For some reason, as the year comes to a close, I start becoming anxious about my planning choices. So come Sep-Oct, I start to feel like I want something different, and of course I can’t wait until the New Year. But, the conformist in me sends me on a guilt trip. Surely, I shouldn’t be switching to a new planner so late in the year. It’s just not right. Yet, the heart wants what it wants and I begin the hunt for a new planner.

Is it wrong to start a planner any time during the year?

It’s absolutely not wrong to start a new planner during the year. In fact, life’s too short to be unhappy in any planner. If you’re itching for a switch, go ahead. You’ll always have the joy of switching again in the New Year.

This got me thinking about planners that you could easily switch into or out of any time of the year. Obviously, this is much harder to do with a bound book, but not impossible.

I’ve written a previous post about switching planners with ease which hopefully gives you some tips. So, before I dive into the list, let me tell you one thing I do.

I like to write in notable items on my monthly calendars to keep a record of the year. That way, when I switch to a new planner, I only need to copy in all the monthly items.  That’s why, no matter what planner I switch to, regardless of the time of year, I make sure that it has a full year’s worth of monthly spreads.

Here are some planners that could work really well for mid-year planner switching:

Super Flexible:

  • The Filofax / Franklin Planner or any other Ring-Mechanism
  • The Disc-Bound Planner – Levenger Circa / Staples Arc / Happy Planner / William Hannah
  • Travelers Notebook – Just put in a new notebook insert and you’re good to go. There are undated inserts.

Easy to swap pages in and out. While most inserts from the companies themselves are pre-printed, you can find them at a massive discount if you’re buying them after the New Year. You could use the older months for notes pages. The Filofax also has some undated options particularly for the A5.

The best part of these two systems – you can print your own inserts.

Semi-Flexible:

  • Bullet Journal – Simple Notebook, with the freedom to draw in your own planner schedules
  • Undated Passion Planner – no dates, flexible

I know most people will object to putting these in the Semi-Flexible category. These systems seem to be ideal for the person who wants the freedom to construct their own planner.

The reason I say they are not as flexible though is because they require some work. If you want to have a full year’s worth of monthly spreads, you will need to draw them out yourself on the bullet journal. This is quite a bit of set up prep, for a switch that may or may not work.

For the Undated Passion Planner, you have your full year’s monthly spreads that you only need to date. However, the planner is set up with 12 months of weeklies and monthlies. This means you’re going to run into a mismatch. If you start in August, you’re still left with 8 months of weeklies but no monthlies. Catch my drift?

The Makeshift System

For the last couple of years, I’d been very happily using the Hobonichi Techo Cousin for work. It’s such an ideal size and you have every conceivable layout you’d want. I used the dailies for notes and the rest for planning. Everything in one compact book. But, the Monday-start really annoyed me. We start our week here on Sunday, so I’d get all wonky switching between calendars on my phone, wall and planner.

Where there is a will, there’s a way right? I really wanted to go back to this one compact book system, so I took out my half-finished one from 2018, and set it up. I used Washi tape over the days and wrote in my own dates and days. I managed to reconfigure the monthly calendar so it worked out to match months this year.

My system is not pretty but I’m not concerned with what the inside looks like as long as I can use it to function. The leather cover on the outside makes it look professional with functional hot mess inside. Kinda like me.

I hope you got some value out of this. Happy Planning!