Monthly Update (December)

          Last month’s lack of motivation really messed me up when it came to my studies, and my journalling. I went days with out writing one sentence in my journal and I hated it. So I vowed that I wouldn’t push myself too much this month but That I should write as much as I can. 

NOVEMBER TRACKER PAGE:

Notice the crosses and brown splotches. The brown is me taking time off and the crosses are just me not having enough energy to do anything. 

There is one thing that I did do and that is pass the first semester of ZAD Academy.

DECEMBER TRACKER PAGE:

I messed up the grid a little so I used white out and then added a sticker on top. 😂 

I took out my morning routine and instead I added Apps as a thing I wanted to track otherwise nothing else changed. 

MONTHLY REVIEW:

I did do the monthly review and I poured my thoughts into it and what I might do different in December. 

DECEMBER COVER PAGE:

Yeah, don’t ask me why unicorns are a thing on this page, in fact don’t ask me why it looks like this. I have no idea.

MONTH AT A GLANCE PAGES:

December month at a glance page. 

This is November’s month at a glance.

MONTHLY GOALS:

Notice how compact it is. Yeah, I’m not doing much this month and that is deliberate. I need to regroup and relax. 

I decided that doing one book at a time right now was the way to go instead of working on many books all at once. 

Well, this is my update for this month.

Monthly Update: November 2020

          As we neared the end of October I realized that by the end of the month I would not have enough pages for a full next month so I decided to move to a new notebook. The new notebook is the exact same one as the one I was using from May to October so no change there.

          Now let us talk about October. For the most part I started strong and then at the end I kind of lost steam. You can see it in my tracker a little bit. I decided to give myself some time off each week and there are times when for Korean and Mandarin I just studied using the apps which I don't think of as real study but at least I didn't leave off completely, and most of this happened at the end of the month mostly.

          I'm going to talk about my language studies and what I plan to change this month in a separate post suffice it to say, I'm tweaking my routine a bit. I might start a study challenge but we'll see. The first thing I did on October 31 was review the month and see which goals are working and which ones aren't or need tweaking.

I looked at my calendar as well as my monthly goal's page from October to see how I did and assess everything.

          Next I set up next month as usual. I did a title page using a simple post card that I liked and then set up my month at a glance calendar and my trackers.

Also as usual I set up my goals for this month. I'm happy with how the setup turned out as usual.

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. 

Update on Repurposed Journal

     I wanted to share with you an update on the condition of my repurposed notebook which I now use as my journal. If you have not read about it before check out how I repurposed the notebook here. 

          For the most part the notebook has held up well so far. The problem is with the spine. I forgot to add some cloth tape that is used for book binding to the spine and as a result the edge of the notebook cracked. 

I had to add some washi tape as a stop gap measure until I fine a better way of fixing it without having to rip the cover off and do the spine over again with bookbinding cloth to hold it together. 

On the inside I now cover the writing at the head of the page with washi tape (different colors for different months) and add the sticker calendar as my monthly first page.  I also use pretty memo stickers to write the date on as a way to beautify the page.

I hope you enjoyed this update on my semi-creations.