Transcription
If you were looking for something a little different to include in your next journal setup, or if you just wanted some fun ideas, then I have 70 for you in this video! Grab a pen and some paper so that you can note down any of the ideas that resonate, and let's have a look.
Idea number one is to take that first kind of awkward page in your journal and turn it into a little pocket that you can store things in. Oftentimes, at the spine edge of that page, the page is just a little bit stuck to the kind of card that we have at the very start of the notebook, and that can make it just a little bit awkward to use. What I like to do is lean into the fact that it's already kind of stuck down to the left-hand side. So, I remove the top of the page and then just stick the outer edge and lower edge to make a pocket that I can store flat materials in. For instance, in this one, I have a year-at-a-glance calendar, a little pen swatch reference for myself, and I've also got a grid spacing ruler.
The grid spacing ruler is actually our next idea, and the nice part about having it on this separate piece of paper rather than as a layout in your journal is that you can take it to whichever page you're working on. This essentially just has all of the divisions that you'd need if you want to split your page into different segments. What I typically do is have it for the vertical dimensions on one side and for the horizontal dimensions on the other side. You can see on this one I have the typical halves and thirds, but I've also got one called "calendar," and that's because I very much recommend that if you're going to set one of these up for yourself, consider the layouts that you typically use. For instance, what sizes do you like to do your calendar boxes? They differ horizontally and vertically, so you can put both of those onto here as well.
Our next idea is similar to the grid spacing guide in that it's a reference, but this one is making yourself a box template for your journal setups. This is effectively just done by taking a cutout from the back of your notebook or from a Dutch door and then trimming out the inside section of a box to make a reference for yourself. What sizes you include on this are very much up to you, but I would totally recommend having one for your regular monthly log just so that you can quickly and easily hold this onto your notebook page and draw in some guides for yourself to get your setup done. If you want to actually use it as a stencil, though, I would probably encourage you to use something a little bit more robust than paper, just because if you're putting pressure with either your pen or pencil around the outside of the box, it could get a little bit warped.
Another style of grid spacing guide that could be quite useful is a flip-out grid spacing guide. This is just done on a separate piece of paper that you then washi tape into the front of your notebook so that you can flip it out and see that from any page that you're working on. The nice part about this versus the bookmark is that it's still attached to your journal, so you're not going to lose it. But because it flips out to the side of the notebook, you can still reference it from any page.
Staying on the theme of flip-outs, another type you might want to include is a flip-out key. This could be for the typical symbols that you like to use in your journal, especially if you're changing any up or introducing any new ones. What you can see here is a color key. As part of this, I also include what pen numbers they are because then I can very easily find the right ones when I want to use them in my notebook.
Idea number six is to use your flip-out instead for a weekly checklist so that you can actually check the items off on this. What you then do is set up a section on your weekly log where you have little dots running alongside each of the entries. Because they line up with this, you can just check them off along here, but you don't have to rewrite these every single week. It's effectively a way to save space on your weekly logs and speed up your setup process.
One of my favorite ways to use flip-outs, though, is for any kind of reset checklist. This could be either a weekly or monthly process that you try and do just to get yourself cool, calm, and collected for the upcoming period. This one just acts as a summary of all of those things that you want to do as part of the reset. Again, by having it as a flip-out, this means that I can reference it from any point in my journal. It means that I don't have to actively remember all of these steps; I can just keep them alongside the planning that I'm doing at any point in time.
Of course, reset processes in general are a great addition to your journal. So, for ideas number eight and nine, we have monthly and weekly resets. As said, the point of these is really to get cool, calm, and collected for the upcoming period. So, in a monthly reset, which you do at the end of the month, this is to get yourself ready for the upcoming month. It's a similar idea for the weekly reset, but at the end of the week, you're ready for a new week. When thinking about how you would like to reset or how you would like to achieve that cool, calm, collected feeling, I like to consider the different areas of my life and what I might do in each of those to get me to that fresh slate. I also like to make sure I'm mindful of how much time the process will take. My monthly reset is usually more in-depth; it has a few more steps, and I do end up spending more time on it, whereas my weekly one is more of a streamlined process, a little bit faster. I don't focus on it quite as much because if I'm doing this at the end of every single week, I don't want it to take half a day.
My resets often involve reflection because I think it's really helpful for moving forward with intention. So, you might also want to have some reflection question references in your journal. These could be sets of questions that you ask yourself on a particular frequency, or similar to the idea here, they could be themed around a particular life area or a particular situation. For instance, this one being for financial review, the kind of questions you ask yourself during that, and this one being for goal review and what you might ask that's related to your goals.
