Weekly IRL Missions and Free Sidebar Printables!

As a follow up to my post last weekend about daily IRL (in real life) missions and how I am tracking them in my planner, I also created some weekly sidebar stickers for my Big Happy Planner for habits that I want to build daily. I have created a points system for each item I check off, and these points/money will get added to the earnings from my daily IRL missions each week and put into my fun money -- my fun(d).

Here is a preview of the what the sidebars look like (4 per page) -- scroll down to the bottom of this post for the download link!

The printables in this post were created using backgrounds/art from freepik. Specifically, the filenames in my google drive download link have the names of the backgrounds/art used and correspond to the list below:

• "Modern abstract background" designed by Kjpargeter / Freepik (pictured above). Used in full as a background
• "Ornamental elements collection" designed by Alvaro_Cabrera / Freepik. Parts used as ornaments for borders
• "Pastel color artistic watercolor background" designed by aviyabc / Freepik. Part used as a background
• "Soft blueabstract background" (sic) designed by balasoiu / Freepik. Part used as a background

I have included downloads for 4 different pretty versions with backgrounds or ornaments (ready to use) in .PDF format. I also included an undecorated version in .PNG format (with a transparent background) in case anyone wants to customize the missions for their own personal use. If you have suggestions for missions, let me know in the comments!

Download my weekly IRL mission free printable sidebar stickers here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1K62sdG_vAGiyp5O9xcTWlBFcH2hJH2Tk?usp=sharing

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! I have tried to give credit where it is due in my printables -- if you think anything here belongs to you or was improperly attributed, please let me know.

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!

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!

Bullet Journal -- Getting Started (and All-Year Pages)

To stay more organized and to use up some of the dozens of notebooks I have scattered around the apartment, I decided to start a bullet journal. For years, I have been making lists of all sorts -- to-do lists, grocery lists, ideas lists, more to-do lists -- they were just scattered throughout different spare notebooks, scrap paper, and lots and lots of post-its. Here's my attempt to centralize everything and make it a little prettier. I used materials I already had (the purpose was to start reducing clutter, not adding more!) so I used a graph-ruled composition book from Staples, my Pilot G-2 0.7 pens, and some colored sticky notes (for the index squares).

Caveat: this was my first time hand-lettering, and I never could draw very well, but I tried!

My main goals for the year. I get to color in each icon as I complete it -- helps motivate me to stay active and keep striving toward these goals.

This page faces the 2017 goals page (above) to create a nice 2-page spread of my year. These are the big events that I have to plan, execute, experience, and enjoy. Since they're like goals for the year, but one-short events, I didn't think it made sense to have the color-me-in icons like for the smaller goals page.

Found something like this on Pinterest and loved it. I've basically copied that page down to the formatting.

I still need to fill this page in, but it's supposed to be my bucket list items with some progress updates/marks to fill in as I work towards checking stuff off the list.

I'm trying to give more small gifts to friends and family to express my gratitude for their love and support. This page can also double as a wish-list and gift ideas page.

Because I'm terrible at remembering when I had my last check-up, annual physical, annual teeth cleaning, etc. I know these things are important, they're just hard to keep track of, so here goes another attempt.

Later edit: keeping it all organized with my indexing system

You may have noticed the small pink squares near the top edge of each of my yearly pages. These are part of my indexing system, shown here now that I've added a few pages for April (yellow) and May (green). Each section is color coded (pink is for annual spreads) and the squares are spaced out a bit so they're easily grabbable to flip to a certain section.