Warning: I saw a stranger's journal at a coffee shop in Portland and it broke my system

I was at a place called Case Study Coffee about two years ago. The person next to me had their journal open, and I saw they used a single page for a whole month's tasks, not a daily log. They just had a big list with tiny checkboxes. I'd been doing daily spreads for years, filling maybe half a page each day. That night I tried their way. I saved 15 pages in my Leuchtturm that month. Now my weekly log is just one page with a rolling task list. Has anyone else switched from daily to a more condensed format and stuck with it?

4 comments

4 Comments

park.miles2mo ago

That kind of accidental inspiration happens all the time. It feels like we get stuck in our own ways of doing things, from how we plan our week to how we stack dishes in the sink. Seeing someone else's simple fix can make you wonder why you added so many steps in the first place. My own notebook got a lot less stressful when I stopped trying to fill up every line for a day that only needed three tasks.

spencer4002mo ago

Fill up every line for a day that only needed three tasks" is a wild thing to admit. I could never leave all that blank space staring back at me. It feels like wasting the paper or failing the day somehow.

spencer4002mo ago

My brain just loves making extra work.

the_piper11d ago

Wait isnt the blank space basically a to-do list for future you? I feel like leaving gaps is just procrastinating with extra steps. If you only have three tasks then write down three tasks and call it a win. The whole point of filling every line is keeping that momentum going for the next day.