Another reference layout that might be handy is something like a timed tasks list. As the name kind of suggests, this is just taking your tasks and grouping them by the amount of time they take to do. Then, anytime you have a spare 5, 10, 15, or 30 minutes in your schedule, you can fill this with something intentional. Now, these don't just have to be productivity-focused; they could be stuff related to bringing more joy into your schedule—little things that you can do for fun or for leisure. But it's a good way to get us spending our time more intentionally rather than more mindlessly. Yes, sometimes we do just need to switch off and do effectively nothing for a bit of time, but if, for instance, you find you spend too much time just aimlessly scrolling your phone rather than learning that new skill you were excited about or playing that game that you bought yourself, possibly a layout like this could help.
Another reference page that I find really useful is something like a trigger list. This one comes from David Allen's book "Getting Things Done," and it's effectively just a list to help trigger or prompt yourself when you're trying to do a brain dump. Anytime you're trying to get all of your thoughts out of your head and into your journal or just onto a scrap piece of paper, rather than sitting there and racking your brain for ages trying to think of every single thought, you can just scan your eyes over a page like this, and it just helps to kind of trigger or prompt you in terms of writing those things down. I like to have mine grouped by life area—things like mental health, physical health, partner, social, and so on and so forth—just because then it helps me stay on kind of a similar train of thought as I'm doing my brain dumping. Your trigger list doesn't necessarily have to have quite as many prompts as mine does, but the nice part about having this as a reference is that you only have to write it out once.
Our next idea, though, is to set yourself up a themed checklist. Now, these checklists can be made so they are either reusable or they're just done as reference pages, and there are quite a lot of options of things you can include. For instance, a travel checklist, a writing checklist, maybe a checklist for your car maintenance, or a checklist for when you're doing meal planning. Of course, the ones we've listed here are just ideas; you probably don't need all of them, but sifting through and picking out the ones that could be useful to add to your journal would be a good idea.
As said, one of the ways that you can make those checklists even more helpful is by making them reusable. Now, yes, you could just use a pencil in your journal and then erase it when you're done, but what I think is really nifty is that you can do something like the tip we have here. Hopefully, you can see that this page is a little bit shiny along this checklist, and that's because I've just gone and stuck some clear cell tape over the top. This makes the checklist reusable because now I can go in and use a dry-erase marker to check it off, and then once I'm done, I can erase all of those, and it's ready for the next time I want to use it. While here I've just used the cell tape and it's only really covering over those checkboxes, you can also add this functionality to an entire page just by getting some book contact paper or contact laminate. Effectively, that's stuff that you might have used in high school to cover or protect your notebooks. Essentially, though, it just turns your journal page into a whiteboard.
As we saw, this checklist is reusable, but the checklist itself is something you might want to add to your journal. This one is a daily planning routine and effectively just goes through the steps that you want to take on a daily basis to make sure that you're getting your planning done in an effective manner. This could be thinking about when you want to check in in the morning, are there any key points throughout the day that you want to check in and make sure that you're writing things down, and what does your end-of-day planning ritual kind of look like? This could be something that you set up as a page in your journal, or it might be an opportunity to have another flip-out so that you have that checklist there to reference from any page.
Staying on the theme of routines, another idea is to have a monthly task tracker. This one has a column for each of the months of the year. I've just gone and put in the initial for each of the months, and then we have the task list down the side. As you complete each of the tasks in the relevant month, you just either use a colored dot or a little check mark or a cross to say that that thing got done. On this one, gray means it did happen, and black means that it didn't. There were certainly some of the things that I wrote on this list that did not get accomplished all that often. This one can also kind of act as a "when did I last" layout, especially for those things that you would like to be doing on a monthly basis. Though you could also use it for things that you want to happen less frequently as well and just note down when the last time it happened was.
A similar idea is something like a yearly routine builder. This one does have a space to record monthly happenings but also has places for weekly or fortnightly tasks—anything you want to use daily more as a reference, so stuff that you'd put on a habit tracker for each month, things that you want to do quarterly or once every three months, and anything that you want to do either annually or biannually. This effectively is just one spread that summarizes the whole thing. Of course, depending on how much you want to include on here, you might need to include an additional spread, or you could just get it down to one page as shown over here. Though anytime you successfully complete the task, you just use one colored dot over the number—these numbers being week numbers—or if you don't end up getting around to it, you just use a different color instead.
A similar idea could be used for any of the monthly happenings, quarterly happenings, and then for the biannual ones, I've just got some little checkboxes which you could put a little check mark in if you're trying to build a routine but you're not too fussy about how it gets accomplished. Or maybe you tend to get bored if you're trying to do the same thing over and over again, then something like a habit menu could be really helpful. This effectively just takes all of the different routines or habits you're trying to build and gives different options for how you can complete them. For instance, in terms of exercise, what are all the different ways you can exercise that you enjoy? In terms of getting more leisure into your schedule, what are the different leisure activities that you could do? How many entries you have for each of them does very much depend on the kind of routine you're trying to build and, of course, your own personal preferences.
