**UPDATED FOR 2024** Here's my Yearly Planner Template

[Daryl_Mander]

2024 Update
Fifth year running! Here’s the 2024 version for your planning pleasure:
https://dynalist.io/d/WGsa1dv7DP2JBs7DJxwXLO4C#collapse&theme=default

2023 Update
Hi all, here’s the 2023 version
https://dynalist.io/d/HuPqOkfshCWtJBoDS8xLCrFY

2022 UPDATE
The yearly tradition continues! Here’s the 2022 version of my annual planner template:
https://dynalist.io/d/SFiJoqUmtvBnEyc-uauepGiw#collapse&theme=default

2021 UPDATE
Here’s the 2021 update folks. I guess I am making this into a yearly tradition

https://dynalist.io/d/TPPf_7NR15xgvmPTEZn_nELl#collapse&theme=default

Special note and thanks to @rubaboo who made a gsheet template that I borrowed to help me do the above faster. See here: Yearly planner 2021

2020 UPDATE

A few people had asked me for a version of the below 2019 planner template, but updated for 2020. So here ya go, here’s exactly the same planner template but updated for the year 2020!

https://dynalist.io/d/BwrOwqlQBAjY7JCZsDiOtniO

================================

2019 ORIGINAL POST

https://dynalist.io/d/Iu3rwXqcWK-WNpkbQM8lCw2y

I just finished putting together my 2019 planner template, feel free to copy/steal this if it’s useful for you!

This is a system I’ve been developing over the past few years. Basically I breakdown the year into months, weeks, and dates inside an outliner app (used to use ‘the other’ one, but past year I’ve lived happily inside Dyna).

Every day, I open up the bullet for that day. I put my thoughts, to-do’s, ideas, everything basically into that day. Sorta bullet journal style - I like to start every day with a “blank page” where I can rapid-log my thoughts and ideas.

Because I map out the whole of the year in advance, I can schedule to-do’s in advance too. To do that, I simply rapid log the future to-do into my today list. At some point later on, probably when I do my weekly review, I can use the ‘move’ feature in Dynalist to move that future to-do to the appropriate week or date.

At the start of a new week, I do my “weekly review”. This involves moving any incomplete to-do’s out of the previous week, into the new week. I also review my notes from last week and if there’s anything I wanna keep, I move it somewhere else (I keep separate documents in Dyna as project spaces, often these notes/ideas will be moved there). Then I archive the previous week by ticking it off. This way, the top of the list will always be the current week.

If I wanna do a task on a specific day in the future, I can easily move that task (using the ‘move’ feature) into that specific date’s bullet. What I like about this system though is that I don’t have to know the specific date, maybe I wanna do the task at some point next month, in that case I move it to the bullet for that month instead of a date’s bullet. I can do the same thing for moving a task to a future week.

This is sorta a mish-mash of a few different concepts: GTD, Tickler Files, Bullet Journal, etc.

N.B. When a week crosses over into the next month (for example week 5 of 2019 will start on Jan 28 and end on Feb 3) I put the week into the month it starts on (e.g. Week 5 is located inside January 2019, not Feb 2019). Because of this, some months will actually contain dates for the next month. For me this is fine because I work in terms of weeks, just take note of that in case you want to use this template but don’t work the same way as me.

Anywho’s, you don’t have to use this list the way I do, I’m just sharing it 'cos I am sure there are others here who like to have a similar year view and seeing as I just put in the hour or two of work it takes to set this up, you might as well benefit from my work and save some time yourself

[Stephen_Dewitt]

This is nice, I do a similar thing. One mini innovation for me recently was to add ‘weekly review’ lists and weekly plans if appropriate directly onto your calendar, bookending the week. I also journal in the note section of the day before filing it away.

[Kevin_Murray]

Thanks for sharing this @Daryl_Mander. I presume that there is much relevant information elsewhere in your Dynalist that needs to be accessed for your daily to-dos. Do you sometimes put a shortcut into the date for this?

[Daryl_Mander]

Nah. I do a few things to access my other lists but I don’t use shortcuts in the today section. What I do is I have my “Areas” set up as different Dynalist documents. That way if I need to flip between the today view and an “Area” view, I can use the document pane.

Within those Areas I will sometimes have nested “special projects” and lists that I want quicker access to. For stuff like that, I use the bookmarks tab.

