(This post contains affiliate links but obviously I’m a raving fan of the journal and only recommend it because it’s helped me so much!)
My brain acts like a pinball machine. My thoughts are all over the place, I’m super easily distractable, and I have a hard time focusing on long term goals rather than short term. Enter The Best Self Journal. I’ve been using the journal for the past six months and I’m so jazzed up for how much it’s improved my productivity that I knew I had to share with you all!
Now to be completely honest, I had been using Erin Condren Planners for the past few years and I did (do) love them. They are gorgeous and fun to use. But I needed something more this year, I needed more than a place to write down appointments, I needed a tool to make me more productive. The Self Journal is just that, let me tell you why…
The 6 Principles
The very beginning of the journal walks you through the 6 principles for the journals design:
- Creating a roadmap to achieve your goals
- Having a zero-based time schedule, so planning for your entire day, even the free time
- Prioritizing your days to be more productive
- Remaining flexible (the journal is self-dated so no empty pages while you’re on vacation!)
- Tracking and Reflection-practicing habits and reflecting on wins and losses
- Positivity-each day starts and ends with gratitude
There are worksheets at the beginning of the journal to walk you through your 13 week goals. Not only setting the goals but breaking them up into steps to help you achieve them and track your progress. You identify key actions and tasks you can do to make that end state goal a reality-it’s so motivating!
Then you move on to planning your days. Each day is divided into 30 minute “chunks” that you can use to plan your day. That doesn’t mean I’m working constantly but rather I am planning for the time I’m not working as well as working. So you can see in the picture above I plan for the times I’m getting my kids up, dressed and to school. I plan for school pick up and dinnertime. I also plan for workouts and free time on social media. BUT I am intentional about it. That means if I have 11-11:30 scheduled for putzing around on Facebook while I’m having an early lunch, come 11:30 Facebook goes bye-bye and I get back to work on what I had scheduled. It give you accountability to yourself and your priorities.
I also love sitting down once in the morning to look over my plan and writing down three things I’m grateful for. In the evening you once more reflect on what you are grateful for as well as lessons learned that day and wins for the the day. (And there’s a super inspiring quote on each page!)
There is also place to reflect on each week’s progress-what worked, what didn’t. Did you focus on the right things, did you keep up the habits you are trying to work into your life. I like to track my exercise and water I drink in addition to my work goals here.
Since I started using this journal I feel like I got an extra hour or two in my days…it’s fantastic! So-if you are interested I have great news for you-the people at Best Self are so amazing that they even let you download a pdf of the journal to print and use at home. This is what I did when I was first interested in trying it. I loved it so much I knew I wanted to order a hard copy bound version and now I’m finishing up my second journal!
Click here to check the journal out yourself.
Join our Blogging Community
Join over 2500 bloggers and aspiring bloggers for exclusive tips and tricks via email, access to our private Facebook group and I'll send you a free blog statistic tracking spreadsheet as a welcome gift!
Thanks for sharing–I don’t need this in-depth of a journal but I am loving your new book–Bite Size Organize!! This has helped me get better organized!
Congratulations to your husband and you–What an Accomplishment!!
Thanks so much Alicia-and I’m SO glad you’re finding the book helpful! ~Melissa
Hey Heather ! I always start out with great intentions to be super organized. I use lists, my planner etc. I usually end of feeling frustrated because finding the time to do the planning itself is hard! Did you just make the commitment to do this or is their something different about this planner that makes it easier? Thanks!!! P.S. congratulations to your husband !!! Quite an accomplishment !!
Thank you! What I like about this journal is you just take about 5minutes in the morning and 5 minutes in the evening to plan and reflect on your day-it’s not a huge commitment and the difference it’s made in my days has been HUGE. The intro part of the planner gives you a really good explanation for how to structure your days and use it properly-if you go to the shop I linked to and go to the planner sales page there is an option to download it (in full!) to try out. That’s what I did at first then I wanted a hard copy so I ordered a few to use over the year.
I can’t wait to see if this will work for me. Thank you for sharing ?
I love that you can download it to try for free first-it shows their confidence in how effective it is-I knew within the first few days I wanted a hard copy because it helped me be so much more organized right away. I hope you like it as much as I do! ~Melissa