Graph paper is a great format for habit tracking. In today’s tutorial I’ll teach you how to make your own graph paper in a just a few minutes – you’ll be able to make your graph paper as small or as large as you like, and sized to fit any planner you like!

Related: Ultimate planner page size guide (with printable reference cheat sheet)  

How to make printable graph paper in Photoshop

For this tutorial you’ll need Photoshop. I shared a tutorial on how to download it here.

To enlarge the screen of the video, click the square icon in the bottom right hand corner of the video (it will say ‘full screen’ when you hover your mouse over the icon). 

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Links mentioned in the video:

• My ecourse: How to Make Planner Printables (there’s numerous tutorials on how to make all different types of planner printables including lined note paper)
• Printable planner size guide cheat sheet
• My other ecourse: How to make patterns in Photoshop

Details:

• I used a 0.25″ x 0.25″ grid
• You can make the lines of the graph paper as fat or as thin as you like
• Make a copy of your rectangles by clicking the layer in the layers menu and pressing CTRL and J on your keyboard
• I recommend using a minimum 0.5” border on all sides as some printers cannot do borderless printing
• Light grey for the lines makes it less busy, especially since you’re not likely to use grey pens but you may use black (so I don’t recommend making the lines black)

Related: Printing Tips

Some ideas for using this graph paper:

• Savings tracker
• Debt payoff
• Bills
• Make a bar graph (or line graph) and compare a goal with actual (e.g. a habit, savings, days you did homework, hours worked etc.)
• Habit tracker (I also shared a free printable habit tracker in this post)
• Bullet journal (print a bunch of copies and have them bound into a notebook – free printable front & back covers available here)
• Attendance record if you’re a teacher
• Year in pixels mood tracker
• To do lists – the boxes are great for coloring in tasks as you complete them (especially if you love color-coding your to do’s)
• Turn it into a weekly planner (I used this for one of the weeks of the 52 Planner sin 52 weeks challenge – make sure you subscribe if you want to be notified when that post is published!)

I’ve left a title line at the top so you can use it for anything you like – or print multiple pages and use it in different ways 🙂

I’ve also left enough room on the left and right margins for hole punching if you want to use them in a ring bound planner or binder. I prefer to use the Arc discbound system, MAMBI Happy planner discs and Levenger are similar.

Related: Planner Organization: Why I use the Arc Planner instead of binders and How to choose a binding system for your planner (comparison and which one I like the most) 

Choose any page size

The best part is that now you know how to make graph paper – you can make it at any size you like! 🙂 If you’re not sure what size you need – I recommend making it at standard page size (US letter size or A4 depending on where you live in the world), then you have the option to resize the page in your printer menu, and your printer will automatically shrink it for you.

Select A5 or ‘custom page size’ if you want to print at Erin Condren planner size, Plum Paper, personal size etc.

And then ‘fit’ to page

Related: Printing Tips

If you want to color code or just want lots of color options, I’ve made the printable in 8 other colors colors – all can be purchased in this bundle from my shop!

Using Graph Paper for habit tracking

I was inspired by the idea of using graph paper as a habit tracker, so added a few other elements to make a weekly planner which I’m using for this week of the 52 Planners in 52 Weeks Challenge. It’s similar to week 14 where I used this printable (post coming soon!) only I added a dinner plans section as well. I liked with the graph paper that I could split that section into as many components as needed.

I’m trying out the HI-TEC-C Maica pens this week. So far I’m not overly impressed with these pens (especially given how expensive they were!). They’re needle tip pens which I don’t normally use as they tend to write too fine and the ink skips if you write on an angle like I do. There’s no purple in the pack 🙁 so I’ve used red to color code social media / behind the scenes / maintenance tasks instead.

I used the 5 spaces on the left for blog planning, but you could also use it for:

• Meal planning with a shopping list on the left and then errands and other random notes at the bottom
• School work with assignments due for classes each week in the 5 spaces
• Any other use you can think of!

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Related Posts:

• How to make a stripe pattern in Photoshop (video tutorial)
• How to color match anything in Photoshop (step by step tutorial)
• How to make a planner bookmark (DIY Page Markers Tutorial)
• Planning 101: Need versus want versus wish list planner supplies
• Planner Organization: How to color-code your planner (so you’ll actually use it effectively)