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My 2025 Planner is DIY

A hand-drawn calendar and monthly goals for November of a year that can't be easily determined from the image.

Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash.

In 2024, I decided to use a planner as a paper habit tracker instead. I chose a Leuchtturm1917 weekly planner, and used it to track whether I'd exercised; whether I'd meditated; whether I consumed alcohol; and my mood.

As soon as I started, I hated it.

Using the planner as a habit tracker created a problem: if I wanted to track my habits, I had no space for tracking anything else. So I had to carry around my habit tracker and a to-do list notebook and go back and forth between them.

It was a pain in the ass. Plus, the Leuchtturm1917 didn't work especially well for habit tracking at a glance. I made it work, but I think there's a better way.

So for 2025, I'm going the DIY route. Instead of carrying around a planner and a to-do list notebook, I'll use notebooks from the pile of unused ones collecting dust on my bookshelf.

I find most day planners and diaries too inflexible for my needs. I use Fastmail and Calendar.app to track my appointments. I don't need hour markers. I do, however, need space for notes and daily to-dos. A two-page per day diary such as the Midori Hibino could work for my needs, but it has a few drawbacks.

  • It costs $64.
  • The paper is too lightweight for the gel pens I prefer and the grid is smaller than I like.
  • It is enormous.
  • Did I mention that it costs $64?

The Hibino (along with the Kokuyu Jibun Techo and Hobonichi Techo) is out of the question.

So instead, I'm going to make my own planner/to-do list/journal/habit tracker with my ruler, my stash of pens and markers, and a variety of stickers and washi tape from JetPens. None of these are affiliate links. This blog doesn't have enough clout for that 😄.

Writable Washi Tape Habit Tracker B
This is a tape roll of 31 day calendars that I (or you) can write on to track a streak. You can use one at the beginning of each month, or set up 12 for the year. JetPens also sells blank calendar washi tape, in case you want your streak tracking to line up with days of the week.
Washi Tape Mood Tracker
Although this tape has three moods — happy, sad, and neutral — I think it will help me notice when it's time to ask for help.
Washi Tape Checkboxes
Some of my notebooks are unruled. No lines. No dots. Nothing. This checkbox tape makes it easy and delightful to create a checklist on unruled pages.
Stalogy Removable Calendar Stickers
These are undated, movable stickers that I can use to create month-at-a-glance calendars.

My first 2025 notebook will be a limited edition blank Moleskine that I received about a decade ago as a gift and never got around to using. Yeah. I know. I bought a bunch of other notebooks when I had a perfectly good notebook on the shelf.

A DIY planner takes more effort. I have to draw my own calendars, decide on a structure for each month, each week, and each day page. But it also gives me the flexibility that pre-printed planners do not.

I'll let you know how it all went in 2026.