How To Make a DIY Personal Planner - Pretty Pokets

At Pretty Pokets, we encourage everyone to plan and live a life of priorities. We believe that there is no such thing as work-life balance. If you are working on one thing, something else will definitely be left behind. You can't do it all. We only have 24 hours in a day. When you live a life of priorities, you know what tasks take importance and what will be taking a back seat, and you are ok with it as it is not your immediate priority.

So to plan and prioritize, you need a planner. Like anyone else, I tried a few planners mainly because they are cute and fun, only to realize that at the end of the year I had used only a handful of pages. Yes, not a good way to plan and prioritize. 

A read book called 12-week year and it helped me to plan and prioritize. I would highly recommend you to read this book. I bought three planners. One of them was a passion planner, and the other was a high-performance planner. Both worked for me. The Passion Planner helped me plan my week, and the performance planner helped me plan daily. Both planners improved my productivity.
I have been using a passion planner for a few years now. This year I wanted to do something new. I wanted to make a planner the way I wanted and customize it with any extra material I could. Also, I did not want to change the way I was planning.  One of the fantastic things about Passion planner is that they provide free digital downloads. So I used my beloved weekly passion planner digital downloads from their website.

I created a few materials using canva and used a few existing materials to make a DIY planner. My dream planner. Here is what you need to make your dream planner!

Materials

• Passion Planner or any Digital Planner you like
• Papers to Print(
• White cardstock paper
• Post-its
• Three-hole punch
• Adhesive tape
• A pair of scissors
• Monthly tabs
• Bookbinding tools to make a book(not required)
•  Cinch binder
•  Bookbinding machine - Fellowes
•  Laminator

What do you want to add to your DIY planner? Please take a few post-its and write them down. Put these up on the board. Keep adding as many as you want. For example, do you want to add space for a vision board, do you want to add some papers where you can post motivation quotes, do you want some room for a daily reading list, do you want to add a daily planner or a weekly planner, or both.

The choice is yours. It's your planner. To keep things simple, make sure you only do a 3-month DIY planner or start with only a month. Don't overwhelm yourself. The idea is to have fun creating something you love.

Now gather all this material. Plan what goes first, next, and so on. Print out beautiful wallpaper designs onto the cardstock paper. Now add the month tab to this cardstock. It will help you to get to a particular month quickly. You can punch the papers out using a three-hole punch and place it in a binder and start using, or you can make a book. To make a book, you need a cinch binder machine and binders, wires or Fellowes binder machine, plastic binding combs, and some plastic binders. I have these at home already as I keep binding my kids' school material and personal/business material.

That's it. Done, enjoy your new planner. Add stickers, washi tapes, motivational quotes, your word of the year, vision board, etc. Whatever you like and makes you happy. If none of these resonate with you, take the mighty pen and get to writing. Remember, it's all about what works for you!

Madhu!