Another thing I do is I always use Dynalist in my browser and by default I open up two tabs. One is on my today view, the other tab I can set to whatever, usually it’ll be set to the Project or Area that I am working on during that day. My idea is that the 1st tab should always be set to Today (I also use the Today view as my GTD style inbox) and the second tab can be used for reference stuff.

So with all of those options combined, I don’t find I really need to put shortcuts into my Today list. I just either quickly click to the info I need via File or Bookmark pane, and then click back when I am done, or I have the other info open in Tab 2 and then I just click between the tabs to get the info.

Side note: I much prefer using the Desktop App but am stuck using the browser app because desktop app does not have the multi-tab/window option. I hope the Dynalist team introduce that soon, give the desktop app some love!

[Daryl_Mander]

Nice idea @Stephen_Dewitt.

I also run through a weekly review checklist but for me I just keep that in my head as it is fairly straightforward and easy to remember.

I like the idea of journalling into the notes section. I’ve struggled to find a good place or way to journal, these days I simply just add a completed to-do if there was something that day I wanted to remember I did (for example “Had a nice date night at that Sushi place with Irene this evening” etc). I also tried journalling on a weekly basis, e.g. file away last week at the start of a new week, and when I do that I write a little weekly summary journal. But, heh, everything I try with journalling never seems to stick.

[Stephen_Dewitt]

Yea I’ve only ever journaled when my system has forced me to by keeping the day in focus until I manually file it away (and when I keep my summary super basic). Also I’d have no hope of remembering what I did several days later

Edit: one other nice thing about journalling in the note section is that if you add a dynalist date function to each day, and sync with google calendar, your notes will appear in the ‘description’ section of the event on google calendar, providing you with (1) another way to easily search your journal (i.e. via any calendar app of your choice which tends to be quite fast and nicely organised) and (2) another way to immortalize your journal by storing it within google

Edit 2: I’ve recently found a lot of benefit from adding a few emojis to the start of my journal to indicate how good the day was … makes me much more likely to interact with my entries by e.g. skimming those and checking why X was a particularly good / bad day etc … but anyway

[A_Saiyed]

Hi,

Thank you for uploading the 2019 Planner and making it available for everyone. I used it extensively last year!

Curious if you had already created a 2020 Planner and were planning on uploading it.

– If not no worries, I can give it a shot-- Did you create a programmatically? I could create a json file with the appropriate dictionaries for each month, week, day but how would I upload/format for dynalist. —

Thanks!

[Philipp]

Maybe my ♾️ Forever Calendar 1.0 will safe you some time. If I find some time I could extend the python script to something similar like in this this template.

[Daryl_Mander]

Ask and ye shall receive!

Here ya go, enjoy

https://dynalist.io/d/BwrOwqlQBAjY7JCZsDiOtniO

[Philipp]

Great, thank you!

[Daryl_Mander]

FYI all I have updated the original post in this thread so it now also contains a link to my updated 2020 yearly planner template

[rubaboo]

I made a Yearly planner 2021.

[Alan]

For what it’s worth, here’s my method of creating a plan:

• PLAN
  • !(2020-12-15)
    • 12am Dentist
  • !(2020-12-18)
    • Feed the cat

(these are for illustration, not actual plans)

I find with the dynamic nature of Dynalist, I just create dates as something comes up, and I don’t need a complete calendar. Dynalist automatically displays them in full date format with the Weekday, and the calendar popup makes it easy to pick a date.

[Daryl_Mander]

I’ve made a 2021 version of the planner, the link is added to the original post and also you can find it here:
https://dynalist.io/d/TPPf_7NR15xgvmPTEZn_nELl#collapse&theme=default

[Gary_Rowe]

This is so great. Does anyone have one for 2022?

[BigChungus]

Are you familiar with Google Sheets (or excel) autofill?

Take the 2021 google sheet and drag the autofill box down to generate a 2022 one, and post it here if you can

[Gary_Rowe]

Sorry, I am not following at all. I am not very good with spreadsheets, don’t really know what you mean by “the autofill box.” I can’t even find the google sheet you mentioned! Sorry, I’m a bit dense I fear.

[Daryl_Mander]

Hey all, just FYI I have a task in my to do list to create the 2022 planner template some time next week. So if you are struggling to do it yourself and don’t mind waiting a bit then hang in there and watch this space!

[Gary_Rowe]

Fantastic! Thank you very much.

[Daryl_Mander]

HI all, apols for the delay, here’s the 2022 planner template:
https://dynalist.io/d/SFiJoqUmtvBnEyc-uauepGiw#collapse&theme=default