How I'm doing daily journalling now

I've talked before about how I've practiced daily morning and evening reflections. I've always felt writing down in the morning how I'm feeling and what tasks I have for the day really helps to set the day on the right path. I would do this using a Notion template where it would give me the daily prompts I would follow in my writing. However, one thing I've always felt was that I'd much rather carry out these reflections with pen and paper and avoid relying on my computer for this.

This has been a difficult thing for me to accomplish though. I've watched so many videos about daily journalling but nothing felt right. I like structure when it comes my reflections. That's why having the Notion templates helped, because it was easy to delete things that were wrong for me, easier for me to change. In a notebook, I'd have to cross it out and leave it in the book or tear out the page. I initially tried the Bullet Journal Method by Ryder Carrol. I watched all of his videos on bullet journaling for organisation, but I struggled to stay consistent and I didn't like the way it came across in my notebook.

I decided I needed to essentially copy what my Notion templates gave me, but in a notebook. So I started that.

In the morning I record the time I got up and how I feel the quality of my sleep is. I'm doing this because I'd like to be getting up at 5:30am every morning and so keeping track of this can help me see if I'm making progress (I'm currently not). At the moment, the sleep quality entry is purely vibes based. I'd like to use an actual sleep tracker app, but I also don't want me phone next to me in bed and I already use my table to play audiobooks when I'm in bed, so I'll figure out a solution soon enough.

Then I write how I'm feeling. Just something short to put into words my emotions in that moment. SOmetimes I'll write a bit more than just two words.

Then, it's the day's tasks. I stick to just the most important three or the three I know I can get done that day and I will often try to keep it varied between professional and personal tasks. This ensures I have some easy wins that I can focus on and getting all the tasks done definitely improves my mood and helps me feel like I've accomplished something.

Next, I write the events for that day, so I can easilyt remember it. After that I'll write down the main focus for the day. This could be another task that doesn't have a clear, objective measure or just something to mentally focus on that day, before finishing it off with one thing I'm grateful for.

In the evening I again write down my mood before talking about what was my Biggest Win and Biggest Challenge of the day, to allow me to take some sort of success from the day but to also be aware of where things could improve.

Then I'll go over the tasks I'd set myself earlier that day and then I'll write down some sort of lesson I learnt that day, maybe something I read or something I figured out that day before planning some tasks for the next day. These might not be the tasks I stick to the next morning as priorities can change.

At the end I write some sort of closing thought for the day.

The beauty of this is that I can have the notebook out in my living room and start writing early on in the morning rather than having to go to my computer and wait for it to turn on. Also, I can include pages for the week and the month so that I'm able to set myself larger goals for that period and reflect on them easily enough.

Another few additions I have is a Current Chapter page. Here I set myself overarching goals for what I refer to as a chapter and viewing aspects of my life in this way help me to not view certain life situations as the end. For instance, one thing I've worried about career wise is my whether or not I'll get back into a job I'm happy with. I would worry that if I ended up in a job where I was stacking shelves or working as waiter that that would be the end for me and I'll be stuck doing that for the rest of my life. Viewing it as just the current chapter puts it into perspective that it isn't the end and things can improve.

I also have in this notebook a list of books and video gamesI want to get through. Just another thing I'd like to keep track of and make progress through.

Overall, I'd say that this has been a succesful endeavour. I've actually surprised myself with how consistent I've been with this. While I've missed the odd entry, for the most part I've been pretty good at staying on track with it. I guess using pen and paper has it's advantages. I'd definitely recommend giving paper daily journaling a try to help one organise their life and reflect on their emotions. It's certainly helped me.