Idea 19 is including something like a routine summary in your journal. This is especially good for anyone who finds that they kind of have pile-on days in their week or in their month. They get to the end of the week and realize a whole bunch of stuff hasn't gotten done, and then they just kind of run around frantically trying to get it all completed before the next week, and then the cycle repeats. In this case, you set yourself up effectively like a schedule to say, "Hey, on this day of the week, these are the routines I want to work on. On this day of the week, these are the ones I'm going to get done." You can, of course, also set this one up so it's on a monthly basis. So maybe in the first week of every month, these are the tasks; in the second week, these are the tasks. Just a nice way to kind of help ourselves pace ourselves to keep tabs on whether we're actually getting those things done.
Though something like a habit scorecard could be good to include as well. For this one, you effectively just total up how many times in each month you manage to do the things you're trying to do, especially if they're daily habits. So, how many times did you meditate? How many times did you meet your water goal, or whatever it is you're trying to keep track of? You can then see across the months whether that number is increasing—are you doing better or possibly worse compared to the last month? Of course, there may also be some months where you don't track that thing, so having a symbol to indicate that it wasn't tracked is also a good idea, especially if you end up including new habits throughout the year—things that you're trying to keep track of that you didn't start tracking at the very start of the year.
Another idea that is related to habits is what we call the high bar, low bar approach. This is for those habits that you're trying to build that you do find kind of difficult. So, you give yourself two different versions for how to complete this: the high bar being what you actually want to achieve, but because this does feel a little bit out of reach some days, you also set yourself a more low-energy or easier version of this as well. What I effectively try to do is make that low bar kind of laughably easy—not to say that we're actually going to be laughing at ourselves, but essentially it's a version of completing the habit that feels very low energy, low risk, and very easy—a very entry-level version. So, for instance, if the routine you're trying to build is around water intake, maybe the high bar is drinking 2 liters of water. If that feels a little bit out of reach most days, though, then your low bar could be something like a sip of water. By giving ourselves that entry-level version of the habit, we're more likely to build that habit successfully.
Our next set of ideas are all related to goals, and our first one of these is doing a brainstorm style for your goal setting. This is one of the first places that I always start with my goal setting, and essentially I just take the year in question, branch out into each of my different life areas, and then consider what I want to work on or achieve in each of those. This makes me feel like I've been very thorough in thinking about what my goals might be, and then based on what I have from this, along with any other kind of brainstorming I'm doing, I can pull out the things that came up repeatedly and use that as a starting point for which goals I will actually work on.
Idea number 23, though, is to set yourself up a goal plan. Rather than just setting the goal and saying, "Yep, this is what I want to achieve," this is where you would break it down, get very granular about what needs to be done, and maybe set up a timeline for yourself. All of the different aspects on here, along with how I set, plan, and achieve goals, are all summarized in my course "Epic Goals," which is linked in the description box. But our next idea is specifically this section, and that's making yourself a project roadmap. This one is thinking about the key steps that you need to take when working on any goal or project and putting them in order so that you can follow through up until the endpoint. I often find it easiest to kind of backtrack this—starting at the outcome, what's going to happen right before that, and what's going to happen right before that. This is just a really good way to give yourself a sequence of steps to take in order to reach an outcome.
Once you finish making a full goal plan, though, that can look a little bit overwhelming. So, what I also like to use are action lists. These ones are specifically for one month in question, and I just pull out all of the little bits and pieces that I want to work on just in that month. I summarize this as part of my monthly setup, and that could be something that you want to include in your journal too. It just helps us avoid the overwhelm of looking at every single step in a series and just thinking about the ones that we can action in the here and now.
One of the most important parts of goal work is reflection. This just gives us an intentional point to check in, consider what's working, what's not, and plan the way forward so we can make more progress. The idea here is to do weekly reflection, though as you can see, this title does say "mid-month." I find that I just prefer to do mine every two weeks rather than every single week because I've usually made a little bit more progress; I have a little bit more data to play around with. But I like to ask myself things like, "What have I accomplished or achieved? What's still incomplete? What kind of challenges have I faced, and how might I avoid those in the future?"
A very related idea to this is doing monthly reflections, though I often find that they feel more summative—more of a summary of the month that happened. So, I also like to include things like memories on here, just as a little snapshot of what happened in the month. You can, of course, still use these to help you make more progress on your goals moving forward, so I also like to have a section for any lessons that I learned about either myself or about goal-getting in general.
