So I got back into journaling recently, and I started to combine it with goal setting and goal tracking. Not quite billet journal style – I lack the discipline for that, but using some of the ideas from that methodology, while I also add my own touch to it. I think my Mission President (one of the four) would be happy to know that I’m applying the principles that he taught me 23 years ago. I still have my original, battered Franklin Planner somewhere, with my goals and plans. Thank you President Winwood for all those great things you taught us to become not only better missionaries but to have more success in our lives.
So I ordered a few things to help me both beautify and make my journal more functional. Nothing as fancy as those stencil sets I keep drooling over, but some fun stamps, stickers, and washi tape. Of course I ordered them because I have a whole bunch of ink pads in a number of colors… the only question is where they are. Obviously, this is the time when I simply can’t find them. If anyone knows where I put them, please let me know!
So what makes my planning different? I do two things. As I mentioned before, I don’t make year-long resolutions, but shorter ones that can contribute towards a bigger, long term goal that might or might not fit a calendar year. Some of it is aimed at developing good habits, some are things I want to try for fun, some are there to really just track how I’m doing. So for every month or week page I have a list of these, a tracker for them with my own marking system, and a weekly evaluation. Some pages also have art from Elder Harman of a duck that has skipped leg days. I mean he is a brilliant artist, why wouldn’t I want his art randomly in my journal?
I have pages of notes from a given day, for example from Ward Council, or a special talk I heard in church or a good training at work. These pages can break the weekly and daily flows, they are on the next empty page. Sometimes external planner or thematic pages are attached, just to have a different view to help me evaluate my progress.
The important part comes from a habit from my mission – again, that Franklin Planner and the lessons taught by Pres. My daily task dump. These vary from day to day, and significantly differ between work days and weekdays. I, however, start to pencil in tasks as I plan them for a certain day, and review and confirm them every morning, and mark them off and follow up throughout the day. Since my work also involves unplanned activities and tasks, I add them separately as they come along, just to see what else I did in my day. This has become even more important for me since I started to work in a flexible schedule, and there are days where I work 10+ hours and days when I work less than 8. I need to see the balance that doesn’t only manifest in the number of hours averaging 40 a week, but also that the work I put in justifies the time I spend on working.
And then… of course there are the journals where I keep a record of my life. Those are in separate journals/notebooks, but I store the overlapping ones together. Of course sometimes I quit for a time, but the instruction in D&C 21 (“Behold, there shall be a record kept among you;”) and the lessons taught and learned always bring me back to that notebook and pen to keep a record.
So This Woman 