This is a question we’ve had several times over the years: what are the tiny boxes in the monthly columns (shown above) supposed to be used for?
Well the real answer is, they are supposed to be an expenses tracker. But of course you should use them any way you like.
I started thinking of different ways these little boxes could be used and came up with a few ideas.
You could write in your daily expenses total of course, or you could use it in a slightly different way: to track not only expenses but also No Spend days, with the goal of having X number of No Spend days per month. Using color helps give a quick visual reference of spend/ no spend days.
But there’s lots of other ways to use these boxes too. You could use them to track the number of minutes you walked/ ran/ biked (or read/ painted/ wrote). I used red to show zero minutes, so you can easily see when you’re not reaching your goals.
You could also use different colors and columns to easily see your workouts and which days you did strength (blue), cardio (black) and stretching (green).
If you take medicine or supplements at different times of the day, you can track what you’ve taken.
Or of course you can track your weight.
Being able to track things like this on the semi-annual planning pages makes it easy to see your progress over the course of the year.
How do you use the tiny boxes in the monthly columns?
Thanks so much for this info. This has bugged me for years, and I’m glad to finally know what they were designed for as well as having some alternative ideas for them. It never occurred to me that you could write numbers there. After I asked the question, it did occur to me also that one could use them for color coding the different days – for example, blue for birthdays, red for holidays, green for travel days, etc.
Great idea Marty!