Chapter 4:

Journaling starter Kit
for Beginners

Chapter 4:
Custom-built: special pages!

From a generic purpose to a concrete goal: Why and What.

It could be that, during the Purpose Exercise at the beginning of your journal, you identified one or more specific goals.

As I mentioned in the section dedicated to the purpose of the journal, purpose and goals are different, but at this point, we don’t need to define these concepts too much.

The fundamental difference is:

• Purpose is the reason or motivation behind your actions. It’s the “why” that drives you and gives meaning to your life or specific endeavors.
• Purpose drives goals: Your purpose provides the motivation and direction for setting your goals. 

• A goal is a specific, measurable, and time-bound outcome that you aim to achieve. It’s the “what” that you work toward in alignment with your purpose.
• Goals fulfill purpose: Achieving your goals contributes to fulfilling your purpose. 

It’s probably not the first time you’ve had a goal, an objective. And I bet sometimes it’s been difficult to achieve it.

For me personally, as someone with a disrupted sense of time, persistent confusion, and suffocating perfectionism, it has always been challenging to achieve the desired goal. This is because identifying a positive and worthwhile goal doesn’t automatically mean “organizing” your resources effectively.

I often set goals that were too ambitious or had unrealistic timelines—goals for which I lacked the necessary prerequisites or mental energy. 

Journaling has incredibly helped me perceive ambitious, seemingly impossible goals as achievable. It hasn’t made the impossible possible, but rather it has made something difficult feel manageable.

What I’m about to share is NOT a secret to achieving every unreachable goal, but rather a method of “organization” that breaks down your goal and makes a plan that seems overwhelming, more manageable and possible.

It’s a subtle art that refines over time. You’ll read more in-depth about this fascinating topic on the blog.

If you have a goal to achieve you will need: 

• a goals page; 
• a goal/project planner; 
• a tracker. 

Every goal can be translated concretely as desired to get from a point A (where you are now) to a point B (goal achievement). 

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 NOTE:
Perhaps you want to use your journal only as a space for open reflection for now, it is still fundamental to have your purpose identified as explained in the Essentials chapter. If this is the case you don’t need to have a Goals Page or a Goal tracker yet, but goals come and go throughout the year and here’s how to manage them.

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Your goal, and your goal pages.

A Goal must be definable and quantifiable. So, if in the Purpose exercise in chapter 2, you wrote something like:

•  “I want to be healthy and fit” 
• “I would like to finally be independent”
• “I want to use the journal to relax or do introspection”
• “I want to have a blog about journaling”

Some goals, like the ones mentioned above, are too generic and abstract.
Actually, these are more Wishes than Goals and they usually remain in the realm of imagination. What we need to do is: turn them into Goals and bring them into the real world.

It’s like going to the grocery shop because you need to prepare a meal for several people, but you don’t know what you need to cook, for how many people, or what time they’ll be arriving

It’s perfectly fine to jot down a general outline, a “draft” of what you want to achieve. It’s a great starting point. But a goal must be placeable on the “timeline” I mentioned in Chapter 2, and it must be composed of actions, not emotions or wishes.

Goals don’t need to be overly descriptive or analyze every possible outcome in detail. They should provide you with a clear, specific, and time-bound target. Things might change along the way, but at least you have a starting point.

Goals therefore need to be described as:

•  “in 12 months I want to be able to run one hour consecutively”;
•  “in 6 months I want to find a job that allows me to rent an apartment”; 
•  “For the next 3 months I will write every night before going to sleep three positive aspects of the day and every morning I will answer a prompt to increase my awareness!”. 
• “by the 31st of December I will open a blog, and I will place at least 20 articles about journaling and personal growth”

1. Goal page.

Goals outlined in this way are Time-Bound into the real world, and time can be managed according to each person’s individual situation. This is why you should never chase someone else’s goal, because a goal is like a piece of clothing—it has to be your size, and you need to wear it comfortably.

If you have written more than one goal, I have to tell you some news that maybe you will not like. 

Select only the One Goal that is the most important to you, the one that if you reach will boost your way to achieve the others that follow. 

Scattering your energy into too many goals will only reduce your chances of success and what I want most for you is that you reach all your goals. 

If you are unsure, then choose the one you believe is easiest to achieve.

• You can write your Goal Page directly after the Exercise of the Purpose.
  Simply write “Goal Page” at the beginning and list your goal(s). 
• Underline the chosen one, or write it last in a larger size, highlighting it. 
• After that answer the question:
  
  Why do I want to achieve this?
  How will this goal improve my life?
  or What will change in my life after I achieve this goal?
  
• The answers to these questions will help you remember why you started this journey and why you want to achieve this goal, and trust me you’ll need to remind yourself several times.
• remember to add the goal page to the index.

KEY TIP: Slowly achieving the little goals will not only give you a sense of progress but the little mundane things all add up to achieving the more complex goals.

