Journaling helps to organize your life and clean-up your mind. It helps you to see the past, the present and the future clearly and this way strengthen your focus on what to do now. The Minimalists Journal has a simple structure and is easy to use. Therefor it creates such benfits with little burden. It doesn't look nice unless you enforce it, but minimal looks good on its own.
Here you'll find instructions and templates to create a clean and useful journal with minimal effort.
The Minimalists Journal splits into a monthly and an annual journal. The monthly journal contains everything about current activites and divides into a weekly planner section and a section for note making. It's small and fits even below the keyboard on your desk or into your bag. The annual journal contains everything long-term like plans, calendars, goals or reflections.
Since the proposed journal requires some crafting and costs there's also a simplified version of the journal to get started.
Contents
The Minimalists Journal are actually two journals the monthly and the annual journal.
The first pages of the monthly journal are a set of weekly planners, enough for one month of planning. The other half consist of dotted sheets to write down ideas and keep record of all kind of thoughts. Both parts relief your brain from the burden to keep them in memory. It helps you to decide what to do now and ignore anything beyond that.
The annual journal has no strict structure. It contains various calendars, trackers and long-term collections. Collections can be all sorts of things: TODO lists wish lists, favorites lists, ideas / concepts, goals&plans, analysis, self-knowledge & reflections. Just start them in your monthly journal and carry over them later-on to block out short lived ideas.
| Monthly Journal | Annual Journal (Left Handed) |
|---|---|
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Use wire binding for the monthly journal so you can use it double sided or single side to save space on your desk. Use Supaclip 40 to bookmark the current weekly planner. A customized magnetic clip marks the last pages in the notes section.
Use a ring book A5 for a customizable annual journal.
| Weekly Planner Bookmark | Single Sided Use (Left Handed) |
|---|---|
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Since the monthly journal ends after one month, it forces you to do regular clean-up and you should take your time for some thinking. Check-out "The 4 Questions" and "KALM" for some simple retrospective methods. Study the recorded weekly planners and review your long-term plans & goals. Then write a monthly summary and define the next monthly goals. Try to get more realistic on your goals each month.
| The 4 Questions | KALM |
|---|---|
| What have I learned? What went well? What should change? Where there ambiguities? |
Keep Add Less More |
Where appropriate carry-over the last monthly journal to the annual journal or the next monthly journal. Archive or dispose the obsolte notes.
With a "Done" stamp notes can be marked as obsolete during the month and simplifying it to search your notes.
Use the weekly planners to do some rough planning at least once per week. Check your calendar and tracker lists for pending activities and transfer them to the weekly planner.
Refine your weekly planner on a daily basis if needed. Log the actual activities there as well, though you can compare plan vs. reality later on.
The longer the time span the less presice become goals. Use trackers and calendars to stay on track with your duties. Set some goals and estimate their priority, while considering the larger context. There are two ways to break it down.
Structure in time:
- live phase (by age)
- year
- quarter
- month
- day
Structure of planning:
- live phase (situation)
- live goals
- projects
- ideas & activites
Get started with the simplified Minimalists Journal. It supports the same ideas at lower costs, but less convenience.
Get an A5 spiral block with dotted pages and put it landscape. Skip the first five sheets. Glue an A5 weekly planner onto each of the next five sheets. The following pages are for note making. The first sheets contain everthing for the annual journalling.
Atfter all weekly planners are filled a new monthly journal starts. Remove the old notes and weekly planners and glue in five new weekly planners.
Go to the crafting page for templates to fill the annual journal and for more customizations.
| Split Pages | Weekly Planner |
|---|---|
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For the least effort to build a monthly journal find an online printer for spiral books. Send them one of the following PDFs:
Some suitable online printers are:
- Europe: WirmachenDruck.de, Direktprint
- US: Printingcenterusa
Offset paper shows the best results for writing a journal. With a wire bind of 10 millimeter diameter, the best comfort is achieved.
Go to the crafting page for templates to fill the annual journal and for more customizations.
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