Track your Life with your Scrapbook Journal
From how to make a scrapbook journal to the best bullet journal layout ideas— this is the guide to get you started on your journaling adventure.
Journals are a great way of expressing your creativity and emotions. A lesser-known benefit of journaling, however, is how it helps you form and maintain habits. If you’re out of bullet journal layout ideas or are wondering how to make a scrapbook journal from scratch, this blog is for you. Plan out your month, build habits and learn more with Habbit’s guide to habit-tracking!
Getting Started
All you need to start habit-tracking in your bullet journal is a good ruler and a pen. Contrary to popular belief, bullet journal layout ideas don’t have to be complex or artistic.
Pick your Habits
Reflect on your daily routine and decide what kind of habits you want to start building — do you want to spend more time pursuing a hobby? Would you like to start drinking a specific amount of water every day?
Write down the habits you want to keep track of in one column. In the next section, we explain how you can pick the right habits to track and how you can make ’em stick.
Set up the dates, set your goal.
Are you going to track your habit for a week, a fortnight or a month?
Set your goals and create columns accordingly. If you’re tracking your habit for a month, write down the numbers from one to thirty-one beside your habit so that you can add a little tick each time you perform the task. It should look a little like this:
Come back to your journal every day!
Maintaining a habit is easier said than done. People are often eager to set up the bullet journal tracker but often find that following up with it is the hardest part. So, what can we do to stay consistent?
Make Your Habit Stick.
The most difficult part about building a habit is maintaining consistency. We often find it immensely difficult to develop a healthy routine, which is why we must make sure we’ve taken the right steps to make sure that the habit sticks.
One of the most effective ways you can do this is to keep a check on yourself — while there are many apps out there that can help with this, using a bullet journal monthly spread template is the most fun way to go about it.
Here are a few things to keep in mind about habit-building before you pick the habits you’re going to track using your journal:
Create Patterns
Experts say that the best way to form a new habit is to tie them to old ones — look for routines that already exist in your day and try to come up with positive habits you can build into them.
For instance, most of us have a solid morning routine that we absent-mindedly follow through every day without putting much thought into it. Sticking a healthy habit in there, along with brushing your teeth or a cup of coffee, will make it easier for you to repeat it daily.
In your bullet journal, include trackers of habits that you already have. Proving to yourself that you can be consistent about one aspect of your life will give you the motivation to maintain new habits. For instance, taking a shower is something most of us do daily — adding a tiny tick.
Start Small
Be honest with yourself — will you have the motivation to work for two hours every day?
Setting unrealistic goals for oneself can lead to demoralization and dropping out of habits. Start with tinier tasks that are less time-consuming and easier to complete.
For instance, if you’re trying to build up a consistent workout routine, you can start with doing two to three pushups every day. It takes twenty-one days to maintain a habit, and if you succeed in doing just a couple of reps each day, you can easily add crunches, squats, and more to that and find yourself with a solid workout routine!
In your bullet journal, make sure your initial trackers are low-effort and something you look forward to. The easier the habit is to execute, the stronger your tendency to stick to it will be!
Reward yourself
Once you complete streaks, reward yourself with something suitable — if you worked out for seven days a week, you deserve that small sweet treat! This will inculcate a sense of discipline within oneself that contributes to how dedicated you are to developing your goal habit.
Begin Habit-Tracking with these Easy Bullet Journal Layout Ideas
Here are a few easy habits you can begin tracking today! Remember that you don’t have to wait for the beginning of a month or even the week to begin building a habit. Pull up your bullet journal today, set up your habit tracker, and start your journey to a healthier life.
1. Mood-Trackers
How do you feel today? It’s not the easiest question to answer every day, but with everything that’s going on in the world right now, keeping a check on your mental health is a healthy habit to have. You can track your mood on a scale of one to ten, or one to five, or using colors!
2. Health — Hydration, Working Out and Sleep!
In the hustle and bustle of daily life, it’s easy to forget to take of your body. Having a habit tracker can make sure you drink a certain amount of water a day, move and stretch your body a little bit and get a few good hours of sleep in. You can track your vitamin intake, the number of calories you ingest or burn in a day, or if you’ve successfully avoided eating out. You can track these using bar graphs, simple tick-boxes, or colors!
3. Your Hobbies
All work and no play — you know how the saying goes. Make sure you put some time in for your hobbies, or any skill that you’ve been meaning to learn for a while now. Whether it is a new language you’ve been meaning to pick up or a whole new art form you want to start dabbling in, the internet is a beautiful place will online classes and workshops that’ll help you learn almost everything.
Platforms like Habbit are dedicated to helping you learn new skills by putting you directly in touch with experts who have years of experience perfecting their art. Learn tons of new skills and track them in your bullet journal to make sure you practice them every day. If you’re new to the world of journals, Habbit’s workshop on Scrapbook Journaling with Kumudini can help you get started!