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Today, I’m going to provide you with ideas for color-coding your planner. When I worked full-time as an oncology nurse navigator, I color-coded every file I had. I used to depend on a digital calendar; however, I’m better at planning on paper. I’ve recently started as a brand ambassador at a planner & journaling company. I’m particularly skilled at journaling and teaching others to do the same. I’m learning to be a great planner!
I have decided to apply my color coding ideas to my planner. I love using color, and to be honest, a few of my early planner pages at the company I’m using were quite haphazard in terms of color. I used color, but things were not color-coded. Currently, I’m in the process of intentionally setting up August, and I’m choosing how I arrange those colors.
Join me as I share with you today how I’m doing that. I’ve set up a strategic plan, and it feels very doable! For most of my life, I have been a very spur-of-the-moment sort of person, and I relied on my memory for appointments and schedules. That did not always work out well for me, and I would resort to sticky notes everywhere. No more! I’m learning to be a great planner!
Assigning Categories
First, I’m going to share with you ideas for color coding your planner by giving examples of categories, and these are what I am using in my August and yearly calendar.
- Work/Business: Use one color for meetings, business tasks, and deadlines.
- Personal: Dedicate colors for appointments, self-care, errands, and social events.
- Family: Assign a color for family events, and use a different color for special occasions like birthdays and anniversaries. You can also include friends’ birthdays in this.
- Health: Use a color for health appointments, workouts, or meal planning.
- Finances: Use a color to represent bills, budgeting, paydays, or writing out financial goals.
Choose Your Colors
- Red: Red is used for urgent, high-priority, or deadline-driven matters or emergent situations.
- Blue: Blue is a soothing color for relaxing activities, such as social events, personal time, or simply unwinding.
- Green: Green is often used as a color of wellness, particularly for fitness appointments, massage appointments, and other self-care activities.
- Yellow: Tasks involving creativity, like scrapbooking or journaling, and creative projects.
- Purple: I love purple for church events, Bible study, prayer group, or other spiritual things you may do.
- Grey: Can be used for tentative or unconfirmed things, even using a pencil that can be erased, and when confirmed, then color coded.
These color suggestions are my thoughts for the colors I want to use. Feel free to personalize and use different colors or add colors to be more detailed. The important thing is to be consistent with what color is used for what task, so your brain begins to recognize colors.
Tools to Implement Your Color Coding
- Highlighters: Use highlighters over your colored pens for emphasis.
- Pens: Use pens for color coding.
- Stickers: Use colored stickers or fun embellishments to mark special occasions or highlight enjoyable events, such as vacations.
- Labels: If you have a label maker, you can create color-coded labels for your different categories.
Benefits of Color-Coding
- Habit tracking
- Visual appeal
- Time management
- Improved organization
- Better productivity
I’m now using a monthly planner that also doubles as a journal. Then, for planning, I also have a yearly calendar that is divided monthly. This way, I can keep track of important dates, such as birthdays and anniversaries, throughout the year. I can also plug in appointments and vacations that are not in the current detailed month.
If you’d like help creating your personalized planner, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. You can email me at joycelynn@joycelynnharrell.com.
You will find my website here at Tula Xii.
Living Whole, Joycelynn
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