Trackers Archives

Medicine Tracker – I Don’t Have to Remember Everything!

February 8, 2018 2 Comments

It’s So Nice to NOT Have to Remember Everything!

A few weeks ago, my baby was not feeling well. I took the poor little guy to the doctor and came home with 3 separate medicines 3 times per day for two weeks. I knew that I would have to wrack my brain to remember when I had given him the last dosage. Then try to remember if I gave him all nine dosages of medicine the day before. I just knew I was going to forget dosages. Then knowing when to stop was the other issue. So what did I do? Created a quick medicine tracker spread in my Bullet Journal of course!

medicine tracking spread, use your bullet journal to remember for you

The Medicine Tracker

Each column has the dosages per day and the rows were the dates. Each day I would mark off the medicine without too much effort to remember what I did or did not do. Except for maybe one day, I successfully administered all the dosages and thankfully, the little guy is feeling better.

Before I started planning with a bullet journal – I would have just tried to remember. Thankfully, now I don’t have to remember everything. I write it down, then out of habit, I check my planner and do the things I am supposed to. What a relief. Medicine tracker to the rescue!

I’d Love to Know: What uncommon trackers do you use in your planner or bullet journal?

Leave me a comment below and let me know!

Remember to plan your life so you live beautifully.

~Tricia

November Mid-Month Habit and Mood Tracker Check

November 19, 2017 4 Comments

November Mid-Month Habit Check + Mood Tracker Update

When I sat down to start writing this post, I realized this is the monthly insight into my life. There are so many emotions tied to habits, so many excuses, so many passions. I can’t write about my habit tracker {and now added mood tracker} without being a little more personal. Of all the things I have in my bullet journal, my habits and my moods show the most insight into my life on a day-to-day basis.

So here is a monthly update on my Habit and Mood Trackers.

Half Circle Habit Tracker in my bullet journal - mid month checkup

November 2017 – Mid-Month Summary

Whew! This month has been – well – different. There were some major things happening at work that made the rest of my life feel like it was spinning out of control. I couldn’t separate my personal life from my work life. It’s not that I didn’t want to or didn’t try. I could not separate them. My friend from work (who got me my job) moved to another company. My employer was very unhappy with this. Alright – I could have gotten around this and helped everyone make peace with it if needed. But we were in the middle of a loan for my friend. There were confusion and so many emotions swirling and information that none of us knew what was true (I am a home loan processor by day, by night I blog, but I am superwoman all day).

I tried to remove myself from the situation, I even banned both parties from speaking further about each other and would not participate if I didn’t agree with a conversation. But being in the middle of the loan where I had to know details so I could do my job made things even more complicated. Every conversation, innocent in intent, kept stirring up more and more. And I couldn’t get away. It was as though dark swirling clouds circled my head.

How All This Affected Me

The stress was taking a toll on my body. The muscles in my back were tight, I had to remember to unclench my jaw regularly and my stomach was so upset for about a week. That coupled with my husband having a cold for two weeks straight and the coughing that kept me up just as I would drift off to sleep wreaked havoc on everything I tried to do this month to improve myself. Thank goodness I tried to get ahead the beginning of the month because, by the middle of the month, I was struggling in more than one way.

In Control or Out of Control

There were many things out of my control – but I used those things to negatively affect my goals and daily life outside of work, which made my life feel even more chaotic. So for the rest of this month, I am going to make an effort to go to bed earlier, wake up earlier and check off my goals before the rest of my family wakes up. When things are out of control in your life, taking command of the things that you can control makes all the difference in having a bad day vs. a good day and a bad month vs. a good month.

New This Month

I created a mood tracker this month – my first. I saw what other people were doing, and knew that I couldn’t group my days into one mood. Both designs are very functional – I am not the biggest fan of the overall look as it is very utilitarian, but like most utilitarian designs, it gets the job done. The more yellow, green, or purple, the better in this case. This month there are a lot more ‘frustrated’ and ‘anxious’ times than I expected.

I classify the moods/sleep by these categories:

Mood:

Sad
Content
Happy
Productive
Frustrated
Angry
Excited
Blah
Anxious

For Sleep:

Refreshing
Good
Restless
Bad Night

Half Circle Mood Tracker with sections of the day in my bullet journal - mid month check-up

Design Assessment vs. Functionality

I would like to make a ‘pretty’ mood tracker that is aesthetically pleasing (like the mandalas or feathers or the endless myriad of designs I’ve seen) and still include the times of day to help me see where the problem lies. If I like it by the end of the month, I will figure out a way to make it pretty and functional. The times of day are broken into chunks (you can see it if you scroll down on the graphic):

Before – before work, getting kids ready for school (on weekends, I consider this to just be morning vs afternoon)
Work – which I blocked off during the weekends
After – afternoons when I get off work and the kids are home from school
Dinner – often a time of angst because of picky eaters
After – after dinner as the kids are going to bed and the time that my husband and I have together afterward
Sleep – track how well I slept

For the most part, I feel like this has provided great information into my days, so I think I will keep it! I will be thinking of different ideas to make it prettier for the future. I thought of using this general layout and turning it into angel wings, I would like to do flowers or I saw a hot air balloon idea that may work but I will keep the segmented times of the day.

