my 2026 planner and tracker
Jan. 2nd, 2026 08:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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journalsandplannersI don't know how interesting this will be to people other than me. I'm not the most artistic or creative person, not by a long shot, but I've decided to share my current primary planner anyway. This set up served me really well last year. This year I've made a few minor improvements, and it's possible that some of these ideas will be useful to other people.
The journal I'm using is the Panobook from Studio Neat. I love the wide landscape layout and the dot grid, and I can vouch for the quality of the paper. I use cheap ballpoint pens (I might experiment with fountain pens at some point, but I haven't yet), and also cheap markers. Neither bleed through these pages. The cover is sturdy, and the spiral binding is resilient. It's 50 sheets, 100 total pages long, which is enough for the entire year and then some. I stay on one side of the page, and then when I get to the end, I flip it over and start writing on the reverse side, so the spiral is always on the left side as I use the notebook. You could obviously just use both sides of the page as you go, but I found this works better for me. (If you're a lefty, in theory you could do the opposite and keep the spiral on the right as you go. The pages have no set orientation.)
Apologies that some of the photos are a little fuzzy. I think my camera didn't like the dot grid because it had trouble focusing.
Cover page:
I am, very obviously, not any sort of artist, which is why this is a bit messy and not at all aesthetically pleasing. I was playing with some colored markers here. The main thing was to set my yearly theme. I'm going with Year of Cultivation because it's nice and broad. What do I want to cultivate? Right now, community and friendship, but I'm leaving space open to add other things down the line.
Period tracker:
I was rather pleased when I came up with Blood Moon for this last year. I need to go back in and add previous years' stats to it. I'm getting into perimenopause so its important for me to keep an eye on any changes to my period.
Q1:
This is where things that need to happen sometimes in the next few months are noted down. Also, it has a sub-theme of community, because that's where I'm hoping to focus during the start of this year. It's pretty empty right now, but I will add any low-urgency tasks as they come up.
January:
The month-level tracker/planner. I'm experimenting with logging my weight each morning. Right now it's information gathering only. I'm not actively trying to lose weight, but I want to have the metric available to me. I haven't added it yet, but this is also where I track financial tasks for the month, including accounts to reconcile, and bills to pay.
January exercise log (yes, I misspelled exercise, oops):
Self-explanatory. Below the tracker, I will try to track some details of what I do. Not very detailed, but if I lift weights I want to track the weight, plus reps and sets.
Weekly tracker:
The main tracker page, and the one that I use the most. Usually I do a full 7 day week even if that crosses a month, but since I was moving from 2025 to 2026, I'm just doing the first days of 2026. The blacked out section is some private stuff. Everything else is pretty self-explanatory.
The daily targets are very low because I find that more motivating. I can often coax myself into sitting down and reading one page of something, and then I almost always read more than that. Not necessarily a lot, but at least a few pages. And even if all I can manage is one page, that's still not nothing, and earns me the checkmark. The writing and exercise targets actually can be a struggle despite how low they are, but again keeping them low means that I have written and worked out at times when I otherwise might have been tempted to not bother at all because I think to myself, "if I can just do 100 words/10 minutes, I can check it off" and that's surprisingly motivating.
The journal I'm using is the Panobook from Studio Neat. I love the wide landscape layout and the dot grid, and I can vouch for the quality of the paper. I use cheap ballpoint pens (I might experiment with fountain pens at some point, but I haven't yet), and also cheap markers. Neither bleed through these pages. The cover is sturdy, and the spiral binding is resilient. It's 50 sheets, 100 total pages long, which is enough for the entire year and then some. I stay on one side of the page, and then when I get to the end, I flip it over and start writing on the reverse side, so the spiral is always on the left side as I use the notebook. You could obviously just use both sides of the page as you go, but I found this works better for me. (If you're a lefty, in theory you could do the opposite and keep the spiral on the right as you go. The pages have no set orientation.)
Apologies that some of the photos are a little fuzzy. I think my camera didn't like the dot grid because it had trouble focusing.
Cover page:
I am, very obviously, not any sort of artist, which is why this is a bit messy and not at all aesthetically pleasing. I was playing with some colored markers here. The main thing was to set my yearly theme. I'm going with Year of Cultivation because it's nice and broad. What do I want to cultivate? Right now, community and friendship, but I'm leaving space open to add other things down the line.
Period tracker:
I was rather pleased when I came up with Blood Moon for this last year. I need to go back in and add previous years' stats to it. I'm getting into perimenopause so its important for me to keep an eye on any changes to my period.
Q1:
This is where things that need to happen sometimes in the next few months are noted down. Also, it has a sub-theme of community, because that's where I'm hoping to focus during the start of this year. It's pretty empty right now, but I will add any low-urgency tasks as they come up.
January:
The month-level tracker/planner. I'm experimenting with logging my weight each morning. Right now it's information gathering only. I'm not actively trying to lose weight, but I want to have the metric available to me. I haven't added it yet, but this is also where I track financial tasks for the month, including accounts to reconcile, and bills to pay.
January exercise log (yes, I misspelled exercise, oops):
Self-explanatory. Below the tracker, I will try to track some details of what I do. Not very detailed, but if I lift weights I want to track the weight, plus reps and sets.
Weekly tracker:
The main tracker page, and the one that I use the most. Usually I do a full 7 day week even if that crosses a month, but since I was moving from 2025 to 2026, I'm just doing the first days of 2026. The blacked out section is some private stuff. Everything else is pretty self-explanatory.
The daily targets are very low because I find that more motivating. I can often coax myself into sitting down and reading one page of something, and then I almost always read more than that. Not necessarily a lot, but at least a few pages. And even if all I can manage is one page, that's still not nothing, and earns me the checkmark. The writing and exercise targets actually can be a struggle despite how low they are, but again keeping them low means that I have written and worked out at times when I otherwise might have been tempted to not bother at all because I think to myself, "if I can just do 100 words/10 minutes, I can check it off" and that's surprisingly motivating.
no subject
Date: 2026-01-03 05:58 am (UTC)I stay on one side of the page, and then when I get to the end, I flip it over and start writing on the reverse side, so the spiral is always on the left side as I use the notebook.
Ooooh this is such an interesting approach! The spiral getting in the way is of me writing on the left page is why I stopped getting spiral notebooks. And with a notebook as wide as yours it just makes more sense.
no subject
Date: 2026-01-03 10:10 pm (UTC)Thank you!
no subject
Date: 2026-01-03 02:38 pm (UTC)I love the tip about turning the notebook the other direction when you're the whole way through. I hate trying to write on the back side of a piece of paper in a spiral bound notebook.
Also like the landscape orientation; you can get a lot of info on one page that way.
no subject
Date: 2026-01-03 10:19 pm (UTC)Thank you!
no subject
Date: 2026-01-06 11:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-01-07 12:09 am (UTC)Thanks!