One of the ways that we can make our goal work a little bit more fun, though, is by gamifying it. This is particularly good for any goals that have repeated actions or for any key identical milestones that you can meet. On this type of layout, you would write down what the goal is, outline what the tasks you have to do are, and assign each of them a point value. As you do those tasks and collect points, you can then level up, and then based on which levels you hit, you could give yourself a reward. This is also especially good for any of those goals where doing the tasks isn't particularly fun, and there's going to be some very delayed gratification in terms of the outcome of the goal and feeling like you get that sense of accomplishment. This is a process that I'm actually using in the year ahead to help myself do more life admin tasks that I would otherwise neglect.
Another fun layout that you can add to your journal is what we call "20 x's in 20x." Now, what numbers you actually put in here depend on the year in question. So, that could be 20, 25s for 2025, 20, 26s for 2026, and so on and so forth. But effectively, this is 20 things that you want to do X number of times in the year of 20x. So, for instance, on this layout here, we have 20 things listed down the bottom, and then our little graph section goes up to 25 for doing each of those things 25 times. Now, going through and picking those things, you do want to be mindful of how many times you could realistically do them. For instance, if you're the kind of person who finds it difficult to read like two books a year, then maybe you don't want to include books in your lineup. But if you love movies, then maybe that's something you could include on here. Anytime I include this in my journal, I don't really make it to be something I strive towards getting 100% completion in; I treat it as a very much just-for-fun layout to see how I've been going in terms of doing these things across the year. It's always interesting to see which of the items I managed to get to 25 and which ones I don't, and also which ones I get there first.
Another layout type that is a lot of fun to use in your journal is bingo boards. You could make this something like a self-care bingo, like we have here, or it could just be a general summary of the goals that you want to work on. You also don't have to make it a perfect square like a lot of bingo boards are, especially if you're using a journal where the dimensions don't really make that very possible or make it look all that nice in terms of page use. Oftentimes, if I do my boxes kind of large, I like to get a little bit decorative with this—use different styles of lettering, use little doodles. You can set yourself specific rewards for completing different rows or columns or anything like that. But often, the things that I capture in layouts like these are things that are going to feel rewarding just by themselves. If you have populated it with stuff that isn't going to feel very fun to do, rewards might be helpful, though.
Another just-for-fun layout that I am definitely going to be adding into my journal is a list of novel or fun holidays. You can see this one I've summarized by month, so it's very easy to see which ones we have coming up. But these are those little holidays that aren't really your typical things—they're not like Easter, Christmas, Hanukkah, that kind of thing—but instead, things like Chocolate Moose Day, Donut Day, Pet Rock Day. We don't necessarily have to celebrate every single one, especially because I think there's a holiday for pretty much every single day of the year. But if you're looking to bring a little more novelty into your life, then this could be a way to do it.
Another layout that can be used just for fun is something like a ranking matrix. This one just takes a series of items—in this case, their books—and pits them head-to-head against each other for every single combination so that you can then see which ones won the most times and thus what is the overall leader. Now, if you are doing this for books, you can, of course, do something like a book bracket. But the problem I find with a book bracket is that it only tells you number one. Like, for instance, let's just say that number one and number two—like what would have been the second-best option—went head-to-head at the very start. Then, he gets knocked out of the running, and this guy ends up going up against something else. I mean, admittedly, "Make Time" is a great book, but still, if you use a layout like this, though, you get a more definitive ranking of what your one through nine, ten, depending on how many books you're using, is actually going to be. Essentially, though, you just take all of your items, write them on this kind of staircase-looking thing here, and then consider for each row and column combination. So, for instance, A versus B— which one was better? Whichever one's better, you write that in the box. We do this for every single combination—so A versus C, A versus D, A versus E, so on and so forth. And then once you've completely filled in each of those head-to-head battles, you then just count up how many times each of those items won. For instance, in this version, C has eight instances of coming out on top, whereas F only has six. One, two, three, four, five, six. Whichever option has the most, that's number one; whichever has the second most, that's number two; so on and so forth. As said, yes, you can just do a book bracket if you want, and it does look very cute, but I just don't want to go to this much effort to only have number one. I'd rather apply the same amount of effort and end up with one through N.
Continuing on the theme of novelty and fun, idea number 33 is a "Try It This Way" mind map. This is effectively considering things that you are feeling are like a little stale; you just want to change it up a little bit, try something a little new. We use this mind map just to brainstorm the different options for doing stuff in that area. So, for instance, if I'm feeling a little bit "eh" about the styles of exercise I've been doing, typically what other things could I try that are still a form of movement? I've been feeling a little "eh" in my home space; what kind of things could I try differently or do to make my home space feel a little bit more revitalized, refreshed, revamped? The different areas you have on here very much depend on what you want to try new, as do the options or outcomes that you have for each of those.
