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This post is part two in a “start writing” series of posts I plan to write. Here is a link to the series archive.

why journal?

In my previous post, I outlined some reasons you may want to journal, and here is the list (I will update the list items as I write more posts):

1. to keep a record of your mood, state of mind, and events in your life as they happen
2. to plan and manage tasks in your daily life and to schedule events in advance
3. to express yourself, exercise your creativity, and have a space to be your authentic self
4. to process thoughts and emotions in a private, unfiltered way
5. to be more self-aware and discover areas in need of personal growth
6. to set goals, track your progress, and celebrate your achievements

Today, I would like to write about the second reason I listed above.

2. journaling to plan and manage tasks in your daily life and to schedule events in advance

I love my stationery supplies. I love the feeling of writing with a nice pen (my favorite is the Sakura Pigma Micron 005 for my journal at the moment) on some smooth, beautiful paper (Tomoe River for me 😍). Even so, I am a pragmatic person who prefers the least complicated and most efficient solution whenever possible. Therefore, I personally prefer to manage my tasks and events digitally most of the time. The functionality of calendar applications is difficult to emulate in an analog system, unfortunately.

Most people have a system where they may take notes on paper and use digital resources in some ways to organize their schedule, or they may use some other similar method to plan and manage daily tasks. I call the systems that make use of both digital and analog (pen & paper) resources “hybrid planning.” I keep a record of important dates in my analog journal, but I only use predetermined symbols and use brief descriptions as reminders. Most of my scheduling and event planning takes place on my phone’s Calendar app, since I can import the various calendars I have in one place and share the calendars with others as needed.

In the above image, the triangles (shaped like this: ▶️) that I scribble in the green column let me know whether I have an event or appointment that day. If I have multiple events that day, I add a small x at the bottom right corner of the triangle.

Then, on the daily pages, I write a brief description of the event or appointment like this:

This is my way to remind myself, just in case I forget to check my calendar app. You could figure out a different way to set up reminders in your journal, but I find that this way works for me. I like using symbols to standardize things and make note-taking quicker.

For task management, I use Google Tasks, since it integrates with calendar nicely if I need it to. On the daily pages of my analog journal, I will write a few tasks that are the most important and denote with marks when they are in progress or completed.