What is a Goal Setting Journal?

When it comes to improving and transforming your life, it is the first step that is the hardest for most people. Residing from the norm and switching up your entire daily routine to chase a dream or a goal of yours can lead to frustrating and lonely times.

However, there are many tools that an entrepreneur, employee or anyone for that matter uses daily to get one step closer to their goals every day. Because every achievement ever made just takes a little bit of improvement each day to reach the end goal.

Using a goal-setting journal is one of the important tools that high achievers use when it comes to self-improvement and reaching a goal. In this blog, we will run through exactly what that is, how to use it effectively for your personal goals and the goal journals you can use daily.

What is a Goal Journal?

You may think you have to have a specific structure for your goal journal and having certain structures will help. But at the end of the day, it’s your goal journal with your personalised goals, so it should never look the same as someone else’s, and that’s the beauty of it.

Goal journaling is used as a tool to write down each one of your separate goals and track the progress of each one. Even when you’ve achieved a goal, it will allow you to decide whether you want to achieve a bigger goal in the same area or diversify into a new goal.

There is no time limit on when you should stop using a goal-setting journal, either. If you’re a hungry and motivated person, it may be worth using one for the rest of your life. Not only will it have an impact on your productivity levels, but it will also give you a structure and plan every day for what you need to accomplish.

What is the Purpose of Having a Goal Journal?

A goal-setting planner will have different meanings and perspectives for everyone who uses one as a tool for progression, but what do we all have in common when it comes to writing goal journals?

Progress is Everyone’s Motivator

It is no secret that everyone likes getting better at something because, as humans, it is our nature to want to improve our skills to become a better version of ourselves.

However, at the start of your journey towards what you’re trying to achieve, it can seem like you’re making no progress whatsoever. This is where 90% of people quit, as they feel like they’ve seen enough to prove to themselves that they won’t achieve what they’ve set out to do. They could either be setting unrealistic goals to achieve in a short amount of time or are blind to how much progress they’ve made but feel like it’s not enough.

You will need to consider that your goals need to be broken down into short-term and long-term goals. This helps with seeing the small improvements that you’re making, leading to a person being impressed with themselves and continuing with their journey.

Another important way of structuring your goals to see progress is by categorising them into separate folders if you like. For example, you may have a category for your career and another for your fitness goals.

When set out in this way, it becomes clear what goals go where and priorities start to become clear.

Ups and Downs

If you’re a motivated person, you may feel as if you want to improve on one specific goal and fixate on that one topic. For example, you may want to lose weight, so you will focus heavily on healthy eating and going to the gym. What you may become aware of is that you start to see your career diminishing slightly as you’re overly fixated on that one goal of ‘losing weight.

This is a normal experience for those starting with no plan in place so don’t worry if this has ever been you. Using a goal-setting planner helps you to write on a piece of paper and recognise that you need balanced goals to become as productive and happy as possible in several aspects of your life.

Not only that, goal journals don’t have to be focused on your professional life or physical capabilities; they can also give you time to practice self-talking. Whether you need to practice gratitude to realise how lucky you are for what you have already or write down what the best event of your day was to appreciate the little enjoyments of every day as it comes.

What Are the Best Journals to Use?

As a result of you now knowing exactly what you’re going to do when searching for goal-setting journals to purchase, we feel the need to introduce you to some of the most popular and best goal journals on the market today:

The Bullet Journal

The bullet journal is well-known for its ‘bullet journal method’ which is crafted to help you track your past experiences, order your present life and design your future and what you want it to look like.

The purpose of the journal is to cut out all of the distractions affecting your wants and needs and to start focusing on living with a plan on your terms.

Panda Planner

The Panda Planner is set with different intentions on different pages. It includes sections on gratitude, journal planning, scheduling and many more. This planner was made to make humans feel happier and more productive consistently.

This planner also comes with free videos, content and strategies that each individual can watch on a chosen device to use to help them through all aspects of life, which is why it reaps great customer reviews.

Freedom Journal

According to the creator, the Freedom Journal has had many scientific studies tested before even making the journal to see what some commonalities are among the most successful people. It rests on the formula of being able to achieve your greatest goal within 100 days.

The planners come with free shipping (depending on where you order them) and will act as daily goal-setters to plan and review your days, giving you the ability to analyse what you need to improve on or put in place. It also contains 10-day sprints to accomplish your goals and quarterly reviews to pinpoint the bigger problems and adjust to create success.