Six Ring Binder Planner

Assalamualaikum and hello visitors..

Two months more counting for New Year 2016. If you going to bookstore or stationery section, you will find a variety of planner size and design. Last year,  I received a 2015 planner from insurance company, it's beautiful with gold cover however I don't used it very well. So this year, I bought this personal size six rings planner.

It's actually one of my wishlist and my birthday present to myself.

Yes, from me to me. Sound a bit pity right..haha..

But for me, if I want something, I will go for it rather than hoping for someone buy it for me.

I like the function that we can easily take out and insert the paper and organized the planner. 

I just receive it last week. 

Now I'm working with the inserts that I personally customized according to my needs for work and personal. It's more to DIY and limited to my skill of arts.

Here some images of my planner, they still in progress. 

Monthly View

Daily

 I just draw a monthly view for quick reference of date and day, quote and leave it blank.
So I can write To Do List, Notes or other important things on that day with unlimited space. That's the great advantages of customized planner

  
Other
 Next is expenses pages for my personal used. 

Since I'm a researcher, student's publication list is one of important criteria to keep track. The process start with preparing the manuscript then submit to conferences or journal. If the article is rejected, you can improvise the article based on reviewer comments and try submit to other conference or journal. After the article is accepted, payment need to be done for publication fee. For conference, the paper will be published after you have presenting the article on the conference's day. It takes about 3 month or even a year for the paper to be appear online and index. At that time, you might be forgot about the article. 

I also keep the list in my computer, this planner will work as backup when I am not at my work space or anything happen that cause data loss.

 Other than work, I also keep list of activities that I participate as committee.

That' all some of my inserts. Hope it will you some ideas about six ring binder.

4 Tips to Keep Journaling

      I love to buy diary and it’s kind of addiction with many nice designs but I only write on it daily for maximum 3 month. Then I skip few days and even months. Maybe some of you had experienced the same problem; it’s quite hard to make it as consistent habit. Worries your journal will be abandon like your old diary, here some tips for you and me, since I am also a beginner

1. Find journal tools you love 

Grab any books a pen or pencil, you can start journal immediately.

 I like to use just normal pen black and blue ink and pencil. Most of time I use pencil, and sometimes color pencil for art. My favorite black ball pen is Brilliant; needle tip fine extra smooth from Faster that I bought from Rainbow (stationery store). It cost only RM 0.70 when I first bought it, now the price is RM 0.80. I also recommend it to my friends, and they also love it.

This is the exercise book, A5 size that I used for journaling, RM 2.80 with 200pages.

Here is a page in my journal, trying handwriting lettering. You can see the black ink is very smooth and fine.

And some doodles from my Art Journal.

You can also get nice, pretty books like Moleskins, colorful pen, marker, that you enjoy using it and comfortable when you write. It's all up to your creativity.

2. Get the idea of journaling 

Don’t find perfection in your journal. Journal is not an official report that needs to be neat, clean. Its ok with all the mess you made. Have you heard of “Wreck This Journal”? That journal was made to be destruct. 

Don’t force yourself to fill the journal books

Experiment different style of journaling like collage, sticky notes.

Find Prompts. Prompts are great help to guide you in journaling when you lost ideas.

Collect prompt that you like and put it in your journal as reference later.

Be creative.

Here 10 Ways to get idea for journaling and be more creative

1. Read books, find quotes.

2 .Explore new things, DIY, life hack

3.  Outdoor activities.

4. Challenges yourself.

5. Socialize, volunteer

6. Keep up with trends, fashion, and current issue.

7. Visit exhibitions, museum, and galleries.

8. Get new hobby. Start a project on your hobby.

9. Make a list, goals

10. Entertainment. Listen to music, watch films and theatre

Benefit - Journaling should be enjoyable, exciting, something that heals you, reduce your stress not something that you feel burden to do it. It’s not like diary that has expiry date, use them whenever you want.

3. Do record everything

What are your other hobbies beside journaling? Do you like reading, traveling, cycling, surfing internet? Those are interesting topic you can include in journal.  

For example reading, record the purchase date, price, and where you buy the books. Then write things that give you an impact while reading them such a dialogues, scene, character. If you don’t like the ending; create your own story ending. No one will stop your imaginations  

As you go cycling, suddenly you find beautiful flower, grab that and kept that on your journal. Make your journal as information storage.

Record your daily progress, insight and gratitude. 

I find this video from Robin Sharma really give me motivation to write every day.

4. All in One Journal

Use a single book as journal. This will keep you more focus and help you to finish writing in a whole book. Keep it on your bed; whenever some great idea come, you have placed for brainstorm the main idea. When you at outside, save the point in your Smartphone. This tips can also be apply for gathering idea to write in blog.

Some idea that I get from other blog and website actually is related. I wrote them in Journal and combine the idea of :

1. How to start journaling

2. How to keep journaling

3. Benefit from journaling.

4. How to be creative

and summarize into a simple post.Journal helps you to organize your reference and resources.

Apart from that, I also have other journal that I keep for my collection.

That’s some of simple tips that I find encourage me to keep on journaling. Hope it will work for you as well.