Thoughts on my journal (Part 1)

          I'm sure you all know by now how much I like the Power-Sheets Journal and how it makes me think, but now that I have tried it for 7 months the verdict is in. While I love the current journal and liked working in it but I've also come to see its limitations for me. Some of the questions posed in the summaries of each month and a few of the questions in the 3 month check in don't work for me. I've been filling them in mainly because I hate leaving them empty. I've come to realize that the "Tending Sheet" is basically a big tracker (Daily, Weekly and Monthly), and I've got a perfectly good one in my journal. I also have come to hate the fact that I have two journals. I prefer just using one. Yep, I know in the beginning of the year I wanted many but now I realized that is not the kind of person I am. So starting next month I'm going to try my own system. I'm going to take what I liked from the Power-Sheets and add my own spin on it in my journal. 

I've counted boxes and this helps me know how to size my two page calendar.

This is what my monthly calendar will look like. I've counted boxes and know exactly where the lines should go. Our week starts on a Sunday so that is how I'm going to start my calendar.

This page is where I will break down my main goals into small mini steps and also prioritize my goals.

This is my "Tending Sheet" AKA Tracker page.

This is my month in review page at the end of the month. I love it in the Power Sheets, but I hate the questions on it so I changed that.

I'm keeping the "Ideas for Blog and Books Read" page, and next I'm going to think about how to structure my 3 month check in pages and the work that needs to be done up front each year... The second part to this might not come next week but it will come :-)

Monthly Update August

          Last month I talked about wanting to journal more because I lost track of time and also memories. So July with the exception of a couple of days I kept up my bullet journalling and journaled a little. This month I’m hoping to do more journalling wise.

          My trackers in my journal is the part I kept up with the most and it helped me keep on track. 

This month I added the same exact tracker. 

Yeah, I love that little sticker 🤣 

I decided to go with a simple theme for the title page. 

The line drawings are actually stamps. I was going to color them but I like the whole black and white theme.

          My Powersheet notebook is the one where I really did a lot of work as usual. I Love the tending sheet page and the calendar was a lot of help. I also added the small goals that I finished during the month and it has been motivating!

I’ve also loved the separate calendars for tasks divided by topic so I’ve used that again this month. 

As usual I’ve worked on my month in review. 

I also put together my tending sheet and calendar for this month and made specific goals for this month. 

I really am enjoying my Power Sheet journal. I’m about 95% sure I will be getting one for next year.

Monthly Journal Update

          It is a new month and so a journal update is in order. Last month was an abject failure in journalling but a sort of success when it comes to figuring out a bit more about myself and power sheets. I learned after adding some smaller goals to my power sheets that I needed more concrete bite-sized goals that go towards the big goal and luckily this month is when the power sheets give you the chance to look over your old goals and revamp them. So today I’m going to start with that. 

I didn’t actually take pictures of everything I did but I used to have more goes than this. I’ve streamlined a few and added more chunks to some. I have targets now, mini-steps that I take for the bigger picture. 

I filled out the other pages too which helped me mentally. 

So let me show you last month’s tending sheet. 

As you can see lots of days where things went to the dogs when it came to my language studies and I also felt like my tasks were not specific enough. 

Here is this month’s tending sheet.

Not many tasks but specific enough to let me have a more detailed approach. 

Now the power sheets calendar is where I keep track of my bills and when they need to be paid when to take my Humeira medication when to post my blogs and I record when I finished a set goal. So I did not want to clutter it with anything more and I hated that sheet they have at the back of the calendar to list mini-goals so what I did was add separate calendars for three different things I wanted to keep track of my Islamic studies, my Korean studies, and my Mandarin studies. 

As you can see...clutter! But organized clutter.

I'm also using Google Calendar to organize my lecture times as just writing them in my journal is not enough of a reminder. I have it set up to remind me of the classes 15 minutes before the lessons.

Now to my journal. The only thing I kept up with there is my tracker page, my idea blog page and my books read...even there weren’t many books read 😂

Here Are the opening pages for this month in my journal.

Now I vowed to myself that I was going to journal more this month because last month was a total failure in that regard and so far I have kept my word to myself.....but the month is only at its beginning...so we’ll see.

I did subscribe to a new stationery box from Japan so you might be seeing reviews of that every month! 

That is it for now!

Journal Update.

    If you remember in a previous post I told you about my journey with journalling and keeping a bullet journal. And how I planned on doing things this year. I also talked about my Cultivate What Matters Powersheets and how I planned on using them. Well now I've been using these 4 notebooks for 3 months now and I'm ready to give you a new update on them.