2. Goal planner.

Goal Planner or Project Planner—personally, I use both terms. But for convenience, I’ll refer to it simply as Goal Planner.

Whatever you want to call it, this page makes it possible to deconstruct your goal into small, manageable pieces. 

Abandoning a goal often depends on the fact that we don’t know how to pursue it. We tend to look at the final goal, deem it unattainable and we give up halfway, or even before starting. 

How to use it: Well, now I’m going to tell you something counterintuitive: forget about the final goal and prepare your Goal Planner! 

• Write Goal Planner at the top of the page. 
• Divide your final goal into 3-5 Intermediate Goals (even more if you deem necessary);
• Divide the time you think is necessary to reach the final goal for the total number of Intermediate Goals; 
• Now identify the Actions Needed to achieve each Intermediate Goal. 
• Add the goal page on the Index.
• Add the deadlines of your Intermediate Goals on the yearly calendar. 

Now your focus is no longer on the final goal but the Intermediate Goals that make it up. 

To give an example: Be able to increase my running from 10 minutes to a full hour within a year. 

Starting from the maximum you are currently able to run, create 3-5 intermediate steps up to your final goal (one hour). For example, starting from 10 minutes of consecutive running, the Intermediate Goals could be 20, 30, 40, 50, 60.

 Now divide the time you have set for your goal (one year/365 days) for the number of your Intermediate Goals (in this example 5, so in a year you will have 73 days to reach each step). 

In this way you will have 5 Intermediate Goals to reach your final goal. 

How to achieve the goal?

• Decide the Actions Needed that will lead you to reach each Intermediate Goals;
•  write them down.
  They can be the same or different actions, this depends on what kind of goal you are aiming for.
•  Still following the example, the concrete action is simply to go for a run, decide how many times a week, and maybe decide to add 5 minutes of run every 10-15 days to reach the next Intermediate Goal.

KEY TIP: This division is arbitrary and purely practical. Of course, for some goals, certain intermediate steps will take more time than others. This might happen unpredictably, or you might already be able to anticipate it during the planning phase of your Goal.

Regarding the element of unpredictability, remember one of the pillars: “flexibility.” Don’t get discouraged if one or more Intermediate Goals take longer than expected; the important thing is to do your best to achieve them.

If you can already foresee that one or two Intermediate Goals will require more time, allocate as much time as necessary for those and less for the simpler ones.

Alternatively, you can shift some of the actions needed for the more demanding Intermediate Goals to the time period dedicated to the simpler one, creating a more balanced timeline.

Manage it as you prefer, but don’t fall into the perfection trap. If you can’t keep to the schedule, that’s okay. You can analyze the reasons in your journal and understand how to prevent it from happening again, but it’s not a valid reason to give up.

3. Goal tracker.

The Goal tracker is simply a tool that allows you to track where you are at with your goal. 

There are different ways to track a goal, and the tracker depends on the type of actions required. If the tracker involves a recurring action, you can use the tracker I’m showing you in the image that follows.

You can also use it just to track and acknowledge the days you’ve worked on your goal, without being too descriptive about it.

I’ve used various methods to track my goal’s progress, sometimes very different ones. The following tracker is universal and can be applied to different situations, although it’s not necessarily the definitive tracker.

You can decide to create a goal tracker for the entire set period, or create one for each Intermediate Goal. It’s entirely up to you.

I recommend the first option, it will give you a better view of the great work you are doing. 

Of course remember to add the goal tracker page to the index.

IMPORTANT NOTE
regarding the “goals” matter:

So far in my life, I’ve set an incredible number of goals. Some were unrealistic from the start, for others I wasn’t ready, some I lacked the necessary skills for, and for others, I simply made excuses.

I believe that setting the right goal with the right awareness is an Art, and it refines over time. I might be going against the grain, but it’s not enough to set ambitious goals; you also need to consider the resources (both external and internal) available when setting the goal.

Roughly estimating, I believe I’ve achieved at most 20-30% of the goals I set for myself. The majority of those I accomplished were thanks to my journaling practice.

Without journaling, that figure would probably have dropped to 5-10% of success, at best.

I aim to gradually improve this percentage, knowing that I will never reach 100% success.

This is to tell you that, especially at the beginning of your growth journey, it’s perfectly normal to miss a deadline or even fail to achieve a goal entirely.

Always do your best, but be kind to yourself if you don’t achieve your set goal.
The most important thing is to analyze the reasons, and do your best not to repeat the same mistakes, without letting frustration and disappointment clip your wings.

Intermediate Goals will help you, because they allow you to realize early on whether you’ve selected a goal that you don’t really care about, or perhaps you’ve set the bar too high.

Chapter 5

We’re almost at the end!
In the next chapter, I’ll give you some ideas of special pages and show you my favorites. I’ll finish up with a brief recap.

Let me know if you have any questions in the comments, or feel free to send me a message.

See you in the next chapter!

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