Our next idea, though, is a list of X, so again, X being a number here. I like to match it to the year; I just think it's a bit of fun. But for some of these options, it could be kind of hard to think of that many things, so you can also think of this as a year-long list challenge for each of the weeks of the year. You just have some kind of category that you're making a list around. You could generate these prompts yourself; otherwise, you can find them online, and it can just be a fun way to think about the different options you have for each of these categories. Some of the ones we have on here are everyday essentials, so songs that make me cry, snacks to combat your hangry feelings, and also hobbies that interest you. This page is essentially just a summary of what all of the prompts could be, and then you could write your responses in a dedicated journal or just somewhere on your weekly layout.
Another fun one is a 52-week challenge. This one doesn't have to be about list-making; it could be about creativity or exercise or effectively any life area. You're going to be able to find heaps of different examples online. This one, in particular, was the year of planning challenge—effectively a layout or collection spread that you could set up for each week of the year in your journal. This can be a great way to build a skill or get invested in a new hobby, or given the category we're in, just bring some more fun into your life. If 52 feels like a little bit too much, though, you can, of course, go with something like a monthly challenge. These challenges, in particular, are the kind of thing that you do on every day of a particular month. So, for instance, saving a dollar per day, aiming to have no takeout during the month, or any other little things you could do daily to save yourself some money. Of course, your challenges don't have to be savings-related; they could be fitness or exercise-related if you want, or they could be some kind of combination of the two. In each of these examples, though, I just use mini calendars and then have some kind of color code that indicates did or did not do the challenge.
Looking at an idea with a similar structure but a very different purpose, this one would be a monthly memories page. As you can see, I have two years here, but you could just keep it to the one depending on what journal you're including it in. But this one just has a space for each of the months of the year, and you can write down any key moments, milestones, or memories that you want to capture. A memories page that is for a smaller time frame is something like a last week in doodles. Though this one's great because you not only get to practice your doodling, but you also get to record more memories than you would on just that monthly summaries page. On this one, we just have three highlights from each of the days of the week, each listed with a little doodle to accompany it.
Two of my favorite styles of memory pages make up ideas 39 and 40. This one being a "Then and Again" page, where we have a series of prompts in the middle of the page, and then you just write your response at the start and end of your journal—or for me, the start and end of the year. The other one being a letter to future me. At the start of the year, you either handwrite or type up a letter for you to open at the end of the year on New Year's Eve or when the clock strikes midnight and you enter the new year. I always put these ones into my journal just using a little pocket, either in the form of just taking an envelope and sticking that in or making one with spare paper.
If you wanted to focus more on world happenings rather than just the things that are a little closer to home or a little more personal, you could set something up like a "What in the World" page. It doesn't have to be doodly or decorative; it can just be a list, or you could set it up as a timeline if you wanted to, but it just captures the important happenings across whatever span of time you're looking at. Another way to capture these memories from the year, or again whatever span of time you're looking at, is something like a roadmap of the year or timeline-like layout, where you have a little section for each of the important happenings and just write these out in the order they happened. This means you don't need a set amount of space for any specific month, especially when some months we have a lot of memorable things happening, whereas other ones we might not have anything really going on. Again, you could just write this one out as a simple list view; it doesn't have to be decorative, but it can make for a fun summary.
Heading into our section that is all about trackers, one that you might want to try is a year in pixels. Now, you might have seen it where you have each of the months going along the top and then 1 through 31 down the side. That is definitely one style of year in pixels that you can use, but I personally find that it's a little bit more fun and also a little bit more useful if you do this based on the week. So, each of these numbers running down the side is the week number, and then the initials along the top are for the weekday. This just helps you better see any trends or patterns that you have. For instance, maybe on Thursdays and Fridays, you just don't find yourself doing something; maybe you're more likely to get it done or more inclined to get it done at the start of each week. Of course, this very much depends on what you're tracking, and while most people use a year in pixels for moods, our next idea is using your year in pixels for not moods. You could use it for fitness or workouts or styles of exercise; you could use it for how much money you saved or spent on each day of the year. You could also use it to record how much reading you got done. There are a lot of different ways to use this style of tracker, but not necessarily just for moods.
Another style of tracker we have, though, is an annual productivity tracker. In this one, you would list out all of the different tasks that you want to do on a weekly, maybe monthly basis, and then in the section at the bottom, we have half of a row for each of the weeks of the year—so 1 to 26 and 27 to 52. Anytime you do any of the tasks, you then log that in the section at the bottom. I've just used letters for each of the tasks rather than any kind of symbol or color code or anything like that, just keeping it very simple to fill in. But anytime one of these things happens or gets done in each of the weeks, you can just record that it did get accomplished. This also means that come the end of the week, you kind of have a level of productivity for yourself, with the more tasks recorded meaning a more productive week. This doesn't just have to be traditionally productive things as well; maybe one of your things is taking a day off because being well-rested helps us be more productive in other areas.
