What do I want to achieve?
Join in the new year and prep yourself for success. If you’re looking for some introspective prompts to get the gears flowing on how you’d like to shape your life, look no further.
What do I want to achieve?
Are you looking to create your vision board, track your glasses of water each day, a way to braindump all the information you learn throughout the day, or just empty your head each evening and decompress?
This ties in with the other questions and why it’s first. If you’re looking to keep a commonplace notebook, it may be worth looking into something refillable, like a Traveler style journal. That way, you can easily add in more as needed. However, if you’d prefer to have a record of diaries to look back on as you fill them over the years, a hardcover, standard journal may fit your needs better.
This longevity, or not, will also influence the paper-type. How important is acid-free to prevent yellowing over the years?
Am I more visual or written?
If you’re looking to create more of a physical vision board versus just written affirmations, you’ll need to take paper thickness into account. Even if you’re just writing, you’ll need to think about your writing instrument as well. If you’re using just a pencil, then any type of notebook or paper is open to you.
Pens are another beast ranging from classic gel, pack of twenty BIC versus the refined, elevated fountain pen. Even between just gel, rollerball, and fountain there’s so many options that will alter the ink. Some are light and will work fine with your standard subject notebooks, while most fountain pens (dip or not) will need a thicker paper almost always.
Then, there’s the option of markers, paints, and so on.
Chaos or organized?
Are you a free-form, totally go with the flow person who doesn’t mind if your thoughts are scattered throughout the book? Or, do you find yourself preferring to keep your information or records organized by topic? The answer can will also influence if you should go for just one journal or multiple for specific purposes. There’s also the option of a binder or personal organizer style so you can trade out pages and rearrange as needed.