On My Work Table: The 2026 Planner-Diary

I have made some version of a planner-diary for a few years now, always in a different format while striving for the right balance of information and functionality through trial and error and then trying again, with varying degrees of success.

Being a one-person operation, the process of first making the Useful Calendar in a few different formats, and then the planner, has meant that sometimes I don’t make one at all and some years I have managed to eke one out long after nearly everyone who uses an analog planner already has one.

I like the flexibility that a spiral-bound book affords, especially the way it can lay flat when opened, but I haven’t had the equipment or the means to bind it that way, so I have hand-bound them with heavy (100 lb) card stock for the cover, wrapping it around to form the spine, then sewing the signatures through that, as shown above. It’ll lay flat enough while you’re writing in it, but doesn’t stay open on its own the way a spiral-bound book does.

This year I did a few things differently. First, it has a chipboard cover, which is thicker and more rigid than past planners, and I used a different binding method that I hoped would be more like a hand-bound equivalent to a spiral binding. Officially called a criss-cross binding, it’s more commonly known as the secret Belgian binding, which I described in my old blog here.

The flexibility comes from having the covers and spine as three separate pieces, which are then sewn together in a hinge-like join, and the signatures are sewn to the ladder of threads criss-crossing the spine.

An inside view of the cover boards, with a pocket glued to the back cover and a blank label inside the front.

Sewing the signatures to the spine.

This year’s planner is a little bigger, too, both in its dimensions (4-1/2”w x 6”h vs earlier versions that were 4-1/4”w x 5-1/2”h) and in having more pages (144 vs at most 128 up to now).

I call it a planner-diary because I design it to be rather open-ended in function. For example, there’s a bit of space on the opening two-page spread each month where a person could jot some goals, priorities, observations or whatever.

While it includes the wide range of multicultural and international holidays the Useful Calendar is known for, it does not include most of the additional notes. Instead, there are more pages for the user to write on—two pages for every week of the year, with one side divided into days and the other a simple grid for however you want to use it.

I did manage to get it done much earlier than in the past—by mid-October, in fact. You can see more details and photos in my shop here, and even buy one for yourself if you want. Happy planning!