Amy Solovay’s Weekly Planner Layout for rhe Week of February 4, 2024, Before the Pen

Pictured here is my weekly planner layout from last week. Those of you who pay attention to planner details are probably surprised to see that I’m using a spiral-bound planner and not a discbound planner right now.

I used Happy Planners in 2022 – 2023 and was about 75% satisfied with the experience. There are things I love about Happy Planner. However, there is one thing that drives me bonkers about the way Happy Planners are laid out: Each month’s main overview page that comes stock with the planner is always on the wrong side of that month’s tab.

That one page isn’t ever enough to actually get my monthly goal setting and habit tracking done, so I routinely add a few other habit tracker and goal-setting pages to that lone, stock monthly overview page. The most logical place to put them is right beside the stock overview page, so these added pages also end up being on the wrong side of that month’s tab. There is no other way that I can see to add them before the monthly calendar spread. I’d rather have them come AFTER the monthly calendar spread, but there is no practical way to do that, because the way Happy Planners are laid out, the page after that is half of a weekly spread. So I’d rather have those monthly overview pages come before the monthly calendar rather than stuck somewhere in the middle of weekly layouts. But I’d much rather have them come AFTER the calendar spread, BEFORE the weekly layouts, and on the correct side of that month’s tab.

Two years in, I never fully got used to this. It is still counter-intuitive to the way I want to have my planner laid out, and there is no fixing it. I have repeatedly tried to make it work, and failed. When I look back at these pages from the past 2 years, I can see that I often set them up and then forgot to use them, because I suffer from out of sight / out of mind syndrome, and these pages, being on the wrong side of the tab, were always out of sight.

This is not what I want.

Despite all the other things I love about Happy Planner, I felt frustrated enough with that situation that it warranted looking around at alternatives. I knew far in advance in 2023 that I was planning a change in 2024. However, finding that magical alternative hasn’t been so easy.
I have temporarily reverted back to using a spiral-bound planner because this planner’s layout is EXACTLY, precisely what I want. I couldn’t believe my good luck to find this planner design. So far, I have been totally thrilled with it!!

This is a collaboration between Inkwell Press and Blue Sky Planners. I have used Blue Sky Planners in the past, back in the days when I was a habitual spiral-bound planner user.

The pictured planner is really a temporary solution because it’s a student planner that ends in June 2024. So, in another few months, I am going to need a new planner again.

I originally started using discbound planners because I loved the idea of being able to add pages to my planner wherever I need them. So I thought it would drive me bonkers to revert back to using a spiral-bound planner and not being able to add pages. However, this has largely become a non-issue because I haven’t needed to add pages. This planner design has all the pages I need it to have, and they are all in exactly the right place where I need them to be. So overall, this planner is working a lot better for me than my previous Happy Planners did.

This leaves me with bunches of questions:

• Is the collaboration between Inkwell Press and Blue Sky an ongoing thing? Will I be able to get another one of these planners in the future?
• If they’ll continue to be available, should I continue down that road? Or should I make the switch to the discbound version of Inkwell Press?
• Could I use Inkwell Press inserts with the Happy Planner covers and metal discs I already bought? Or do I need to start over from scratch and get all new covers, all new discs, all new folders, all new dashboards, stencils, punches, etc??
• I have 2 discbound edge punches; one is the Happy Planner 9-hole punch, and the other is the We R Makers Crop-A-Dile disc punch. Are either of those compatible with the Inkwell Press discs?

The floor is open for comments, so if you have insights to share, I invite you to post! Thanks so much!
And, thanks for dropping by my blog today. I appreciate your interest!
XOXOXOXO,
Amy