Daily IRL Missions

Happy New Year's Eve everyone!! For the new year, I wanted to start rewarding myself for building little daily habits that are good for my physical or mental health. Lots of games that I play (or have played in the past) have daily missions that give little rewards that really incentivize working on things daily, so I thought I'd borrow that idea and create daily in-real-life (IRL) missions! For this first month, I just wrote out a list of things that I wanted to do and randomized the order, then wrote them into the January monthly spread on my Mini Happy Planner. Here's what it looks like:

I will check off daily missions as I complete them. At the end of the month, each completed daily mission is worth 50 cents toward my fun spending money (for planner stickers, washi, or gaming money). This way, I can try to keep my discretionary spending under control too!

Here are some examples of my daily missions:

• Walk 12k steps
• Read a book for 15 minutes
• Listen to music
• Read 1 academic paper (related to my work)
• Publish a blog post
• Throw away or donate 1 item
• Text an old friend to stay in touch
• Plan a happy surprise/caring thing for my husband

If this month goes well, I will make some printables for next month to make it look cuter! I could also move these into my Big Happy Planner, since my to-do list has moved out so I have the space... we will see how it works!

January Monthly and Weekly Layouts - Big Happy Planner

As promised, here is my January monthly page decorated with washi tape at Michaels Planner Bar event.

And here are my weekly layouts for the month, using mostly washi and my water and mood trackers. I might add some functional stickers to these as I go, but haven't put anything yet.

I am soooo excited to get started for the month! I have one more thing left to do... my monthly page in my Mini HP. I have an idea for that but am still finalizing details. More on that by the end of the year!

Mini Happy Planner - January Weekly Layouts

I've been loving my Big Happy Planner so much, but sometimes I find myself taking pics of my to do or shopping lists so I can refer to them on the go, which obviously defeats the purpose. To obviate this need, I bought a Mini Happy Planner to carry around with me to record my to do lists and daily reminders. I am keeping my Big Happy Planner on my desk at home to remind me of big picture stuff, track water and mood, and gratitude journal every night before bed. I'm on winter break right now so don't have anything to plan, but I'll start using the dual planner system January 1. In the meantime, I hit up the Michaels Planner Bar event with my friend Z and decorated ahead for the month of January in both planners. No excuses now not to plan ahead! I really love some of the Mini HP spreads that we made using just washi!

These quote box "stickers" are actually washi! I just cut them at the borders between messages so they look like individual stickers. I like this as an inspirational way to start the new year!

I am finishing up a few things on my Big Happy Planner January monthly and weekly spreads but will post those soon!

Free Printable Water and Mood Tracker for the Big Happy Planner

Something I learned from my bullet journal days and my planning days so far is that I really like checking off boxes -- I find it so satisfying that sometimes I will do things just to check them off (which is the desired effect of making the list). To get myself to drink more water, take my daily vitamin, and track my mood, I made some custom trackers for my Big Happy Planner that I'm loving so far and wanted to share with all of you! Here's a sample of what they look like -- scroll all the way to the bottom of this post for the download link! The 8 circles are for glasses of water, the single circle on the right is for my vitamin, and the bar along the top is for my mood (I shade in the bar differently for different emotions to represent the percentage of my day spent happy, sad, angry, etc.)

The width of these custom trackers is the same as the width of a Big Happy Planner box, and I usually just place them along the bottom/top of a row. For example, in my spread for the upcoming week I have the trackers along the bottom of the first row.

The decorations and checklists here are from the Merry Mulberry kit by Pink Pixel Graphics

To download these trackers in .PNG and .PDF format, click here. You can recolor the trackers to match your weekly spread by using the .PNG version, but make sure whatever program you are using doesn't change the sizing. I like to print to .PDF first and line it up on my screen with the provided .PDF file to make sure the sizes are the same before printing to a printer.

TERMS OF USE:

You are free to download for your PERSONAL USE ONLY. You may not resell, repackage, redistribute, or in anyway present any of my creations as your own. Please feel free to share these files by linking to this post directly. You may not make them available for download from another site, social platform or other media. If you use these in your planner, please link back to this post to give me credit for my work!

Big Happy Planner - Free Printables Resources

There are so many amazing free printables resources out there (and I've gone completely down the rabbit hole finding them) so I wanted to make a post just compiling some of my favorite places to find things for my Big Happy Planner.

Pink Pixel Graphics -- I linked to this site last week because this is where I found pieces for my first weekly layout, and it's still one of my favorites! She posts for all sizes of the Happy Planner, which is amazing, and gives you .PNG files so you can cut out the pieces you don't need to save printer ink. You have to subscribe to her newsletter to get a password to download, but that's pretty standard for most printables sites I've found.

Planner Problem -- These weekly spreads are generally in more bold colors, which I usually don't like quite as much but sometimes it works. She also posts for multiple planner sizes, which is great.

My Planner Envy -- This site has some beautiful weekly spreads, but unfortunately most of her stuff is for the Classic Happy Planner. There are some great checkboxes and sidebar items for the Big Happy Planner, which is why I have listed it here. She also posts some adorable standalone stickers that can fit in any size planner, like cute animals or flowers. A few of her weekly spreads are reformatted for the Big Happy Planner, too.

Lovely Planner -- This is my go-to for standalone stickers that can fit anywhere. They tend not to align perfectly with the boxes, but they're designed so that they look great anyway. She has some super cute checklist boxes too!

The Happy Planner

I am in love with my new planner!!! A friend finally convinced me to get the Big Happy Planner by Me And My Big Ideas (MAMBI), and I am so glad she did! For me, the Happy Planner is the perfect mix of creativity/crafting and practicality. I had tried bullet journaling a bit last spring, but it lasted less than a month because I found it too hard to keep up with making all the monthly pages. Plus, most of the pages I was making were for things I was already tracking on my phone, so just coloring in the boxes was getting tedious. Having the premade structure of the planner, but enough blank space for decorating, is a great compromise!

The Big Happy Planner that I got comes with a monthly spread so you can see an overview of the whole month and weekly pages so you can plan each day in more detail. I have been decorating mostly with free printable sticker kits that I found online -- there are some really cute free printables out there (and searching for them quickly gets addictive)! So far I have just been printing on regular printer paper, cutting the boxes and shapes out, and using a glue stick to glue them in (I tried Elmer's regular glue at first and that wrinkles up the page, so it's no good). Here is my first full weekly spread #beforethepen (and where I got the decorative goodies from):

These beautiful boxes and checklists are from the adorable Shabby Chic free weekly kit by Pink Pixel Graphics. I find that I don't use even close to her entire kit for the week, so I only print the pieces that I need (LOVE that she provides .PNG files so you can cut and paste only the elements that you need so you don't waste ink!). I also love that she provides all sizes of the Happy Planner and Erin Condren planners.

I am using the bottom row of boxes for a daily gratitude journal where I write down 3 good things that happened or that I am grateful for each night before bed. The top two rows are a combination of decorations, to do lists, and appointment/meeting reminders.

Next steps on my planner adventure: I have ordered some blank sticker paper to make the free printables easier to use, MAMBI planner sticker value packs, and washi tape. I am also thinking of designing some of my own free weekly printable kits for the Big Happy Planner (lots of stuff out there is for the Classic size only, but I would love to see more for the Big). Stay tuned for how those go!