A style of tracker that could be quite useful, especially if you're the kind of person who has a tendency maybe to forget to keep in touch with people, is something like a contact tracker. So, this one is just set up with a year at a glance. This one's a free printable you can get in our resource library linked in the description box. But anytime you get in contact with whoever you're trying to keep in contact with, you can just add a little dot over the relevant day. You could use different color codes depending on which people you're getting in contact with, or you could color code it depending on the style of contact. So, for instance, a phone call versus a message versus meeting up in person, or it could be about the direction of contact—did you contact them or did they contact you?
A style of tracker that I include every year is a monthly statistics tracker. Now, I use this for social media statistics, but you can use it for anything that you track with a numerical value. So, that could be the number of books read, the number of books read in specific genres; it could be about exercise goals, whether that be weight, water intake, distance ran, anything like that. Essentially, if it has a number tied to it and you can keep track of how many times you've done it or how something has grown over time or decreased, depending on what it is, you can set it up in a layout like this. In particular for my ones, I like to have a starting value and an ending value—so first day of the month, last day of the month—and then also a column for the change in the value. Because this is social media, I do hope to be seeing these going up, but sometimes things do decrease, especially if I continue to neglect to post on Instagram.
Idea 48 is a "When Did I Last" tracker. There are a couple of different options for how you can set this up, just depending on how long you're going to be keeping the layout. So, for instance, if this is going in a journal that you intend on keeping for many years, then maybe you want to have a column for each of the years, and then in each row, you can write down the month number that you got that thing done. So, for instance, in this case, in 2024, in January, the heat pump got serviced. If it's something that you're keeping just for a year, though, then maybe this style would be a little better. You can see along each of these highlighted sections, I have what the task is and then also how frequently I want it to be done—so once per quarter, once per six months, or once per year. In each of these boxes, though, you can just write down the last time it got done or possibly the last couple of times if that's important.
You could also set yourself up a "When Did It Happen" tracker. Again, it depends on the time frame you're looking at. This one is set up for a monthly view, so we have each of the days of the month running down the left-hand side, and then each of these colored blocks represents when something was happening. So maybe each of these are projects that were being worked on, reports that got started and then finished—depends on what you want to keep track of. I know a lot of people use this kind of thing in their reading journal to indicate when they started and when they finished reading a book, especially helpful to see when you have multiple things on the go at the same time.
Before, we looked at an annual productivity tracker, but you can also set up a monthly productivity tracker. This is the style that I most often like to use, and it's set up across two different spreads, with this middle page being turned into a Dutch door by removing the side and the top of the page. On this one, though, each of the different symbols represents some form of productivity, and then on any of the days that I did them, I just fill in that symbol and also color it in using a different color for each life area, mainly because I just like the way it looks. Just like the annual productivity tracker, the longer the bar for any given day, the more productive or more varied in your productivity that you were. So, for instance, on this day here, I did a lot of different types of productivity or a lot of different individual productive tasks. It's just a fun way to kind of visualize the things you're doing for yourself in terms of being a productive person. And again, I like to think of leisure as productive because you can't pour from an empty cup.
Our next idea is to include an energy tracker in your journal. This one I've also set up on a monthly view, so each of the days of the month, and then we have set times during the day that you check in and consider how your energy is going. I've then used a color code or kind of like a pattern code to indicate how high or low energy I would be, and it's also good to note down any of the things that might have an effect on your energy. You can put these in a separate column to the side or have it as some kind of checkbox, depending on how many things you want to keep track of. As you fill this in across the month, you can hopefully start to see any patterns in terms of your energy. So, are there any particular habits that lead to high or low energy? Are there any particular times during the week or the day where you're higher or lower? Through using this, you can start to get an appreciation for what times during the week or month or day you should start putting those tasks that require you to be a bit more high energy.
Our next idea is for anybody who finds that they're not very good at holding their boundaries at work, and that is something like a work boundaries tracker. This one is set up in a similar way to the monthly style, except we only list out the days that we would typically work, and then each of these letters represents one of the things we're trying to do to maintain those boundaries in our workplace. So, making sure that we're starting and finishing at the right times, we're not starting earlier than we need to or working later than we're supposed to, and making sure that we're honoring our breaks during the day—whether that's kind of like smaller breaks or the lunch break, anything like that—very much depends on what kind of boundaries you're trying to keep. In this section down here, though, we can start to keep totals. So, what are your weekly totals for each of the weeks of the month, and then what are your daily totals? Like, for instance, on Mondays versus Wednesdays, what kind of things are you better at keeping up with in terms of those boundaries versus where you let things slide?