My habits – well they suffered this month as well. I finally read The Miracle Morning and loved it. It is very motivational I started getting up early and enjoying morning yoga and reading. I would get so much done in that short hour, and many of my habits would be checked off in the morning. I discovered that if I am going to do this, I need to go to bed earlier.

If you are curious – these are the habits I track

Study – usually scriptures
Kid Time – time where I put my phone down and play with my kids, we go to a park, play outside, watch a movie together
Exercise – I count yoga in the morning as exercise, a walk, etc
Journal – Writing in my journal, even if it is a one-liner or one word in my gratitude log
Kind words – speaking kindly to everyone around me and not losing my temper
Words – it’s my swear jar in reverse – I fill in a square if I don’t swear all day. Last month I had just 5 days where one of those pesky words slipped out but I’ve already passed up that quantity this month.
Healthy Choice – consciously choosing to eat healthily vs. not. Taking a side of veggies instead of seconds of pasta etc – this one will be more developed in the future, but I included it so I could become aware of it before fully developing what I wanted to do.
Dishes – do the *&%$ dishes
Straighten – choose a room and straighten it
Clean a room – vacuum, dust, wipe down, clean it.
No Spend – frivolous spending, eating out, extra spending (I don’t count grocery shopping or getting gas)
IG – Instagram – keeping up with my challenge!
Show Me Your Letters – Hosted by the Happy Ever After Crafter – a great place to start if you want to start modern calligraphy (I will be doing a post later with my favorite lettering resources)
Prayers – I will probably separate this into AM & PM later
Laundry – ugh this task and dishes are never-ending. Only checked off if I have completed one full load – not just put it in the washer or taken out of the dryer but put away.

I put habits on my tracker to assess how I am doing before making loads (haha I’m punny) of changes.

Other things I’ve done this month

I read a new book this month on habits. Read is a relative term, I listened to it. But hey! According to “things I am going to do” I wanted to read/listen to more books. I have consumed two books already this month – Better Than Before & The Miracle Morning. Thank you library. I will do a book review of these books later – spoiler: I liked both.

Habits and Moods mirror each other & provide daily insight, half-circled mirrored bullet journal layout, Habit and Mood Tracker

Remember to plan your life so you live beautifully.

~Tricia

Mid-Month Habit Check – October

October 17, 2017 4 Comments

Need some re-motivation in the middle of the month? Do a Mid-Month Habit Check.

In a habit slump? Do a mid-month habit check to reignite your motivation

I started doing a mid-month habit check a couple of months ago. The beginning of the month I am completely motivated and know that I am going to conquer all of my desires and do all the things. Well, that’s what I intended to do anyway. By the middle of the month, it seems that I have lost steam and I need a boost of motivation.

So the middle of the month, I do a quick assessment of my habits which re-motivates me to keep going to the end of the month. I find this 5-minute assessment does wonders for reigniting the flame that I felt at the beginning of the month.

Questions to ask yourself for re-motivation:

Once I reassess where I am, I spend a couple of minutes thinking of what motivated me in the first place.

I ask:

Why did I start this habit?
What is the end goal?
Do I need to change the time of day for this habit?

A little meditation goes a long way.

Make a Change & Get It Done:

If I find a neglected habit, it probably means that I am not planning for it or I am letting other ‘fluff’ get in the way – things that don’t really matter occupy the time that I would spend on that habit. So I need to refocus and eliminate some of that fluff. If I need to move the habit to the beginning of the day, I do it.

For instance, the I’ve neglected the Show Me Your Letters habit this month. Last month, I missed maybe one day. This month so far, I’ve missed 7 of 17.

Supercharge your habits:

If you notice at the end of this tracker, I have numbers and a blank column on the right side. Th blank column is for the end of the month and I will calculate the percentage of days that I completed that habit. The other column that already has numbers recorded shows how many days of the month I completed the last month. For instance, the show me your letters had 23 days of September that I completed that habit. If I put it as a priority for the rest of the month, I could still meet or beat that number from last month.

I created a post a couple of months ago to “Super-Charge Your Habit Tracker” that talks more about these columns in the habit tracker. You can read it here.

I created a percentage chart so you don’t have to figure it out. Pin for reference later! In October, you would use the 31 days column to figure your percentages. At the end of the month, count the number of days you completed a habit. For instance – if your total days completing a habit was 21, and the month had 31 days, your percentage would be 68%.

For instance – if your total days completing a habit was 21, and the month had 31 days, your percentage would be 68%.

Calculating the percentage helps me really see if I need to change the time of day for that habit if I need to move it to the morning or evening. I love seeing the real numbers so I can give that habit a ‘grade’.

Percentage calculator for monthly habit trackers

Two Categories of Habits:

I actually have two categories of habits that I track. It’s not indicated anywhere except in my mind.

Habits I am actively trying to pursue, and usually the ones I spend the most time on.
Habits I am assessing – these are ‘test subjects’ if you will – things I want to include in my life and are important, I just may not have set goals for them yet. These will most likely become the next set of habits I am actively trying to pursue. Maybe they need a little tweaking, or I need to plan them into my day. It’s like they are getting a trial run on my habit tracker.