“Keystone habits are small changes or habits that people introduce into their routines that unintentionally carry over into other aspects of their lives.” - Charles Duhigg

Journaling is a keystone habit because the act of logging your thoughts, reflecting on them, and writing about them creates positive change in your life. In this course, we will explore how to practice the art of journaling through my 3-notebook system, and we will also spend a section on digital journaling with Day One.

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Inspire Now Journal

This video is about my first journal, which I started to use as part of my daily journaling practice. Before going for the Inspire Now journal, I researched and tried a ton of different productivity planners. I wanted one that fit my expectations in terms of data tracking and insights, and this journal was the closest match, but with a few tweaks of my own which I cover as well.

Dotted Notebook

If I had to burn all my notebooks except one, I would keep this one. I use this journal to write and draw on the go, or at my desk. I log article ideas, pitches, sketches. I’ve journaled this way since I was a kid, and all the ideas that have driven me and lifted me the most in my life have been generated through this messy, imperfect but great journal/notebook.

5-Year Memory book

This is an amazing tool for self-development, motivation, and long-term vision. So many people pick up something to work on, tell themselves they’re going to keep at it and drop it after 3 weeks and no results. But the secret is consistency, and the long-term vision of filling out a page of this notebook every single day for 5 years can be really helpful in achieving your goals.

Digital journaling with Day One

Day One is mainly sold as a journaling app, but a “library for your journals app” would be a more accurate description in my opinion. It’s not just one journal, it’s many. The beauty of Day One is that it makes everything organized naturally. Whenever you open your digital journal to write in it, everything you type will be made searchable and filterable by content type, by text, by date… That’s one of the big advantages over physical journaling, where things can get messy really quickly. In this section, I also cover my 2 custom-made templates for Day One, for daily and weekly logging.