A layout idea that I very much would have benefited from over the gift-giving season was something like an online shopping tracker. If you do have a tendency to place online orders that then get delivered to your house or you have to pick up in-store or anything, having a tracker to make sure you are going and picking them up or they are getting delivered could be quite useful. In this one, we have a space to write down when it was ordered, who you ordered it from, any kind of description of the items to help jog your memory, you can write down the charge, what is the expected date of delivery or expected date for pickup, and then check off once it's all been sorted. You may want to include other information on here as well, just depending on what kind of things you might need to keep track of. But again, this is one that I really would have benefited from around the gift-giving season, so having one of these set up in advance could be quite useful.
Our next layout is for anybody who has a series of projects that all have the same repeated steps. For instance, for me, that would be something like video making. These could be home projects, work projects, and the general idea is to set yourself up a project workflow table or a project tracker. In this one, you list out all of the projects and then all of the steps you would have to do in working on those, and then as you complete each of these steps, you just check them off underneath the relevant project. You can also switch these around depending on what you have more of—like more projects or more steps—but this is just a great way to keep a summary of all of the different steps that you've been working on, especially if you're not the kind of person who does one project through to completion and then the next project through to completion. I'm the kind of person who tends to do little bite-sized bits and pieces of things, especially in the form of kind of like task batching—so filming a bunch of videos at once, then editing a bunch of videos at once. This kind of layout just helps me keep everything organized.
This idea is more of a style of tracker than it is a type of tracker, I suppose, and is particularly useful for anybody who uses multiple journals in a year. I typically find that I either use two or three, depending on how quickly I fill it up. But the idea is to make detachable trackers. So, rather than having this one set up as a layout in the notebook, I've made it on a separate piece of paper. This one can either be slipped into the back pocket or washi-taped into the front of your journal, and that way, once this journal is finished, I could move it out of this one and put it into my next one. It means that I don't have to rewrite everything again.
Moving into the realm of schedules, though, our first idea is a flexible weekly schedule. Now, anything that isn't flexible—like the actual kind of scaffold itself and any events that happen at the same time every single week—those ones go in just using a regular pen. But for anything that you build on top of this, ones that might have a tendency to shift in terms of when they happen or maybe the amount of time they take up changes, those ones you put in using flexible systems. So, whether that be something like sticky notes that you can just peel off and move to different days, or it could be washi tape, or it could be filling those things in with pencil. This could also be another layout that you use that reusable trick on by just covering the page with that contact paper.
If you find weekly a little bit too limiting, then something like a fortnightly or bi-weekly plan could be a good idea. The section that you include on here very much depends on what kind of planning you're doing, but I have a section for priority tasks. We have events down the bottom, not specifically tied to different sections for different days because the amount of events you might have on any given day might differ. And then this section in the middle could be for something like a meal plan—so breakfast, lunch, and dinner for each of the days of the fortnight. With the way that I've set this one up, I would probably be making a new plan or schedule for each of the fortnights or setting up at least two of these when doing my monthly setups.
Another style of schedule is something like a typical monthly schedule. So, this is looking at each of the weeks of a typical month and the tasks that you might want to do on each of those weeks. You can also tie these to specific days of the week if you wanted to. This one is set up thinking about work tasks in particular, so it only has Monday through Friday. But if you want to expand this to other areas of your life, or if you work for the entire week, not just Monday through Friday, you can add the weekend on here as well.
Looking at an even larger span of time, you can also set up a similar thing for quarterly planning. So, what kind of tasks do you want to do in each of the quarters, or when within a quarter do you want to have things done? So, for instance, if we were considering this for just the one quarter, maybe we'd only use three boxes, and each of those would be a month.
For idea 60, we have a meal planning dashboard. This layout has two halves, so we have the schedule on the left here with Monday through Sunday for lunch and dinner, and then on the right-hand side, we have the drop space for any of those meals. So, as you come to do your weekly meal planning, you just take the little sticky notes, drop them onto the other side, and then bring over any of the meals that you want to include in the weekly schedule. As you add meals, you aren't going to end up with, like, you know, writing out sushi 27 times any week. You want to have sushi; you bring that over here, and any week you're not going to have sushi, you can put it back over there. Of course, if you do have meals that you have multiple times in a week, then you will want to have multiple of those sticky notes. But it's a great way to have a log of the meals that are kind of your go-tos—ones that you know that you like—and you can build your meal plan from those every week rather than trying to think of things from scratch.
While a sticky note one can be a bit of fun, you can, of course, set up something like a reusable meal planner using that whiteboard technique—so just covering the page with that contact paper and then using a permanent marker or a dry-erase marker over the top of this to say what you're going to be having for each of the days of the week. Then, when it's time to write up for the next week, you can just rub that one off and write out the new ones.
