For the third year in a row I’m using a Leuchtturm Bullet Journal as my planner. This year it’s a dark green one. I don’t use the bullet journal system at all, but I like the paper and format enough to customise this notebook for my own purposes.

A new year means moving into a new planner. I take the chance while moving in to review the pages in my planner that didn’t get used or that need be copied into the new notebook, and decide which ones need to be copied and which ones can stay behind or be migrated to my Obsidian app.

Planner Setup

I plan my year in four thirteen week quarters. You can read about it more here.

The Q1 plan starts at page 76 and ends at page 79. From page 80 to page 105 are the first 13 weeks of double spreads – on the left side is for the week, where I write down the 7 days of the week with their dates, and on the right side is where my weekly plan and goals go.

I use the 7 days a week planner part to map out my exercise plan (I run, swim and lift weights), note events that I need to take into account in my weekly plan (travel, meetings with friends, things that take large blocks of time or require preparation). I usually don’t fill the days here – I have a google calendar for my day to day planning and reminders, both at work and at home – but it is still useful for me to get an overview of the week ahead.

The interesting part is the right side of every weekly spread, where I plan my tasks for the week. They are divided into headings and groups for ease of reference, plus room for free text planning.

Every week has a detailed fitness plan – but not too detailed so that I lose too much flexibility. I just note that I want to get in 4-5 runs, 2 swims, 2 lifting sessions, 2 plyo sessions and however many stretching sessions.

I then note the “connections” I plan to invest time and effort into. This is just a list of friends that I want to call, meet up in person or zoom with. Texting doesn’t count. Yes, I have to set this as a goal or life just gets in the way and it doesn’t happen. I neglected to do this in last year’s Q4 and I really felt it. Everyone is busy and maintaining friendships requires planning, time and effort – and it’s WORTH it. So if it’s worth it, I need to treat it with the same seriousness as anything else that’s important to me.

Next comes the reading section, with my reading goals for the week. Again, if I don’t set these, my reading tends to be neglected in favour of less nourishing pastimes.

Then come “tickers” for quarter specific goals. I won’t get into these as they are personal, but if you can’t measure it – even in the simplest of ways – then it’s not really a goal and you won’t do it. “Yearly Themes” are for people who stopped publishing on their YouTube channel and recording their podcasts. I have learned again and again, especially during the latter part of 2025, that if I don’t set measurable goals, I just let myself off the hook and the result isn’t pretty.

One goal for Q1 that I am willing to share is getting off of social media again, and focusing on finishing a challenging technical certification for work. To get it done I need time, and cutting out Instagram, Facebook and YouTube gives me 6 hours a week without too much effort.

Q1 2026 Plan

I had two wobbly quarters of planning in 2025. It was a rough year in general – war, upheaval at work, more war, more upheaval at work, some personal stuff, lots of travel – which meant that my routine and some of my habits took a serious hit. I stopped reading for a while. I stopped journaling for a while and then struggled to get back. By the end of the year I was back on track with both habits, but still, 2025 was a wake up call that my quarterly plans need some rethinking.

This year’s Q1 plan is a result of that thinking. It’s still divided into areas of focus, but the areas have changed a bit and have become narrower. They are: Health and Fitness, Professional Development, Reading, Conversations, Sketching, Blogging, Sleep, Journaling, Planning/Productivity, Money, Decluttering, Mental Health, Other.

Each one has a detailed, achievable set of goals that are broken down by week. The idea is that I can reference these much more often, and it’s easier to copy them into my weekly task plan when the time comes. It took me much longer to make this plan, but as I’m closing week 1 of this quarter (I started on Sunday the 28th of December) it’s already hugely paying off.

Setting goals is hard. It’s easier to not set them, or to be vague and then give up – most of the time before you’ve even started. You want to read more? Set a measurable goal, and if you’re worried you might have a hard time with it, make it tiered. For example: one or two easy books a month if you haven’t read for years. Stretch to one easy book and one more difficult book. Then stretch for more – but track everything on daily or weekly basis. In case of my reading for example, I aim for two chapters a day, or around 30-40 pages a day. Some days I read more, some days I read less, but that’s the average. It comes out to around 4 books a month.

The Rest of the Planner

What about pages 1-75? Well they’re for general lists, trackers, brainstorming my quarterly plans, etc.

I have a list of “Unread Books on My Kindle” – currently containing 28 books. The point is to get me reading the books that I buy, and not just buying them (BTW – I use a Kindle but I’ve been buying books on Kobo for over a year).

“Mindful Consuming” is a list of movies and series that I want to watch – things that are worth taking the time to view, instead of mindlessly grazing on algorithmically recommended slop.

“Conversations, Not Connections” is a list of friends that I want to make sure I actually touch base with, instead of just liking their posts or sending texts every once in a while. The list is there to encourage intention and not because I might forget a friend. Look at it as sort of a contract or formal commitment.

“List of Courses that I’ve Enrolled to” – if you’re like me, then you’ve enrolled to more than one online course. The point is to track them all, and make sure that I take the time to actually complete them. Until now I have had a very low success rate, but the change in my plan for Q1 means that I’ve started more rigorously to carve out time for my courses, which means that I’m actually starting to make progress with this. The other goal of this list is to make sure that I don’t enrol to another course, because I’ve got enough of those right now.

“Punch List/Brain Dump” – is just a running list of things that I want to get to. It gets formalised later into either my daily to do, my weekly or quarterly plan, or it gets deleted.

“Things from Abroad” – a running list of shopping items that I’m waiting to receive. Serves a dual purpose – to help me keep track of what I ordered, and to stop me from ordering more stuff. With prices soaring lately, this has become more important than ever.

“Q1 Prep” – three pages of just freeform planning and brainstorming before I came up with the 2026 Q1 plan. I plan on creating similar pages for the rest of the three quarters of the year.

That’s it. There are no stickers in my planner, no highlighters, illustrations and such. It’s a practical tool for me. I won’t photograph it for the blog or social media because it’s so personal, and that’s its job – to work for me, not to generate content or likes. It isn’t pretty, but boy is it functional. I reference it at least one or two time a day every day. From it stems my daily to-do list, my weekly review, my long and short term plans. It’s an investment that’s paid dividends over the years, and from what I can tell my new format promises to pay me back even more.

I hope this helps you set up a similar planning system of your own. I recommend creating one that fits your needs, rather than taking one that someone else built for their needs. There’s nothing more personal than a person’s planner and a person’s journal. Make it your own.

Have a great planning year!