Frankenplanning & Using Life Categories
Hello! Welcome back to my Blog! This week I want to speak on the topic of Frankenplanning. I’m pretty certain that this term was made up by the planning community as a play on Planning and Frankenstein. (aka: Taking parts of something to make it whole). You might ask, how does it work? Well, it works best with planners that have a transient system, meaning you can easily take paper in and out. The best example I know of is the Happy Planner which uses a disc bound system. I know that people sometimes cut pages out of ring bound planners, but the pages are not meant to be cut; not to mention, it’s A LOT of work. Also, when doing that, the paper is no longer bound and can easily come out. You could also recoil a planner to customize it, but that seems like even more work.
So why might you want to do this? The answer: customization. You may know that to completely customize a planner, you can create a bullet journal and create pages based on what you like in a planner. These are completely hand-drawn by you, so some people might be intimidated by the work involved. (I’ve made many bullet journals since starting 2 years ago, and I can vouch that it is a lot of work). The best thing about a bullet journal is that you create the spreads as you need them (so literally on a day-to-day basis). However, the bullet journal community has moved somewhat to creating monthly or weekly spreads all at once to take photos or video content for social media.
To bypass all this work, you can customize a planner. The benefit to using a planner over a bullet journal is that all the spreads are already there. All you have to do is move stuff around. It can get costly however, especially if you fall into the trap of FOMO (fear of missing out) or wanting something because you think it will complete your system and make it even better. FOMO has become a thing, mostly because of social media. We watch a lot of Youtube these days and there is a lot of content to consume. The planning community has grown substantially and there are a lot of great personalities out there. I know I started Frankenplanning from watching Youtube videos and I wanted to try it and see if the system worked for me.
I decided to create a Frankenplanner last year (my very first time) because I found I was running out of room in my Erin Condren. I just didn’t have enough room for all the stuff I needed to take care of every day. I also discovered that I could use an entire planner to keep track of my life categories. These are the areas in my life that are important to me and that I feel the need to keep track of in order to feel in control and organized. (I will have examples of life categories down below).
So first of all, to figure out what your life categories are, brainstorm all the things that you already do. Then, think of things you would like to keep track of or plan for. Here, I will list all the life categories that I have used at one point or another. I have nine main categories and each of these have many subcategories. You can customize these to your specific needs.
Home
Cleaning/Chores, Organization, Big Projects, Maintenance, Renovations, Groceries, Meal Planning
School (either yours, or your kids)
Days off / Holidays, Appointments, Meetings, Homework/test dates, Shopping (clothes, school supplies), lunch ideas, Time Table
Personal
Events, get togethers, Birthdays, Appointments, Routines, Work days, Self care (hair cuts, pedicures, manicures, massages)
Expenses / Budget
Bills, Home expenses, Work expenses, Income, Budget Goals
Business
Work Schedule, Plans, Brainstorming, Things to Do (for me, this is social media - Youtube, Instagram, Patreon, my Website, Etsy, Posting Dates, Editing, Filming Schedule, Blogs, Patreon Tier Work, Thumbnails)
Health
Mental, Physical (workout plan, tracking), Emotional, Water intake (trackers), medication, Journaling, Gratitude, Reflection, Pain, Food Diary, Weight Tracker
Reading
Book Summaries, Notes, Thoughts, List of Books Read (Monthly), List of Books to Read
Goals (I keep track of these in one spot in my Goal Planner, and reiterate them in my bullet journal but you could keep goals in each section of your Frankenplanner) Sometimes I have weekly or monthly goals in each section to remind myself of what I want to accomplish that month.
Ideas / Brain Dump Section / Notes
To jot down any ideas that come to mind so you don’t forget them. If they are in one place, you won’t lose them.
I currently have 8 Happy Planner sections in my one Frakenplanner. I will link the Youtube Video here, in which I show how I put all the sections together. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRYw_eHYQVg
The trick in having your planner not too big, is to only include one month into each section. My Happy Planner currently also has an hourly catch-all planner at the very beginning to show me an overview of everything and also for me to see a realistic view of how many hours are in the day. I can get carried away with a huge task list, and I have to prioritize my tasks and make sure I always compete my 3 most important first. (See my Blog “Productivity & Working From Home” ).
Happy Planner also has different layouts that may work for some categories, but not for others. For instance, I have my sections set up with the following:
Catch - All: Hourly Vertical
Business: Vertical & Monthly
Home: Dashboard
Social: Social Inserts from the Happy Planner
Ideas: Filler Paper from the Happy Planner
Expense (Business): Happy Planner Expense Planner
Budget (Work): The Budget Planner by Alaina from The Organized Money
Physical Health: Dashboard Fitness Happy Planner
Mental Health: Wellness Dashboard Happy Planner
Journal: Journaling Happy Planner
Reading: Horizontal
As you can see, there are a lot of options for Happy Planner layouts. You need to figure out first what you want to use it for, and then what works for you best. For instance, the teacher planner also works well for business if you are running many social media platforms since it has four large sections across a week.
If you are interested in Frankenplanning, or want to know what it’s all about, I hope you enjoyed this article and got some useful information out of it. Good luck in all your planning endeavors!
💜 SAN