A layout that I enjoy including in my journal is a future me problems list. So, this is just those things that you want to do at some point, but not today, not this week, maybe not even this month. I typically set this one up for an entire year and use a little Dutch door so I only have to write the header out once. I mainly like to do it on a yearly or annual basis so that then at the end of the year, I can just review anything I've added to the list and consider whether it's still something I want to do. Anything I still want to do will get moved to next year's list; anything I've decided that I'm just not going to do, it really isn't of interest to me anymore, I'll just scratch that out.
Another idea that could be quite useful in your journal is that of a prioritized task list. Now, task lists can get quite long. I've just tucked mine into the corner of a page here, but these ones are prioritized in two different ways. The first one is prioritized in terms of high, medium, and low priority, whereas the second one is prioritized in terms of when you would do it—so first, today, tomorrow, or this week. For both of those options, though, you just have columns running down the side of your task list. You'd write out all of your tasks and then indicate their priority by putting a dot in the relevant column. This could be useful for anybody who finds that their task list gets quite long or that they have a tendency to do some of the filler tasks before the stuff that's actually important.
Our next idea is making yourself a "What's Wrong" layout. This just gets you thinking about any of the different things that could cause you some kind of mental discomfort, make you feel less ideal than you'd like to, and then think about what you could do to help remedy that feeling. So, for instance, if my physical space is stressing me out, what kind of tasks could I do that would either mitigate that or lessen the feeling? If I'm finding that I'm just feeling lonely, what kind of things could I do to not feel so lonely anymore? This effectively acts as a handy reference for ourselves any time we're feeling low for any particular reason and the stuff that we can do to kind of get out of that funk.
Our next idea is for anybody who finds that their bills kind of just sneak up on them, and that's something like a monthly bill timeline. I've set this one up so that it's on a separate piece of paper just so that you could then take it to whichever month you're working on and add these things to your monthly log. While this one's been set up so that it's monthly, you could make it so that on the reverse side you had an annual schedule, especially for those things that aren't charged as frequently as once per month.
Our next idea is having a checklist for a recipe for a good day. Now, I like to split this into a regular good day versus an ultra-good day—so things that we could do on a regular day to make it the best day possible versus things that we could do for something that feels a little bit more luxurious, a little more intentional, something a bit more special. Essentially, though, these are things that you can either start your day off with or make sure that you do at some point during the day to get yourself feeling as good as you can, whether that be physically, mentally, or emotionally. The actual items on this list depend on what you enjoy and what makes you feel good, but it could make for a handy reference.
Another handy reference, though one that we hope we don't have to use, is an "In Case of Emergency" page. I would actually encourage setting this one up as a removable or spare page rather than in your journal—maybe one that you could put into a back pocket—just so that the information on here can be handed off to a medical professional if need be. The idea behind this one, though, is kind of in the name: what kind of information would people possibly need in case of an emergency? You can set this one up so that you have a full page for yourself, anybody you're kind of in charge of or a guardian of, or anybody close to you in your life, just so that if something does go wrong, you have the information handy to hand off to the relevant people. Information you can include in here is stuff like medications and the frequency of taking them or the dosage, blood type, insurance information, emergency contacts, and any key details that might be useful.
For idea 68, though, we have theme planning pages. These ones I find particularly useful anytime I'm coming up with a new monthly or start-of-journal theme, and I want a space to build out my color palette, like the materials I'm going to use, list out any kind of decorative details I want to note down, and also keep a list of any spreads or layouts that I want to set up. Doing this pre-planning can just help make sure that I make a cohesive monthly setup where each of the pages actually look like they belong together.
Also related to themes, but a bit more just for fun, is something like a theme summaries page. You can do this for your year in themes if you wanted to, so a box for each month of the year and noting down what color palette you used, any of the decorative elements. These ones in particular were for other videos that we had on the channel, mainly around theme ideas for each month of the year, but it can also be a nice way to just look back on your year in themes.
A layout that might feel a little bit odd to include in a new journal setup is actually thinking about the next journal—not the journal you're specifically setting up right now, but thinking about the one that's going to come after it. The idea here is having a new journal planning page, and that's so that as you're using the current journal—the one you're specifically working in—anytime you get an idea about something you might want to include in the next one, you have a dedicated drop space for those thoughts. Then, when it comes to setting up that next journal, you have all of your ideas collated into one space. I like to have sections for notes, sections for pages that I want to include, and also a space to draw out any of the layouts I might want in there. But you can also have other sections dedicated to thinking about the wins and aversions from the current notebook you're in, anything you might need or want to try in the next one. It's just a handy space to collect all of those thoughts and ideas so that you have them ready for yourself when it comes to doing your new setup.
If you found any of these ideas useful or interesting, though, make sure to give the video a thumbs up! But if you found that 70 ideas wasn't enough, then I do have another video which has over 200 for you. Always keen to give you more journaling inspiration, so click or tap on that one, and I'll see you over there!