Yesterday I set up my content planner for next year using a 20 baht notebook (less than USD1). It took me a few hours to have the spreads set up and in this post, I would like to share how you can also set up your own planner on a budget.
View a short video on this:
Setting up a content planner
At first, I had wanted to try to buy online from Shopee. I had picked up a calendar and a couple of planner designs, adding them to my cart and was browsing other items. However, yesterday being 10th October, there was a massive sale (they have this each month like 10:10. 11:11. 12:12, etc) and the site went down just as I was browsing and was thinking to pay for those items.
It was a blessing in disguise as I should not be spending on planners as now, my mom’s medical expenses is taking a toll on our finances. So, I decided to make my own planner instead….. and I am quite happy with the result.
Why you should make your own planner instead of buying one
Commercial planners are overrated and very expensive. Not only that, the person designing the planner is not you, live a different life than us. Hence, it would be next to impossible to find a planner that comes in templates and layouts that you like. No matter how, there would be just some pages that we do not use in the planner because it is not our jam.
Enter…. customise your own planner
All you need to make your own planner is a blank notebook. Then the sky’s the limit ….. you can customize it all you want. Often, we see a layout that we like but it could be totally different when we are using it. The only way to find out is via trial and error to discover our style.
It took me sometime to figure out a style that I like. There is a lot of inspiration you can get from watching YouTube videos and browsing through planner flipthroughs in social media. Mine is a content planner but for you, it can be any other planner that you need to use.
Below is a planner I customize on my own for next year after trying out for October and really liking it. That means going forward, most of the content related to my content creation (blog, YouTube and social media) would reside in a single planner.
The notebook that I use:
I use a spiral notebook in a design that I like which I had bought a few years earlier from a 20 baht store.
What you would need:
Pencil ( to first draw the boxes and layouts), then either markers or colour pencils to run over the borders. A long ruler, and Frixion pens for writing. I recommend Frixion pens (ie erasable pens)- they are more expensive than normal pens but it allows us to amend or move our content.
Other optional items are highlighters, washi tapes, stickers and decorative paper.
How I set up my planner:
Here are the chronology of pages that I set up:
SECTION A. Index or table of contents (3 pages)
I always reserve at least 3 pages for Index or table of contents where I would draw a table with columns of page, subject and remarks. Usually I do not end up using 3 pages and often these ‘reserved pages’ come in handy when I need to plan or jot down some important things later.
SECTION B. Year’s calendar at a glance and related festivals (1 page)
I have a lot of content that is seasonal so it helps for me to know what are the upcoming festivals so that I can plan my content in advance. I’ve started doing this for about 2 years and was able to prepare most of my content in advance instead of last minute.
SECTION C. A year’s month layout (1 page)
The purpose is for me to look at a glance what are the focus I need to do for that month. For example, each year I would try to prepare calendars in September and publish them by October. So I would indicate in the month of September to start working on next year’s calendars.
SECTION D. Quarterly planning/ tracker (4 pages, 1 page per quarter)
This template is available in my shop. I’ve actually printed the template on a lilac colour A4 size copy paper. I prefered 3 months in a page instead of the entire year as it provides more space for writing. As my planner is slightly smaller than A4 size, I folded the edges and secure them with glue, then secure to my planner using double sided tape. I use double sided tape instead of gluing the page …..in case I need to pull out and replace the page later.
I’ve written another detailed article on how to use a quarterly planner sheet. For this quarter I am using it to encourage me to be more consistent and to meet my goal of publishing 3 Shorts per week on my YouTube channel. I would write the title of the video published on the publishing date.
Next year, I plan to use it to track my videos and other social media content as well as include some stats so that I can refer them in future.
SECTION E. Monthly spreads (2 pages per month, total 24 pages)
One of the main reason that pushes me to finally customize my own planner is because the monthly spreads that I have using for the past few years on my A5 planner often does not contain enough space to write down my content title. I have already build October and November layouts in my current notebook to use for this final quarter and I am really liking it because the lines enable me to write more neatly.
There are 5 lines on a single day and I designate each line for purpose:
- first line- YouTube content
- second line- draft content – for example, I often batch and schedule my content. For Pinterest, I use the native scheduler within Pinterest which only allows for one month advance of scheduled content. Anything more than a month, I would write the titles to schedule (I have already prepared the pins) so that when it I sit down in future to batch schedule, I would know exactly what pins for what date instead of trying to recall
- third line – other published content such as blog post, Facebook posts, etc
- forth and fifth line- reserved exclusively for my Pinterest as I usually pin twice per day so I need 2 lines.
As there are 4 columns per page, there is an extra column left which I use it to write to-dos related to my content. For example, after I published a video, if I already have an earlier blog post writen, I would need to remember to embed the video on the blog post.
SECTION F. Blog maintenance and updates (4 pages, one for each quarter)
There are some checklists related to my blog that I need to update or check on at least quarterly basis. I have a table where I list down alll my blog, and then a checklist for them.
SECTION G. Content ideas page (aka brain dump) and notes
The remaining pages are then used for brain dump for content ideas for my blog/ YouTube. These ideas often come about at random times so it helps to have a specific place to write these ideas down. In the past, I have written down ideas in a few notebooks. In this final quarter, I would refer to this and anything that I have not published, I would move all to my content planner.
The ideas page are sorted by the site/ channel instead of all jumbled up together. I would dedicate about 2 pages for each of my active blog, and 4Â pages for my YouTube channel. There would be a table section that consist of:
- checklist box (to be ticked when done)
- date (the date where the content is prepared/ published)
- title of the post/ video
The above would be my setup for next year, something I have honed in after a few years of trial and error. Hope this can help you if you would like to customize your own planner on a notebook.
