Have a spare planner that you’re looking to set up?

Struggling to think of a use?

Then look no further than this handy little guide of ten planner set up ideas! While this is a top ten, these are in no particular order!

1. Fitness Planner

Whether you’re training for a marathon, losing weight, or just want to get a bit fitter, dedicating a planner to this journey can be a great idea.

Weight tracking, exercise logging, meal planning and tracking of macros/calories can all be easily done across the monthly and weekly pages of a planner.

I have a fitness planner set up, and I find it makes me a lot more focused towards my goals. Knowing that if I don’t exercise on a certain day creates a blank space definitely encourages me to get moving!

Depending on the layout of the planner, the pages could also be used for workout routines, recipes and fitness class timetables.

2. Finance Tracking

Until I started tracking my spending, and creating a budget each month my saving situation was dire. I thankfully didn’t have huge debts or anything, but my savings were a lot lower than they should have been.

Having a separate planner or section for finances is something I’ll never be without. You might think ‘well what is there to fill a whole planner with?’ but once you start thinking of all the different financial things you should probably be aware of, you’ll find a lot more than you thought. A non-exhaustive list of things to pop in a finance planner:

• Pay days
• Overtime tracking
• Bill dates
• Direct debit information
• Bank account information
• Savings trackers
• Debt information and trackers
• Budget planning
• Spending log

3. Content Planning

Obviously this won’t be applicable to everyone, but if you have a social media presence you’ll likely need to plan your content.

I’ve done in this in various forms over the years, from putting my editorial calendar in with my normal monthly planner, to having a separate bullet journal just for all things social/blog/YT.

This can be as simple or as complicated as you need it to be. For me, I have separate sections for all social media, blog and YouTube ideas. I set up a simple monthly calendar and at the beginning of each month, plot out what is going to be posted and when.

I like using a bullet journal for this, so I can use the blank pages for post outlines, notes needed for when I’m filming and just general content related brain dumps.

4. Diary/Journal

Bit of an easy one, but I couldn’t not have it in the list!

This can take many forms, from a paper based agony aunt/uncle to just having a record of what you did that day/week/month.

Journaling isn’t something that comes naturally to me. I prefer to do a bit of the next one in my planner instead…

5. Scrapbook

We take millions of pictures thanks to smartphones, but what do we do with them after? I know I was just backing them up to my PC and so this year I’ve made a big effort to print some each month and fill the pages of my Cousin with them. These are mixed in with the usual daily planning and I really like how it looks.

I love just flicking through my planner at the end of the month and seeing snapshots of how I spent the previous few weeks.

6. Planning

Another obvious one, but it had to go in the list.

It’s amazing once you get a planner how you go from feeling like you’ll never fill the pages, to suddenly needing more space!

You could just use your planner to track where you need to be and when, or you can use it for that plus tasks. I have a terrible memory, and so I know if I don’t write down everything I need to do each week, I will forget something.

7. Hobby tracking

I struggled with what to call this, but this is about something separate dedicated to your hobby (or hobbies!). If you love to read, it could be a book planner where you list all the books you want to read and maybe write mini reviews of each one you’ve completed. A crafter might have something for tracking patterns used, shops purchased from and supplies owned. If you’re into drawing, you could have something purely to encourage you to draw each day (an A6 Hobonichi is perfect for that).

8. Home planning

This can take many different forms and can include:

• Cleaning trackers (particularly for those tasks that may only get done a few times a year)
• Important documents/information
• Renovation planning
• Moving planning

I love using any unused weekly pages in my Cousin for creating a running list of tasks needed to be done by room.

9. Health planning

I see this a lot with families. Having a separate planner to keep tracking of all important medical information is an excellent idea, particularly when you have children.

For those with underlying medical conditions it can also be a necessity to track symptoms and medication etc.

Similar to this is a pet planner (similar enough for me to pop it all together). I’ve seen lots of people have separate planners for their pets. Really handy if you’re heading to the vet as you can just take it with you and have all information to hand. Sadly I don’t have any pets, but when I finally get one, I’ll be setting up a little pet planner for it!

10. Business planner

For those with their own business, or even a side hustle, having a separate planner for it is a bit of a no-brainer. I’ve had various different styles of planners just for my business over the years. A lot of these planners keep reference detail that I’ll need each year, and so a Filofax or any kind of planner where you can switch out the pages is ideal for this. I’ve also recently experimented with using a Hobonichi day free for actual business planning. The combination of monthly pages with lots of blank pages allow me to plan out my time sensitive tasks, whilst having lots of spare pages for brain storming and goal planning.

Hopefully this has given you a few ideas!

If you use your planner for something other than one of these uses let me know in the comments below, I’d love to write a follow-up post with even more planner set up ideas!