How to start Journaling in Your New Journal

So you’ve figured out what kind of journal you want to start. Here comes the most daunting part for some: How to start it. Those blank pages are just staring at you, waiting for the pen or pencil to touch the paper, but what should go in the first few pages?

You've chosen your type of Journal/planner
What's Next?
What are the Key Values?
Tracking Your Progress
Other Options

You’ve chosen your type of Journal/planner

As I mentioned in my previous post, “Types of Journals and Planners I use“, choosing the main focus of your journal is important.

Now, it’s time to find the focal point of journaling.

Before we begin, I want to point out that there is no reason you need a separate planner or journal for specific focal points. You can still have everything within one book to save money, and it’s easier to find things if it’s all in one place. It is totally up to your personal preference.

Here are some focal point ideas:

Health Care Monitoring	A journal monitoring your progress through new medication, pregnancy, rehabilitation, etc. With the use of medication, moods, weight, nutrition trackers, and more.
Emotional Stability	A reflective style journal. Writing about the day’s highlights, struggles, challenges, gratitude, energy levels, stress levels, anxiety levels, and moods. There is also a range of journals on Amazon that are aimed specifically at ways to deal with stress, anxiety, anger and self-love.
Productivity	Better suited as a planner, rather than a journal. The main focus is on time management and organisation. Using time boxing or time blocking tools to help plan each day. It’s especially useful for work, projects, or family management.
Creativity	With options of a Junk Journal, Scrapbook Journal, or any art sketchbook. There is no need for trackers, reflections, or writing. It is more to let creativity flow onto the page and see what happens.
Studying/Projects	Another that is suited for planners, rather than a journal. Focusing on ideas, project planning, goal setting, progress stages, reviews, deadlines, and exams.
Review Entertainment	A review-style journal. Monitoring what books, movies, TV series, games, etc within a month. With the use of trackers, monthly statistics, reviews, ratings, and next month’s aims.

What’s Next?

After you’ve written your name on the title page, the fun – or for some… not so fun- part begins.

To show my process of what I do, I’ll be using images of my Sprouted Planner Daily Planner. It’s just to give you an idea of what you can do. You don’t have to copy it exactly; it’s just a guide to help you.

What are the Key Values?

Key Values – aka Goals – are the areas in life you want to work on. The owner of Sprouted Planner made a workshop video to help find them.

Once you’ve found your key values, it’s time to set your intentions for each of them. Now it is explained in the video, but just in case you didn’t make it to the end. You’re intentions are “how you are going to live out your key value”.

As you can see in the picture, my values are the 6 areas I want to work on for the rest of the year.

Then, for the intentions, I wrote what I wanted to do for each of them, like a target.

To help me reach the targets, I set tasks to help me get there. These tasks are something that I can track.

Value > Target > Task

Tracking Your Progress

Here is where you are free to decide if you want to track/monitor your progress throughout the month or not. You can choose how frequently you monitor your progress. It can be in a weekly tracker on a Weekly spread. A monthly tracker placed after the monthly log, before your weekly and daily pages. Making it easier to find at the start of the monthly collection. Or it can be a yearly tracker, in the first few pages of your journal after the year-at-a-glance page.

If you need inspiration on different ways to design your trackers, then Pinterest and Instagram are your friends. There are so many photos of different designs to help spark your creativity.

I personally like to monitor my tasks for my key values as monthly trackers. I track my Relationship, Fitness, Creativity, and Project tasks in my Habit Tracker (the coloured Icons in the picture correlate with the key value colours). My Home tasks are monitored in my Cleaning tracker (using the Alphabet, which is assigned a chore). Lastly, my Wellness tasks are in my Self-Care bingo. As not everything is a daily task, it’s more of a “Whenever I can” task; a bingo layout works best.