Journaling: Month vs Quarter vs Year – what do you do when they all coincide?

quinn

Happy New Year everyone!

On January 1, it's time to do your Yearly, Quarterly, and Monthly journalling. According to the recommendations in the journal docs:

Year note: “list your annual theme, highlights, important events, or accomplishments for that year”
Quarterly notes: “list your quarterly theme, highlights, important events, or accomplishments for that quarter”
Monthly notes: “list your monthly theme, highlights, important events, or accomplishments for that month”

This is confusing: am I suppose to write the same thing in all three notes (theme, highlights, events, accomplishments)?

How do y’all differentiate the purpose of year vs quarterly vs monthly notes?

I'm considering dropping the quarterly notes, because they fit a similar time period and purpose of monthly notes; instead, I'd just using monthly notes for short-term goals and review, and the year note for long-term goals and review. Thoughts?

j-robelek

quinn

Try working backwards. Start with your large yearly project, goal, whatever it is. Most times that'll never be a straight path. That's not an A - D - Complete. So make your quarterly and monthly entries your B and C destinations of your yearly project, goal, whatever it is.

Does that make sense?

Additionally, if you have goals that are not going to last a full year and will only last a month or a quarter or two quarters, you can slot them in at the appropriate time frames.

Karl

Excellent question I'm tackling myself right now. And it's a) a question of granularity and b) depending on your personal mental model

I don't really use forever notes as a diary but as a tool for everyday life. Notes on books, appointments, health notes, habits. Therefore I don't really use the year note, I use the quarter notes to set objectives and I use the month notes to break them down into manageable chunks to accomplish (and I usually jot down a few lines for the day in the month note to keep my days rather outcome focused in terms of todos and appointments). At least that's what I did in my BuJo