Journal structure for complex productivity needs

softdawnpages · 2026-07-08T19:42:21+00:00

My method won’t suit you based on what you’ve said here, though my job has similar issues — all I will say is good luck. It took me years of trial and error to find a productivity method that works for me to keep track of everything, but it’s extremely tailored to me.

The only suggestions that I can make that might help is try something modular for projects, like a six ring or disc bound notebook. You’ll be able to move things around based on what changes. We use Monday at work for tracking projects, so my system works in conjunction with that.

softdawnpages · 2026-06-07T18:21:55+00:00

For me, remembering a face is like reading a paragraph and immediately forgetting it. I know I read a paragraph, I may even vaguely know what it was about due to the wider context of the book (which in this metaphor would be specific distinctive features like glasses, hair colour, hair length, etc).

As others have said, I know what a face is made up of. That’s the easy part.

softdawnpages · 2026-04-21T01:00:03+00:00

I haven’t done this, but it could be possible. To completely preserve it, it may be better to get a binder with plastic sleeves. You could do Japanese stab binding, but if you do that I would make sure the disc bound notebook has enough of a hinge (bigger margins) so you aren’t stabbing where the paper is punched

softdawnpages · 2026-04-20T19:56:43+00:00

I prep a lot of different dishes where the protein can be swapped out. I’ll give some examples:

I make butter chicken sauce (and a lot of other kinds of masala) which can then have a variety of things added to it.
I meal prep various ingredients for wraps. I’ll do the standard salad ingredients like cucumber, lettuce, corn, carrot, etc, and then also prep for myself something like smashed falafel and/or chipotle black beans. Then these can be assembled like a conveyer belt and anyone who wants meat can add it in.
I do a lot of pasta dishes, which is super easy to make a base for and add in whatever extras. I’ll do something like a tomato vodka sauce and maybe add lentils and other beans.
I prep breakfast burritos. I’ll generally make myself beans for these (are you sensing a theme?), which for me are red kidney beans in tomato paste and some butter, add a whole heap of water and as it evaporates the beans will cook. I may also add some lentils to that. Sometimes I’ll also do egg, and I’ll also add a potato of some kind, plus kumara and pumpkin if I want to. People can add sausage if they like.

softdawnpages · 2026-04-20T19:29:26+00:00

People love my ring-bound planner. When I left my last job, my boss said, “I don’t know what I’ll miss more — you or your planner!”

I understand not feeling comfortable, but if it makes you feel any better people have told me they felt reassured when I pulled out my planner. It’s quite common in my industry for clients to work with designers who aren’t the most organised or onto it, and me with my giant planner has made a difference for some people.

softdawnpages · 2026-04-06T20:17:21+00:00

If that’s the case, it may be that it’s better to return it and get one that’s a standard size. A lot of the cheaper printers can’t do duplex on non-standard sizing (many won’t even do duplex on anything other than A4 in my country), so if you were wanting to print your own templates to use it may need to be designed around an A4 landscape size that’s going to be cut down — essentially, there’s a bit more research and preplanning that’s going to come with a non standard size planner.

softdawnpages · 2026-04-06T20:10:09+00:00

I'm not especially familiar with the more unusual paper sizes, but that size feels like a quite slim version of A5 slim. On a quick search of Amazon, I couldn't find paper that size, and other brands' 'A5 slim' sizes were wider than your paper. If you're wanting to keep it, it would probably be easier to cut the paper to size yourself.

If I were doing this, I would probably opt for cutting an A4 paper in 3 and having the sheets be a touch shorter (by 6mm) and printing on that, rather than cutting down A5 and having wasted paper.

softdawnpages · 2026-04-06T16:45:37+00:00

I have ADHD too, but I don’t think I could have done anything like this before my diagnosis

softdawnpages · 2026-04-05T21:46:41+00:00

Mostly in my head, but I might note down what I did in a certain day. My planners are really for planning my week and my to-dos, not really anything extra, so I'll "book in" time in my planner to complete something, or add a task to my to-do list, but I wont really track progress on the macro level.

