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The Book of Days

1 - I can do better 2 - Jury's out 3 - Pretty darn good 4 - Splendiferous 5 - Awesometastic (by 1 person)   Your rating: 1 - I can do better 2 - Jury's out 3 - Pretty darn good 4 - Splendiferous 5 - Awesometastic

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A Five-year Journal for Tracking your Personal Development

The Book of Days is a five-year journal. The premise is that one has a page for daily entries for each day of the year. Each daily page has room for five entries - one per year from 2008 to 2012. This allows you to see what you were doing on a particular day each year. As time goes by, you will be able to track your progress, seeing just how far you have come since the same time last year.

I made this set of three books from blank 5 x 7 journals from Barnes & Noble. The customized covers were created by printing a perpetual calendar image I found online onto parchment paper.

This paper was glued to a 5 x 7 piece of cardboard, this cardboard backing was in turn glued to the kraft cover of the journal.

What is inside 

Each month is divided into 3 sections

This is the Table of Contents for Volume I:
Introduction
Table of Contents

January Goals
Daily Entries
Monthly Review

February Goals
Daily Entries
Monthly Review

March Goals
Daily Entries
Monthly Review

Quarterly Reviews
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012

April Goals
Daily Entries
Monthly Review

May Goals
Daily Entries
Monthly Review

June Goals
Daily Entries
Monthly Review

Monthly Goal Setting 

Each section begins with a page set aside for writing down my Goals for the month.

These goals will include both personal and professional subjects. I believe that it will be interesting and instructive to be able to look at what my goals for each month were as the years go by.

In fact that feature is, for me, the greatest appeal of this type of journal. I do keep a journal that I write in most days, mainly a collection of ideas, free-associations and rambling thoughts, not so much a record of anything. This journal is also difficult to use as a reference due to its free-form nature.

Daily Entries 



In contrast, the Book of Days is designed to become an ongoing record of my personal development, with tags and pointers to other resources.

The page for each day gets 4 lines per year, where I will record brief notes on the weather, work projects, current events, and a general impression of the day.

I will also give myself a letter-grade (A thru F) for how I did on keeping to the workflow process that day.

For example I may make a note of an interesting blog post or book that I read, with a "link" to a quotation in the Commonplace Book, or a website, or a notation that identifies a file in the archive where I put the printed article.

The Monthly Review 

The third part of each monthly section is a page for a summary of the Monthly Review. One full page is set aside for each year.

Over the course of the past year, as my GTD practice has grown and evolved, I have found that a summary of this kind comes in handy for the Quarterly Review.

Likewise, at the end of each quarter (March, June, September and December), there is a section set aside for a Quarterly Summary. This summary will focus on progress made toward long-term goals and larger-scale projects.

Your Own Book of Days 

Make one or buy one?

After reading this I should think that you could easily create your own version of the Book of Days. I also believe that many people are too busy to go to all of this trouble to make something like this, or perhaps you don't feel like you have the patience.

There is an alternative.

I have completed a commercial version of this excellent journal, and it is available at Lulu.com.

You can order a pre-printed 6" x 9" notebook version that is spiral bound, or a PDF download. (I do not recommend the PDF option, unless you have a new printer cartridge!)

The first volume weighs in at 246 pages, consisting of January through June, 2008-2012.

The second volume is 268 pages, consisting of July through December of 2008-2012. The second volume is longer because it contains pages for the Annual Summaries.

Unfortunately, due to the massive size of the Book of Days, it could not be uploaded as one book. Click this link for The Book of Days at Lulu.com, and check it out.

You can also look inside for a preview of some of the pages, just click this link.

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Please contact stephen @ hdbizblog [dot] com for more information, or with any questions or suggestions that you may have.

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Related topics: journal,  goal setting,  journaling,  How-To & Education,  more

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Stephen_Smith

About Stephen_Smith

I am a Web Publisher and Productivity Consultant in the midst of creating a global microbrand.

My website is an exercise in community-building, with an emphasis on utilizing the Internet to reach out to those in need of a tool for setting goals, completing tasks, and managing their personal knowledge base.

User feedback will drive the development of this lens, so let me know what you think.

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