January life log flip through and update ✸ a chat about journal discontent 

Something that really helped me was titling my entries rather than focusing on the date! So I'd be like "a day out with ___ at the museum" and then write the date smaller under it. That way I get my snapshot but I can still enjoy writing lots

i use a midori a6 grid notebook and average around 1-2 full pages a day with my journaling, which is mostly for the purpose of memory keeping, having a fun and creative morning routine, and analyzing some of my feelings in regards to mental health. i also ran into the same problem where when i tried to flip through a month and get an overview, i ran into a wall of writing. the way i fixed my issue (and this worked for me but journaling is a super individual endeavor so it might not work for you, but i thought i'd share it anyway!) is that at the top of the new entry, to the right of my stamped date, i would write a few little bulleted lines with a kind of snapshot/overview of the day, leave a space, and start my actual writing/entry. that way, when i flipped through my journal at the end of the month to see what i'd been up to or find a particular section, i could scan those first, easily separated lines and then go more in depth if i chose! i fill my spaces with washi tape and stickers but a more minimal look with white space could also be pretty! a basic and vague example (i'm specific with mine but i won't be here for privacy reasons): 19th museum day grocery shopping with e (trying out new recipe) order from etsy delivered and then here is where i'd start writing down my 1-2 pages of thoughts/memories/go more in detail. i hope this format translates well in this comment, because it helped me a lot! another option that i considered but decided against would be to basically combine the functionality of a hobonichi weeks into my regular a6 journal, where i'd make my own weekly page every week for reference, write my daily entries, and rinse and repeat. that method might work better for you, so i thought i'd mention it too ^^. happy journaling!

Hi Kaitlin! I had the exact same issue! What I now do with my A5 journal, is to date the top of the page, then using a ruler, draw lines dividing up the page into 8 boxes (different widths). Then I add a single memory into each box (1-2 short sentences), with a large single word title at the top of each box, that represents what the memory relates to. It's made it incredibly easy to look back through and trigger full memories. The downside is that it takes a bit of time drawing lines with a ruler (I set up a week at a time), and that it doesn't allow for a full documenting of feelings and thoughts etc, but then again, the short entry may trigger all those memories anyway. Hope this was easy to understand/visualise!

hobo weeks/mega serves the purpose as you mentioned for me. I used monthly for highlights of day/index. the weekly as you did in the video. the notes pages for all thoughts with color coded. and I review it every week. It works for me for several years. It is also satisfied to look at them when they lined up.

I really love dividing pages into margins so then I can long write to process my feelings and write short memories in the margin / a highlight of the day:) or i’ll caption a photo there if it’s just of my animal but there’s a cute moment attached. It’s really helped me to have the both of them

I keep a bullet-point log of my day to see at-a-glance what I did, then I just long-form journal underneath it if I feel like it. It’s a simple solution that works for me.

I use a hobonichi a6 day free so on the monthly, I put down the main thing I want to remember on that day, mood or sometimes just a sticker if I don’t have anything notable. I don’t journal everyday so I consider the monthly like a kind of bare minimum journal entry. :)

I have a section at the top of my daily log for quick recaps of the events of the day, and it works for me as a solution to this issue!

To get a good overview of the month i use the monthly in my hobonichi as my memory keeping page. Its very quick to fill out an useful for reviews. I used to do that in my bullet journal by making a classic monthly page following Ryder Carol’s method and using it to record events and memorable moments. Honestly i dont like to read my journaling entries. I have a very tiny and ugly handwriting and its a pain to read…

Hi Kaitlin, I've been swamped with work so I have not been on here or Patreon, but I will head on the latter soon. I was watching this video while doing some admin tasks and I had to stop and respond because I have the EXACT SAME ISSUE!!!! I've not heard anyone else talk about this. There is something about me wanting the review process to be easy to read and access the information without having to read paragraphs of writing. I struggle a bit with this in my bullet journal as well. I've moved to putting more in my digital calendar and digital task list for this reason. However, for my journal, or Life Book, I'm trying a Hobonichi Cousin Avec. I'm playing with brush lettering and using different fonts to capture titles on the daily pages. On the weekly spreads I'm just capturing a few words with maybe a doodle to capture the major thing from the day. Sometimes that "thing" is a feeling. Like this past Thursday I wrote "Struggle, Frustrated & Tension (each in a different font) and then I wrote "exercise" with a doddle because I had a remarkable change in my mood after that exercise and then I ended that day doodling a tea cup and tell the tea I enjoyed that evening. I don't know if this is making sense but it is working well. So far, I'm filling up the daily pages enough for me to be happy and I have been able to keep up with it regularly for January. If it ends up being too much space then I might decide on a different dated planner, like the weeks or a TN insert like you showed.

I use journaling for both memory keeping and just braindumping. For quick reference I generally look at my planner because it's a literal record of what exactly what i was doing. I use the monthly pages to write the most memorable part of each day, and there I have a monthly recap at a glance! But if you wanted to do this all in one notebook, because it seems like you really enjoyed writing about each day, maybe in the future just make a section like "top highlights of the day" and maybe put 3 highlights each day! or whenever a day doesn't have highlights maybe you don't even need to do that. If you've really enjoyed actually writing longform entries totally keep up with it! no need to stop just because it doesn't work with how you like to review your months! just figure something out so that you can continue to enjoy what you do!