I've been using my Mental Health Journal Filofax for about a month now, and have been able to evaluate how it's working. October was a very challenging month, so I'm really glad I set up the journal when I did, because boy did I need it. Here's what has worked so far and what didn't:
There are monthly tabbed sections which contain:
Good Things That Happened This Month: My favourite pages, where I jot down any good things as they happen so I have a running list of good things to look back on. I'm really glad I write these down, because in challenging times it's so easy to forget the good things!
Challenges This Month: As I predicted this has turned out to be extremely valuable. I write challenges or worries as they come up, and then (most importantly) I write what actions I took, or how they were resolved. This lets me see that these roadblocks or worries turned out fine/ I was able to do something about them. This lets me feel less helpless and will be a great reminder of how I have overcome specific challenges.
Monthly Journaling Pages: I haven't used these as prolifically as I thought I would, but the things I have written down have been helpful in revealing thought patterns.
Using a Filofax for this journal has been great, because I have done a lot of moving pages around and am starting to settle into specific tabbed sections. For example, in my month section I wrote down specific challenges that were ongoing and took detailed notes. As they went on I realised I needed each of these challenges to have their own tabbed section for ongoing records and notes. This has worked very well.
Something I quickly abandoned was written weekly evaluations. It was too much re-writing of what I had already written in other sections. I decided to just to a weekly review where I look back over each section and how things have developed in the past week.
I also did a month review where I looked back over the entire month in each section to see what has been resolved, what is ongoing, what worked and what didn't.
I'm sure my use will continue to develop and change according to my needs at the time.
As always feel free to ask and/ or discuss anything ring binder organiser related!
Thank you for your post. I have been jotting down some things related to my mental health in my Filofax, but I didn’t have any structure in place. I like the simplicity of your system and plan to implement your ideas in the future.
ReplyDeleteI agree. I’ve always (since 1986 anyway) used a month as my main planning period. It’s long enough to achieve results - especially as a “bite sized chunk” of a huge “elephant task”, but not so long a period that a goal that has been overlooked doesn’t disappear, but can be reviewed and prioritised next month, modified or dropped. .
ReplyDeleteThe use of a running list of what has gone well really strikes a chord for me - so often when doing the look back at the end of the year it's easy for me to forget the moments that felt big and good at the time. I'll be starting this practice asap!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the feedback everyone, I'm glad you found this helpful!
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