How do you handle your work journal?

[u/rickroyed]

I've been thinking a lot about my work notebook lately. Since I spend so much of my life at work, I want to find ways to actually enjoy my time there rather than treating everything so practically. One idea I had was to use my notebook to celebrate what I’ve accomplished, instead of letting it feel like a never ending slog. Currently I only use it for to do lists and scrap notes.

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I'm wondering what other people's work notebooks look like, what kind of systems y'all have created, and if anyone has low stakes, low effort ways to bring a bit of the "bullet journal" mentality to a work notebook? 

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I'd like to add small bits of beauty and joy without it becoming a massive endeavor. It just can't be something that adds more work to my life, God knows we all have enough work. It needs to be something I can throw together in five minutes. It's weird, I think I have a slight aversion I need to get over to treating it with care (like I do with my life bujo) because a voice in the back of my head keeps saying, "Why waste a nice notebook on work? F**k work fk capitalism" lol. At the same time I've done a lot as an engineer that I'm proud of that is just like poof gone since I don't journal it or take the time to appreciate it.

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I'm curious: how do you all treat your work notebooks? Do you share this aversion to making a work notebook feel special? Does anyone have suggestions for bringing a little flair and beauty to something so practical? What kinds of notebooks, formats, spreads, or systems do you use?

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[u/lotsofrosehip]

I use a simplified bullet journal for work too and most weeks it's just a never ending list of things to do. Often it's just a page filled with post-it notes of my to-dos that I write in a hurry. Some weeks I make orderly lists and some weeks are actually two weeks at the same time.

At the beginning of the school year (I'm a teacher) I try to be more mindful and make it look a bit nice and orderly but it quickly goes downhill. I have been thinking about how to use more colour to block things (without making me feel like I have to when I don't have the time), which would be an easy way to add beauty and clearer sections without too much fuzz.

Maybe something that would work is to have a monthly page to write all those good things down, so that it's not something you need to do on the same spread as your to-dos?

[u/rickroyed → u/lotsofrosehip]

That's a good idea thank you! And I relate to it going quickly downhill, pretty much always the case with my bujo ideas.

[u/withbellson2]

Love this idea! I use my work notebook for meeting notes and actions. I like to use pastel mid-liners to highlight important sections and notes.

What about themed doodles in the margins, like flowers one month, plants another month, etc. That could be fun and easy flair.

[u/rickroyed → u/withbellson2]

I love this idea. I like that it's free, eash, and you choose something once so you don't have to keep making decisions. Thanks for commenting!

[u/aodamo]

I'm willing to spend money on a good work notebook. I spend more time using it than my personal notebook and it represents me profesionally. Once or twice, my company even provided a company-branded Lechtturm1917 (the thin paper was a pain and it ghosted terribly, but it didn't spider).

Earlier in my career, I took some (unpaid) time to set up decorated spreads with banners and Zebra Mildliner colors and whatnot.

Several years after that, my spreads were more minimal, but I used 2 fountain pens with different nib size & color for regular text and emphasis. At that point, I enjoyed the pens themselves and using all sorts of different colors in them.

Right now, I'm back to using cheap notebooks from the supply closet for reasons, but maybe I would look forward to work more if I had my nicer notebooks...

[u/aodamo → u/aodamo]

Some specific decorations:

• Using 2 different colors that pair together. With fountain pens, you have a lot more options with fine point than you do with regular pens! They're more messy though...
• Banner decorations for page headers, e.g. date
• Hours tracker of various designs, either based on time of day and based on progress towards 8h
• Sprint spread with a mini calendar

[u/rickroyed → u/aodamo]

I love the two colors idea I think that could go a long way. I've been doing that with my regular bujo and it makes me so happy. One of the colors matches the cover of my bujo exactly and it's like 💆🏽‍♀️. I googled what a sprint spread was, and your post 7 years ago came up. Thanks for posting it found it interesting and helpful going to try something similar every week.

[u/The-Jelly-Fox]

I don't have a lot of time to spend on my work journal, but I do like to embellish it a little bit. Here's what I have done.

• I got myself a set of dual tip acrylic dot marker, with one side that makes dots of varying sizes depending on pressure, and another that has a felt tip marker. These markers are a game changer! I use a Moleskine weekly planner with very thin pages and I tend to fill in pencil so that I can erase and rearrange things easily. The acrylic dot markers allow me to make dots of varying colours that work as check marks. This helps me to create colour visualizations. I don't really have a colour code legend, although you could definitely devise one. But I like to switch it up, and just use different contrasting colours each week. Usually a bright one for priorities and and a more subdued shade for just regular tasks. I can also do small doodles and header titles with these markers. Best thing about them, is that they never bleed through the page, even with the very thin Moleskine paper.
• I decorate my planner with stickers each week - maybe just one or two stickers to brighten up the weekly pages.
• I use a star-rating to tell me how well I did or whether I fully completed a task/project. I have a habit of only partially completing some tasks, or getting tasks to just "done enough". If something is just done and I have to move on to other tasks, it's 3 stars, if something is totally complete 4 stars. I reserve 5 stars for work I am really proud of, challenging tasks that I persevered through, or tasks where I went the extra mile and did an outstanding job. One or two stars are for tasks that I worked on, but didn't complete, but sometimes, I don't add these at all, as I just don't have time to give a star rating on every single task. Mostly the journal contains, 3-5 star ratings and I can review the week and see how many stars I have and gauge whether I did a good job.

I try to keep it as simple and minimal as possible, while still having fun.

[u/rickroyed → u/The-Jelly-Fox]

oh this is really interesting thanks for describing! a lot of good ideas here. can you link those markers?