1. The Four Notebook System.

I am no longer using 4 notebooks. That system just was not working for me. I no longer use the notebook reserved for the study programs. It was not something I looked at because due to first getting sick in January and February, then the Corona Virus situation that escalated big time in March, those programs are on hold or canceled and now I just do as I can. The second notebook that I got rid of was the notebook that I was using to add my weekly and monthly tasks too. I kept forgetting to look at it and things started to slip past me. It was a total mess. So now I only use my daily journal which also has my daily tasks in it. And my Powersheets which have the month in view of my tasks and any future tasks get added to it.

2. Daily Journal

    The daily journal which I use both as a bullet journal now for my daily tasks and also as a way to keep record of my day, is still the one I got from Ferris Wheel and which I have reviewed here. I'm still using the one which looks like the Traveller's notebook. Although the notebook itself is of good quality I have to admit I'm not a Traveller's Notebook type of person. I won't be getting that size again.

    The first thing I did this month was figure out the kind of colors I wanted to use so I picked out some stickers and a washi tape that I will be using through out the month of April. You can see both below.

    I also decided that my tracker for last month was perfect so I will be keeping that as well as my Blog idea page, however, I will be adding a section on Books Read on the Blog Idea Page.

March 2020 Blog Idea Page and the Tracker

    This is what my cover page looks like for April. I postcard that I liked on one side and some stickers and washi tape on the other with April 2020 written down. I also added a tab sticker which has a tiny calendar on it but it is not shown in this picture.

April 2020

This is what my Tracker, Blog Idea and Books Read pages look like.

April 1, 2020 Daily Page

Finally this is what my daily pages look like. The date on top, tasks underneath, and then my daily activities that I want to write about.

3. PowerSheets

    One of the main things I love about Powersheets is that every 3 months you get a few pages that make you look at the previous three months and assess where you are at with respect to your goals. This is the time to change your mind or adjust things where they need adjusting.

    This is what I took the time to do during a lull at work at the beginning of April. I looked at my goals, re-evaluated myself and what I can realistically do. My goals stayed the same but they are a little more realistic now.

    These previous pages were all the work I put into re-assessing myself and my goals and I really enjoyed working on them. Next is what needed to be focused on in April and how to work on them.

April Monthly Task list

April's Monthly, Weekly, and Daily Tending list.

For now this is my journalling setup, whether it will be streamlined more in the coming months is yet to be seen. 

Cultivate What Matters Power Sheets

          The end of 2019 brought with it a lot of thinking and a lot of decisions that had to be made and goals that had to be set. Being the planner girl that I am I was surfing YouTube to look for ideas on spreads or sections that would help me set goals and track them. While I was searching I found a video by Cindy Guentert-Baldo starting her prep work for the Cultivate What Matter planner.

It made me go looking for the Cultivate What Matters website. I read a few of their blogs and viewed a few of their videos. Some of their posts are a little Christian Centric but that is a minor issue and can be ignored if that is not your cup of tea. After some thought, I finally took the plunge and bought the planner (as I already mentioned in a previous post). While I waited for it to arrive and knowing that it was going to take a while to get it thanks to our postal system in Kuwait, I worked on the preparation work by working through the videos on their website. It is a 5 part series that walks you through the material in the beginning of every Power Sheets planner.

          My planner arrived on January 4 and I spent the whole day and part of the next getting used to the planner and transferring the preparation work I did before into the planner.

So let's take a look at what the planner looks like. Apparently, I actually bought the planner and a sticker book as well...I had forgotten about that.

I got the flower cover, the cover itself is hard and the edges have the metal bits that protect the corners.

The sticker book has interesting stickers in it. I don’t know if I am going to use all of it this year but I can always use it with my other planners.

The front inside cover has a pocket and I put the cards that came with the planner in it. The cards can be used as post cards and to put your word of the year on so that you can keep it with you at all times without flipping to the relevant page in the planner.

It has a title page and a sticker page as well. 

These pages are the pages of the preparation work. They make you look into yourself, and think about how to look at your goals and how to realistically break down your goals into manageable chunks. 

Then comes the monthly pages, a prep page, the calendar pages, a goal focusing page, and tending list. The tending list is your actions for that month. Finally, a month review page.

Then every three months there is a review of the last three months and reevaluation of your goals.

I have been using the Power Sheets for almost a month now and I am loving it even though falling sick made me fall behind on my goals. I am using the monthly calendar to record my daily wins and it is working well for me. It also helped me realize that one of my goals needs more work than I actually thought and the first step is actually research this goal. 

I'll be doing the end of month review of my planning system and re-evaluate some stuff.