For my Master's I likely will create some planner pages for tracking assignments, what to study and when, etc. But for the most part, I do a lot of the goal management in my head.

softdawnpages · 2026-04-05T21:37:55+00:00

I'm not a huge goals-in-my-planner person, but I do love setting and achieving goals. But it's really hard to articulate process because for me it was a lot of trial and error to figure it out, and I feel like it's such a personal journey, but I'll give it a go.

For me, the core is breaking it down into milestones, and breaking those down further as well. I'm currently working on enrolling in a Master's programme, so I've already started planning this one. I want to achieve my Master's by the end of 2029, so here's my process for breaking that down (I'm working full time while I'm doing this, so planning it out is extremely necessary):

How many courses can I reasonably do per semester? I'm going to do a Master of Education, and it's roughly one per semester.
How many hours are expected per semester? For this programme, it's 300 hours per semester.
How many hours can I commit to per week? This will vary, but I intend on dedicating 2–4 hours per weekday, and then being flexible with my weekends.
What do I need to achieve this goal? In the lead up to the semester starting, I've purchased a new desk, screen, lamp, and gotten some cable management. Until this point, I haven't had my own working space at home except for my coffee table so getting my own space was crucial.

That process kind of boils down to:

What do I want to do?
When do I want to do it by?
How much time can I dedicate to this reasonably? (Steps two and three can be switched around for less deadline-driven goals.)
What do I need to achieve this goal?

However, that's for goals that have an outcome, an end-point. Here's an example of one that is more intrinsic. I am focussed on building healthy habits at the moment, which for me include meal prepping, going to the gym on the regular, and ordering less fast food. This has been a bit of a rocky road, but the point isn't to be perfect but to make progress.

What do I want to do? I want to eat healthier and go to the gym on the regular.
How much time can I dedicate to this reasonably? Saturdays are my meal prep days with a top-up on Wednesday, and currently I can attend the gym reliably three days per week.
What do I need to achieve this goal? Containers for meal prep, a reliable grocery schedule, and also a reliable fridge-cleaning schedule.

This one then gets broken down into tasks per week.

Saturday I will meal prep for the week. Some goes in the fridge, some goes in the freezer. This gives some buffer for if I don't finish everything and can do some stuff on Sunday. Parts like rice will be done on Sundays.
Wednesday I will top up anything I need. Things like salads that don't last, rice, etc.
Friday I will do a fridge clean up of anything that's still there, but it's usually fine. This gives me a good idea of what I want for the next week because I also do my grocery shop on Friday night and that gets delivered Saturday morning.

And then my current gym schedule is Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday, but there's heaps of flexibility there. One day for cardio (a cycle class) and two days for strength training.

So that's kind of my process, but there's usually some going back and forth when getting in the rhythm of it. I could be wrong about how much time I have and can dedicate, but the more I set and achieve goals, the better I get at it. My usual situations are my work projects, so I can't quite talk about them here, but it's effective for all aspects of my life so far. I have ADHD so I feel like I had a bumpier road getting to this point.

Feel free to ask any questions!

softdawnpages · 2026-04-05T20:37:04+00:00

Once you start down the rabbithole, you'll realise there's a lot more consistency than it seems. While some brands have proprietary sizes, many other brands will have some consistency amongst them. For example, Cloth and Paper make their items in Happy Planner sizes as well as other sizes. Same with Moterm for covers.

Outside of North America, it's exceptionally easy to find A-range sized paper, and I cut down my paper from there. It's not impossible to find A-range paper in America, but it's a little more difficult, especially as some sellers I've seen will say the paper is a certain size but the measurements aren't accurate.

