Academic Daily Planner: Colour code your life, with to-do lists in relevant categories. Valid for one semester’s usage!
This is a school planner as I created this based on my personal experience in polytechnic, but to all who are using this for university, work or daily life, feel free to edit your own variations after downloading.
There are 20 weeks to this planner as a semester is generally 16-18 weeks excluding holidays. Like in most academic institutions, the ‘Weeks’ start at the beginning of each semester. Do re-download after each semester!
Download The Template Here
How do you use the planner?
1. The 3 Steps to prepping your planner.
Firstly, download your planner using the button above ⬆. To edit, make a copy under ‘File’.
Then, add in your dates and months in the indicated boxes. For months, due to varying weeks, we do not have indicated boxes for all 20 weeks. Month is on the top row, on the first day of each month, simply type in the month on the row right above the date.
Lastly, insert all your important projects, assignments, events and holiday dates. In most academic institutions, the important deadlines should be given to you at the start of each semester. For holidays (to be inserted under Events), this can be public holidays and academic holidays (as seen from your school’s academic calendar, or your government’s scheduled holidays).
2. Like normal planners, there are To-Do lists.
Under mon-sun, there are empty boxes for you to insert your tasks for that day. These to-do lists are categorised into 3 main groups: Projects/ Assignments, Tasks and Events for better organisation. This too, ensures that the most important details, the deadlines, are on the top to greater urgency. After completing the individual tasks, highlight them green to indicate completion.
3. Colour-coding your To-Do lists.
Tag your individual tasks by colour-coding them. The legend for the colours are found in the second sheet. You’re highly encouraged to add more tags in order to maximise the use of the planner! Simply add a new row in the colour-coding sheet and input the details. To colour-code/ add tags your individual tasks, highlight them using the respective colours or green (to indicate completion). Be sure to check and update your planner frequently so you’ll be prepared for the day.
4. Deleting each column after a day ends.
For convenience’s sake, each column can be deleted after the date has passed, so the leftmost dated column will now be the latest date, for easy access. No more flipping through pages or scrolling endlessly for your plans today!
5. Have rest days? Grey them out for easy indication.
Using light grey, highlight the entire column (of the date that you will be resting/ Saturdays/ Sundays). Mind you, simply highlighting the entire column cells will look unaesthetically pleasing, please highlight just the white cells in each table. When planning for leisure, you can easily spot your rest days. This also pushes you to put things down and rest, by planning your work-related activities around these dates.
Lisa Lim 