all Alice. I love Alice and Wonderland.

The best thing came over the December holidays I received the Beetlejuice planner box.

It came with a 2025 ‘Juice planner, a notebook, extra pages for the notebook, a pen pouch, an enamel pin, three different washi tapes, a snap-in bookmark, and an embroidered patch.

Now, I can look at the HP I bought on clearance, all dated and ready for 2025, and have no issues re-dating those pages, or turning them into anything else for the planner and/or notebook I will actually use in 2025.

I had to come up with something to do with this planner because I am not letting the ‘Juice sit on a shelf and languish silently away.

I have to say, I LOVE the discs that came with the planner. Beautiful purple discs with an insect cut-out in the center of each one.

The planner is the typical vertical weekly from Happy Planner. Other than the ‘Juice, it’s your standard planner.

There is the nameplate page. This is followed by a 2025 future log page, before a 2026 future log page. Both of these are twelve mini calendars on each page, specific to the year in question. Let me take back future log; these are actually years at a glance, although there is minimal space along each set of calendars so you can make notes.

Then comes the actual 2025 future log, where there are three months per page, with one line per each day.

After those four pages is the January dashboard, followed by a tabbed divider for January.

Then we get the two-page monthly spread where there is a bit of space to make notes, and nice big squares for each day in the calendar.

Flipping over to the next spread and it is the first vertical weekly. Each day is a column. Each column is divided into three different sections.

This monthly format repeats through to the end of the planner.

As soon as I saw those boxes for each day, it hit me what I wanted to use this planner for. This is my content creation planner.

The best thing I did in 2024 was buy myself the Erin Condren teacher’s planner. Each weekly spread was divided into boxes. This was a horizontal planner. So each day of the week, each school day, Monday through Friday, has seven boxes sectioned out for each class of the day. There is a long column running down the one side at the end of the week for notes; this column does not have boxes. It is just a long box with lines to write on.

I don’t teach traditional classes. I didn’t buy this planner for homeschooling purposes. I bought it to help my writing.

I tried a bit to stick to the whole weekly format. When I started to use the planner, I worked horizontally, adding a single task or topic to write about to each block.

After a couple of weeks, I started to ignore the days of the week and plan a task or topic for each block.

That is the plan for the ‘Juice planner. Each block will hold a task, a topic, and idea to be used whenever in order to create content—be it a written project, or a video, or a book to read, or whatever else strikes my fancy.

If you are going to ask, where do the ideas you write in the boxes come from?

Well, when I read through my emails, sometimes a word or a phrase will trigger an idea. I will find quotes, recommendations, who knows what in my emails. Sometimes a subject line starts the ideas flowing. I make note of all of those.

When I watch YouTube videos, same thing. I hear quotes and I write them down. Ditto for recommendations, be it for a product, a service, a book, a movie, whatever.

Each different thought or idea or whatever it is, I stick in a different box, so I know that X is separate from Y. Nothing special.

Am I going to do this every single day?

Oh, yes, I am. Now these planner pages only have three boxes per day. That is absolutely perfect for me. My goal is to find topics that are generic enough that this can become a perpetual content creator calendar set-up.

I have read articles by several different writers over the years who made themselves a generic topic calendar. They know on, for example, on July 10th, their prompt is ‘watermelon’, so every year on that day they write or they create something about watermelons.

I have long desired to create something similar for myself, but with a bit more meat to the prompt.

My fun and funky Beetlejuice planner hands me the perfect substrate to do this.

If you have any suggestions for me on this project or if you have any questions, leave them down below. I will respond to you as quickly as I can.

Until next time.