Topics for Multiple Planners

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In recent years it has become more and more common to plan in multiple planners for different reasons. Outside of just a need for keeping different areas of your life organized, you may just have multiple fun planners that you want to use for the new year, and more power to you! I use multiple planners every year, so I thought I would share my ideas for topics for multiple planners, just in case you need some ideas on how to use your next favorite planner.

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For starters, before we even get into specific topics for multiple planners, it’s common to use a separate planner for work or business and personal life or home life. I think most people like to use their more fun and colorful planners at home, and more professional looking planners for work, but if you are like me, your planners all stay at home, so you can use whatever bright and fun planners you want to! Personally I am using at least 4 planners for 2023, on top of google calendar to keep me organized. I’ll share my different topics I’m using for those and some other ideas for you as well.

Whether you are using ring bound planners, a planner with spiral binding, discbound planner, bullet journal, or digital planners, you may find that you want a different planner for different parts of your life. Using multiple planners is easy when each planner has a specific topic and purpose. Mine are, honestly a little muddled right now, but they’ll sort themselves out once we get into the year. It’s okay to miss days (or weeks) in your planner while you get things sorted out. It’s also okay to decide a planner isn’t working for you. You can always gift it to a friend, or resell it inside of planner buy sell trade groups on Facebook, if you decide you don’t need it at all.

When determining what planner to use for which topic, consider whether you need to take that planner on the go, or if you might need to be able to add pages to your planner. Here’s a post I did on how to choose the planner system that is right for you, where we go into different sizes and functionalities of some of the most popular planners. You can also check out my post on the best planners you can add pages to, which are great if you are a person who loves to use free planner printables. You can print them and add them right to your planner!

A Main Catch-All Planner

When I’m picking my planners, I usually start with my main planner. This is usually your catch-all master planner, where everything is in one place. For me this year, that will be my Makselife planner. Makselife has a huge focus on goal setting, you can see my review for Makselife that I did, but it is very goal focused and really trains you to incorporate your goals into every single week, so that will be my main planner and kind of a catch all planner for the year. I wouldn’t say it is just for home stuff, because I have all of my goals there, but home life stuff will go in this planner, and basic planning for work tasks for the week, along with any work goal related tasks.

Planners for Work/Business

My next planner will be a color block layout Happy Planner that I’ll be using for planning more in depth work tasks, I’ll consider that to be my work planner. I’ll map out social media scheduling, everyday plans for work, and more details on what I’m doing work-wise to reach those goals.

I’m also using a 2nd vertical Happy Planner as a content calendar. Part of my work this year is that I have three different blogs I’m running, so I really need to keep content straight in my mind and make sure that everything is getting published, and then that everything is getting promoted. In years past I’ve combined Happy Planners together, which I’m considering doing again since both of these planners are work focused, but for now I’m just using them separately. I do have some tips for combining multiple Happy Planners together, too, if you want to check that out.

Wellness

I do have a 3rd Happy Planner that I’ve purchased, and I don’t necessarily know if you can call it a planner, I don’t think I’ll be using it to plan ahead, but more for journaling after the fact at the end of the day. It is a Happy Planner with the recovery layout, it gives space to write what you are grateful for, to reflect on your week, and to track your mood each day. In previous years I’ve used the Happy Planner fitness planner, though not consistently. This year I’m switching to the recovery layout to kind of just track my mental health and how it’s impacting my goals and my physical health, if that makes sense.

A Daily Planner

Finally, my daily planner that I’ve used for years and years is the Daily Duo planner from Erin Condren. I’ll be using that planner daily this year to map out each day from work to home to meals I’m making, and more. I try hard not to be redundant with my planners, writing the same information in more than one planner does kind of bother me, so we’ll see how this goes, but truly the Daily Duo has been my one consistent planner for several years.

You can honestly plan for anything in this planner and use any topic you like. You could make it work focused, or home focused (or those combined). You could even use a Daily Duo just for planning finances, or health and wellness. There are so many options. I like to use the daily as another sort of catch all to really map out my days. Time blocking helps me a lot, I shared about how I have used Google Calendar in the past for time blocking, and it has worked great for me for making an overall plan for my time, but I really like doing it day by day in a daily planner more. My life seems to shift and change so often, anything I plan in advance is subject to change, so its nice to sit down at the beginning of the day and get a totally up to date view of what I need to get done.

So, work and home are some obvious topics, then you might need to plan for the week in a planner that includes weekly spreads, or you may need daily planning pages to really keep yourself on task. However, you can really take your planning even further than that. In the past, I’ve used different paper planners for things like fitness and nutrition, meal planning (and my grocery list), budgeting and finances, and more. Here are several ideas you can use for topics for multiple planners-

More Topics for Multiple Planners

Budgeting– if you have big finance goals for the year, it can be helpful to have a planner dedicated to just that. You can turn a basic planner into a budget planner, or use planners designed for budgeting, such as the Happy Planner budget planner or the Erin Condren petite budget planner.

Meal Planning– there are also add/on type planners meant for meal planning, like the Erin Condren petite meal planner. If you are a busy mom, you work longer hours, or have kiddos in sports and other evening activities, this type of planner would likely be super helpful for you.

Gratitude– If my recovery layout HP didn’t have a space for gratitude, I did have plans to turn a horizontal Happy Planner into a journal, mostly for gratitude. You can absolutely have a planner for this type of journaling.

Fitness/Health– again this topic could easily be done in a regular layout planner, but there are also lots of planners designed for fitness and health that can be purchased for that purpose. If this is one of your big goals for the year, dedicate a planner to it!

Goals– you can absolutely have a separate planner for just your goals. Think, Powersheets, or even the Makselife you could JUST plan/document your goals in there.

Faith– Whether you just want to write out scriptures or have a whole book for writing church notes, planning events, etc… you could easily have a whole planner for Faith/Church if that is a big part of your life.

What else did I miss? Do you have a planner for a different topic than I talked about here? Share in the comments! The best thing about there being so many wonderful planners available on the market today is that you can find just the right planner to plan different important areas of your life. Having a planner that works for you that you can be consistent with is one of the most effective ways to use a planner to get organized.

Once you pick your topics, be sure and head over to see the best ways to organize your planner.

If you need more help choosing what type of planner to use, I have lots of comparisons and overviews for different planners. You might find these helpful-

Erin Condren Life Planner Horizontal Layout VS Vertical Layout

A look at the Erin Condren Deluxe Monthly Planner– this planner JUST has a monthly layout for each month, along with lots and lots of lovely notes pages. This planner is perfect if you can do all of your planning inside of monthly spreads with lots of extras for notes or just writing out details for your plans.

A look at the Erin Condren Daily Duo planner – in my opinion, the perfect planner to keep track of tasks, daily routines, daily tasks, work hours, and all of the other parts of your daily schedule.

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