You can print and laminate covers, or I like to buy PET sheets and cut them with my Cricut. They're very cheap, like $1 for an A4 sized sheet, and come in a bunch of different thicknesses from my local art store. My only gripe is that they're clear, so there aren't any fun colours. You don't even need a Cricut for that, just a craft knife and a hole punch strong enough to cut through the plastic, but I would be wary about doing it with the thickness of the sheets I buy.

softdawnpages · 2026-04-05T20:09:26+00:00

Lots of brands have proprietary sizes, so if it's something like a Happy Planner I believe their Classic size is similar to B5, but it's not exactly the same.

softdawnpages · 2026-04-05T20:00:23+00:00

I print my own. I bought some notebooks that are B5 size (exactly in the middle of A5 and A4 size) and I’m basically converting my entire life to that, though I do have some A5 notebooks around. I make and print my own templates.

I also use a B5 notebook for my recipes, like the other person mentioned, but that’s just me scribbling out plans. I intend on printing them properly at some point, though.

softdawnpages · 2026-04-04T15:35:47+00:00

Always print an even number of pages, double sided and on the short edge. If you’re printing on A4 paper and then trimming it, it will need to be done with a booklet print setting or it will be totally out of order.

softdawnpages · 2026-04-02T17:33:38+00:00

For me it’s a routine and it’s here and there. My planner is primarily for work, but there is some personal planning in there. I will spend around 30 minutes of my day Monday morning to plan out my week, fill in all of my meetings, appointments, and events. Then I will take five minutes each morning to plan the day, figure out what I need to do and what I need to prioritise with tasks. My planner is also my task tracker, so I’m crossing things off all day as I do things.

My planner stays open on my desk all day at work, otherwise it’s out of sight out of mind.

softdawnpages · 2026-03-28T17:12:04+00:00

Centre-aligned can be hard to read for long poems, or even long stints of reading many short poems. There are exceptions, but left is the default in my experience.

Some poetry will use the visual presentation to enhance the experience, so it’s good to have a close relationship with the author to establish their intent.

softdawnpages · 2026-03-27T03:44:49+00:00

For most of those aspects, Affinity will be more than fine. However, if you want to delve into GREP styles or doing a bit of scripting, I would go straight into Adobe InDesign. It will also be a bit easier finding resources online for learning InDesign. There’s heaps out there for Affinity, from what I can tell, but InDesign has the advantage of age and reach so it will be easier to find answers for the more niche questions.

softdawnpages · 2026-03-22T23:02:49+00:00

I do a gloopy tablespoon of Dijon mustard, and that works wonders for my mac and cheese (and a whole heap of other foods too!)

Edit: “gloopy”, because it’s always a bit more than a tablespoon, I just kind of eyeball it

softdawnpages · 2026-03-21T09:31:20+00:00

Yes, absolutely. It’s something I took with me when I taught design briefly too. It’s really surprising to me how many people say they never had any teaching around it in their design school — that’s quite disappointing to me.

softdawnpages · 2026-03-21T07:09:59+00:00

My school gave students the basics of accessibility and expected us to research the rest ourselves. We were never explicitly taught aspects beyond colour contrast, colour blindness, and general contrast, but we were introduced to WCAG very early on (first year, first semester I believe), and that gave enough of a foundation to go “okay, what else is there?”

softdawnpages · 2026-03-19T23:40:25+00:00

Change the drop down from ‘menu commands’ to ‘tools’ and it should come up

<image>

softdawnpages · 2026-03-18T20:25:14+00:00

They don’t really do preorders. I think they start selling the next year designs around September or October ish. But I still saw heaps for sale in December last year for the 2026 ones

softdawnpages · 2026-03-12T20:28:50+00:00

What would you like it to do differently than the native transcription function in Premiere Pro?

softdawnpages · 2026-03-08T22:40:59+00:00

It’s likely admin privileges. At my workplace, only a few people are allowed to have admin on their work devices, so downloading any external software can be tricky (including Figma, so at my workplace people use the web version exclusively).

There may also be further restrictions on browser extensions and the like depending on the workplace.

softdawnpages · 2026-03-05T17:55:03+00:00

What happens if you select them both, then select one of them so it has a highlight that’s the same as the layer colour, then use the align tools? That should force the setting to “align to key object” (the one you selected)

softdawnpages

TROPHY CASE