How to Journal Every Day for Increased Productivity, Clarity, and Mental Health

(bright thoughtful music) – Hi, everyone, my name is Matt, and welcome to another bullet journal productivity video. In this week’s episode, I’m going to be showing you how I journal and create a daily practice of journaling using this tiny pocket-size Baron Fig Confidant. I love this little thing. It’s fantastic. Fits right in the back pocket as you would expect from a pocket-size journal.
Make sure that you check out all these videos. You’ve seen how I’ve used a normal-size bullet journal on all the videos that I have for that. They’re going to be linked everywhere on this video, so make sure you check those out. But I’m mainly going to be concentrating on how you can use a simple daily practice for journaling and keeping your ideas down using this pocket-size, and so that’s where we’re going to be concentrating on today. Can’t wait to get into it with you. Here we go. I want to show you in size, real quick, the difference between the pocket-size and the flagship size for the Baron Fig Confidant.
As you can see, it’s almost double the size. Actually, I don’t know that. I just kind of made it up. But you can see it’s significantly bigger, the way that it, you know, this will obviously fit into your pocket. This has no chance, unless you’re wearing some sweet cargos, shout out to the cargo pants that are still being worn out there in the world. But we’re not going to worry about this one right now.
I just wanted to show you the difference. I hate the first page, I don’t put anything on it. And then I just kind of fill in some other details. This is from Tim Ferriss: life rewards the specific ask but punishes the vague wish. So I’ve just got a bunch of bullets right here. A couple of icons, just notes about the day, the weather. Whatever I want to put in here is totally fine for me to put in here.
Feel free to write down ideas, make notes, ask questions, put down icons, don’t think of this as overly structured, and that you have to this like flowing wonderful journal that people are going to obsess over. You know, maybe, maybe that’ll happen. Maybe that’ll happen for you. Google some of Leonardo da Vinci’s journals, and you’ll just see that his were very random and haphazard as well.
So now I just want to show you some other pages that I’ve marked, just so you can get an idea. Doing a lot of icons on this one. You can see multiple days on one page. January 7th, 8th, 9th. A lot of the same ideas and notes. Just making notes and ideas about the day and not taking it too seriously. Not going to lie, wanted to brag about this one. This was a day that I flew.
My flight got canceled and then rerouted, so I actually went from San Diego to Seattle, three hour layover in Seattle, Space Needle here, and then long flight back to Nashville. Another little example that I wanted to show you where you’ll recognize this from the last video that I just did is that this is the project planning template that I just put into the previous video. You can check that out with the link, something, I don’t know, you can find it.
But this is just where I started, this is where I was using that a little bit. And in fact, scooting down a little bit more, you can see here that this is like, this is where I started scoping that out. This is where I started just sketching out what it was going to look like. This is the kind of thing that I’m doing in the journal. It’s not just that I’m writing things down. It’s not just that I’m making, oooo, that one’s good, too. It’s not just that I’m making notes or writing down feelings.
I’m doing all those things. Like, I’m doing whatever I want. I’m doing as much as I want in this journal. Another little thing that I’ll do. You probably recognize this from another video on the evening routine. You can check that one out as well. But I drew out the thumbnail image right here in this journal. So just another thing, another thing to do using pictures, using icons. One thing that I do want to bring up and I want to make specific is that backfilling is okay. So you can see right here. This is eight days. Eight days on one page.
So if you ever get to the point as I did right here where you’re like, oh my gosh, an entire week without entries, what do I do? Just go back, try and remember one thing, maybe just one thing about each day, and make a little note of it. ‘Cause it’s still something that’s going to, that’s going to make it more memorable for you, that’s going to cement something important in your mind.
So the four parts of journaling that I want to emphasize to you and make really concrete so that you have some takeaways for this video is to, number one, make it easy. Even just one word to start, even just one line on a day. Any of that can be a good way to start. Number two, use pictures and icons to have fun, make it a little bit different. They don’t have to be super fancy.
Just make it easy, make it as simple as some stick figures. You’ll be surprised how much that’ll make it more interesting for you. Number three, just use it for whatever you want. So write down ideas, notes, questions, icons, sketches, anything that you want it to do. This is, it’s really for you. And I want to really emphasize that, that whatever you’re doing in here, this should be for you.
You shouldn’t be writing this or thinking about it in terms of well, what’s going to look, what’s going to look super fancy if someone finds this? Don’t worry about that or you’re totally going to get stuck. And the last thing is that backfilling is okay. So if you miss some days, even an entire week without entries, then I wouldn’t worry about that. I also wouldn’t worry about it if you don’t want to go back and fill things in.
However you want to use this, that is how you, my friend, should use your journal. I do want to say, like this entire video came out of conversations that I’ve had with other people in the community, so make sure that you’re commenting, make sure that you’re asking questions about what you want more clarification on, things that I can help you learn more about and be more productive, and be more mindful of where you’re spending your time. Specifically, I want to say thanks to Allen for bringing up this idea initially.
We’ve talked about it some on Instagram, so you can comment below, you can send me a DM or comment on the photos. And also, a shout to my friend Kayley on Twitter. I’ll link to her bio in the description below, but she’s a shoot, she, (laugh) but she’s a super-smart writer, and she and I were talking about journaling throughout the week as well. So shout out to her also.
The last thing that I want to remind you about is you can also go to bulletjournalguy.com to download the entire productivity pack, including the ten blocks, the time-tracking grids, the monthly project planner that I just laid out in the previous video as well that everyone’s been loving. So check all those out. Get everything that you need to be more productive, be more focused, and be more mindful of where you’re spending your time.
You’ll also get added to the email list when you do that, and I send out special emails, like email content and just like general questions and thoughts that I don’t send anywhere else but to people on the email list. So when you join right there, you’ll get access to all of that as well. So can’t wait to keep interacting with you. Like I said, there’s three main ways to do that.
Commenting here, please do that. Give this a like and a thumbs up. I think that’s the same thing. And subscribe, and then check out the email list and Instagram as well. There’s a lot of different ways we can interact. Do what’s best for you. I’m going to be here for you, and can’t wait to keep sharing all this with you. Hope you have a great week. See you next time, bye. (thoughtful electronic music)