Sometimes, there are no words to describe your day—good or bad. Other times, days are long and tiring, so who wants to spend energy writing at the end of the night?
However, if you’re set on journaling in 2024, there are still options that can turn that dread into excitement.
Try taking writing out of the mix. Journaling doesn’t have to include words. Focus on visuals: drawing or doodles, graphs, daily Polaroids or creating pixels.
Documenting the year in pixels has been a favorite among bullet journaling in the past few years. Follow these six steps to set yourself up for an easy year of journaling:
Find a piece of paper. This could be within a journal or a standalone piece. Keep it where you can find it at the end of the day.
Choose five to 10 colors from your set of colored pencils, pens or markers. The medium you choose depends on how vibrant you want your pixels to be. Pens and markers tend to be brighter.
On your piece of paper, draw a horizontal line at the top of the paper and a vertical line along the left side. Draw an additional 31 horizontal lines going down the page and 12 vertical lines across the page, creating little squares that become pixels as they are filled in.
Once your squares are drawn, place the first initial of each month above the columns. Along the left side, number the rows one to 31 downward.
To the right side of the page, create a key. Match a color with an emotion or state of mind you were in that day.
List emotions or states of mind you might feel throughout the year. Some useful ones are: good, happy, normal, routine, productive, lazy, unmotivated, angry and sad. To the left of these words, assign a color. You can choose as few or as many colors as you would like for your year.
Now, all you do is fill in a box a day. At the end of the year, the result is a page of colors and a snapshot of your 2024.