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Types Of Journal To Keep (How Many Journals Is Too Many?)
How many journals is too many? When there are so many different types of journal to keep, it can be hard to know what to choose. That’s why we love bullet journaling so much. Everything’s in one place.
But if that’s the case… then why do so many of us still have stacks of notebooks surrounding our desks? Why do we trip over journals poking out from underneath our beds?
Turns out, it’s totally okay to have multiple journals. You’ve just got to be crystal clear on their purpose.
20 types of journal to keep
- Bullet journal - to keep everything in one place
- Business planner - to grow your side hustle or career
- Creative ideas notebook - to jot down ideas as they come to you
- Daily to-do list - to maximise your productivity
- Dream journal - to detect patterns in your dreams
- Financial planner - to monitor your finances
- Fitness journal- to keep you on track with your fitness goals
- Habit tracker - to make those goals a daily habit
- Memory journal - to log those precious moments for years to come
- Moon journal- to bring more harmony into your day
- Morning Pages journal - to keep your practice someplace safe
- Parenting journal- to help those little moments last a lifetime
- Personal journal - to journal out your daily thoughts
- Personal planner - to manage your downtime
- Project planner - to help organise big events, like weddings, renovations and holidays
- Study notebook- to remember what your teacher told you each lesson
- Study planner - to keep student life organised
- Travel journal - to document your big adventures
- Work notebook - to keep track of meeting notes and other important to-dos
- Work planner - to plan out your work schedule
But, do you have space for 20 journals in your house? That’s a lot of paper. And even more ink!
If you had to choose just one type of journal to keep...
If we were to choose just one type of journal to keep, it’d be a bullet journal. All those journals we listed above? You could bring them all into one. Everything could be in one place.
There are so many benefits to this simple system - from mindfulness to mental health and so much more. But there are also a few challenges. Most notably, around bringing different areas of your life together.
Still, a big question lingers. Do you combine your work and personal life into one bullet journal? Or, do you keep them separate?
Combining your work and personal bullet journal
Combining your work and personal bullet journals together can give you a more holistic view of your life. When our personal lives and work lives are so intertwined, it can make separating them hard.
We only have one dose of energy to share between the two sectors of our lives. So managing your time in just one location makes a lot of sense.
We loved what this Reddit user had to say about combining your work and personal bullet journals:
“My advice as a productivity junky - keeping separate bujos (bullet journals) for work and home can trick you into thinking you have separate energy banks to accomplish tasks. When I kept separate journals I found myself vastly overestimating how much I was able to get done in a day - and it made it harder for me to look back and see what went wrong if I dropped the ball on something.Now I keep one bujo, but each daily page is split in half - work stuff and non-work stuff. Makes it easy to see when I’m in danger of overloading myself.”
That makes a lot of sense. There’s only one of you, so combining your work and personal bullet journals can:
- Give you a bird’s eye view of your life
- Help you manage your time better across the board
- Enable you to track your meetings and appointments, even when the hours between your work and personal life overlap
- Keep you on track towards goals that you’re working towards “out of hours”
- Help you get personal chores and to-dos done in your work breaks, and vice versa!
Creating a separate bullet journal for work
If just the one bullet journal doesn’t feel right for you, you can try creating a separate bullet journal for work. This ensures that you’re not taking your work home with you and can be a great option for those of us who struggle with setting boundaries between our work and personal life.
It’s also a pretty handy way to prevent any awkward moments. Like confidential data from the office getting into the wrong places. Or your colleagues coming across some rather personal notes inside your bullet journal. Yikes.
Reddit seems to agree, with these users explaining how work-personal boundaries are their main motivators for having a separate bullet journal for work:
“My work bujo (bullet journal) lives in my desk and is used as a reference by my entire team, not just myself. I wouldn't want anything personal in it just for that.
On a more practical level, I keep track of a large number of tasks and information at my job on a day to day basis, and even though the data isn't in itself sensitive, the sheer volume of it would overwhelm anything personal. My work dailies alone often take up an entire page per day.
I also prefer to keep my work and personal lives separate, as this isn't a job I take home with me.”
Source
“I show my work notes to other people sometimes, and I'd rather not have my coworkers see information about my personal life. I'd also rather not think about work stuff when I'm not at work. And it's a lot easier to find things in each notebook when they're separate.”
Source
How to organise your bullet journals
Once you’ve decided whether you’re combining your work and personal bullet journals, or keeping them separate, ask yourself this. “Are there any extra types of journal I want to keep?”
Only add them if you’re really clear on their purpose.
If they’re for a specific project or chapter of your life, then go ahead! If not, check-in with yourself and see what feels best.
So, the short answer to how many journals is too many? It depends. It depends on you and your personal needs. But hopefully, you’ll be finding that decision a whole lot easier to make!