@cookingmylife - For past years, I created Smart Collections by week since I did weekly spreads. For 2016, since I am doing a spread per month, I created a Smart Collection for each month then I flagged the photos I want to use. Nothing fancy
I've been doing this to catch up on my last 2+ months of PL too. I was feeling stressed but I really wanted to do at least something. So I selected photos, and put them onto my templates. It's not a lot of work, but it feels so much easier to finish those weeks now!