Theme System Journal Part 3
2023-01-10 00:00
Finally onto how I use mine.
I use my journal every day. I typically fill out the journal page late afternoon or early in the evening. But I fill out the checkboxes in the morning. To avoid me fucking up my diet plan late in the night.
Theme page
At the moment I have filled out one theme page. I wrote a theme in the classic format of The year of X
. Then I added some context of why that theme in the description. And finally I filled all 8 boxes under ideal outcomes for what I want to work on over the next 3 months on that theme.
Journal pages
I typically use the first box to summarise how I feel about my personal life in the first box. Then in the second I write about big picture thing in my life that I have the most feelings about at the time of writing. Sometimes it’s work, other times my daughter, my dog, my diet, exercise stuff and often my ADHD.
Then I always use the large box to dump out what’s on my mind. And the final tiny box I use to write down what I want to focus on tomorrow.
Daily theme pages
This is how I do my daily theme pages.
When I start a new pair of pages I sit down and look at my current setup and draft a new setup based on it. I get more into it below, but I do a retrospective after I complete 15 days, then I use that plus my current setup to decide how my next 15 days of daily themes will look like.
I use all 14 themes. And I use it in a way where it kind of covers more than just 14.
I have a document describing how I currently use it. Just in case I forget.
In some cases I just fill in the entire circle if I just did a thing. But more often I fill in first half if I did something and all of it if I did it properly. And in other cases the first half of a box tracks one thing and the second half another. For example I have one call listen where the first half means music and the second half means podcasts or audiobooks.
I usually fill out the boxes the day after. Like I said in the start of this section. And I usually review and set up the next 15 days of daily themes a few days before I start it.
I also do a retrospective of the period when I’m done with it. And some stats of how many times I did what and think about how things have gone. And try to include some other factors that have played a role in things.
Like skateboarding is one of my daily themes. But I can’t do that when it’s a lot of snow or ice. Another one I have is going to the gym. But I don’t do that if I’m sick.
Conclusion
I really like this format, and it have worked really well for me this far. And the plan is to start a subscription soon ish. I guess I’ll set it up by the time I’m half way through this one. So that I have some time between it being mailed and me needing it.