I have been planning for just over a year now! I cannot believe how quick that has gone. Today i thought i would share with you all how my planning style has changed over the last year. This planning journey begins in January 2015. I have pictures dating back from 2015 up until now and my current planning style. So lets start.
The first photo is my very first planner that i brought when i got into planning and that was a Personal Planner from http://www.personal-planner.com/EN/ . This was a perfect first planner because you can customize it in near enough anyway. I decided to go for the vertical layout because i loved the look of Erin Condren Life Planners so i wanted to try and recreate something similar. Due to only just starting out planning, my planning style was very basic and minimal. I didn’t have any washi tape and i didn’t have many stickers.
After a while, I brought some sticker paper from eBay and i started making my own stickers. I loved doing this as i could make a sticker for absolute everything. I would spend hours filling up an A4 word document with stickers that i wanted to use in my weekly spreads.As you can see from the picture below i am still using a Personal-Planner, however i still haven’t found a use for washi tape.
A few months past and i started writing to a new penpal. My penpal was using ringed binders and i would lust over her Instagram pictures of how she set hers up. I loved the idea of having something that you could customise to your heart’s content. One day i got home from college to find a parcel waiting for me. When i opened it i couldn’t believe my eyes. My penpal sent me a Paperchase A5 organiser that she wasn’t using. It was on this day that i got the idea of cutting my Personal-Planner up and punching it into a ringed binder. In the picture’s below you can see that i have finally started using washi tape to break up my days. I also used stickers that i had made to mark important events such as an assignment being due.
A few months past and i was still in love with using a ringed binder system so i decided to buy my very first A5 Filofax. After a few days of searching, i decided on the A5 Pear Saffiano. At this point i had been planning for about 11 months now so i was really getting into decorating my planner with cute stickers. I was learning that planning can be fun. You can use stickers to decorate as well as using them functionally.
Now we have come up to January 2016. I decided that i wanted to buy another Personal planner and punch it into a Filofax. I loved how last year went however i decided that i wanted to try something a little bit different. I brought the Personal Planner in a box layout instead of the vertical layout.
As you can tell in the picture below my planning style changed a little bit than last year. This was because of the different layout that i was using. I still used washi tape and stickers, however it looks much different then how i planned with a vertical planner.
After a few months of using the new Personal-Planner in my A5 Filofax, i found that i just wasn’t enjoying planning as much as i did the year before. I couldn’t tell if it was because i was feeling down in myself and couldn’t be bothered, or if it was the fact that they box layout was just not working for me. I decided to push though and just try new ways or style of planning to see if i could work out the problem. A few weeks past and i still couldn’t shrug of the feeling that planning style wasn’t working for me. One morning i was in bed looking through Instagram when i came across a picture of a lovely decorated personal sized Filofax. That picture got me thinking, maybe it was the size of the Filofax that wasn’t working for me! I decided that the next week i would plan in a personal ring bound planner that i won in a giveaway and hadn’t used yet due to it being a personal size. When i was planning that next week it was like a weight had been taken off my shoulders. I LOVED it! I loved the way it looked and how simple it was yet i could still use stickers or washi tape if i wanted to. The A5 planner must have just been to big and because i wasn’t filling up much of the page space it was getting me down.
I have been using a personal Filofax for a month now and i love it! It is defiantly the right size for me. I hope you enjoyed looking through old photo’s of the last year and seeing how my planning style has changed. I have learnt that planning is all about trail and error. You have to find out what works for you. Some things may work for other people, yet they do not for you. Don’t feel discouraged. Try something new and eventually, you will find a style that works best for you and it will feel amazing!
I hope you have a lovely Easter,
Zoe oxox
zoeplans 
Eu também comecei com um A5. Mas minha rotina é um pouco parada, então sobrava muito espaço, além do que não conseguia carregar na bolsa. Estou a dois meses com o tamanho personal, e não me arrependo. Agora tem funcionado muito bem pra mim.
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I think a lot of people start with an A5 and then find that its way to big for them. I think its the thought that bigger is better when you first start planning. I’m glad you have found a way that works for you 🙂
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So much trial and error with planners! I got my first Filofax about this time last year. It was personal size. Then in October I got a pocket planner and I just got my third one last week (moved back to personal size) 🙂
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It defiantly is! You never know how things will be in a few months! I tried a pocket planner when i fist started planning. I didn’t include that in the post. I brought it from a charity shop and i used it for college before planning became a real thing in my life. I just found it so small. I had to use a piece of paper a day just to fit things in. 😦
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Ya, pocket planners are just too small, especially because I like to be able to see my whole week on a page and that layout just didn’t work for pocket size. Still, it was a learning curve! And at least I had a very cute pocket planner xD
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