How to Split and Organize Your Journal for Best Convenience  

Now let's talk about how to split your journal. 

When I first started journaling, I decided to have a few journals for different life topics. 

One for learning, one for planning my day. 

Then I decided to add one more containing ideas and quotes. 

It did not take me long to realize that I couldn't keep all three journals simultaneously. 

Because I need to remember what I need to write in my journal, it is not practical to carry 3 of them with me. 

Later I tried to split one journal into sections of equal length. 

So one was for planning, the other for learning, and so on. 

This approach was better and more convenient. 

However, there was one problem with this approach: often, one section was filling faster than the other. 

If, for example, I was planning more in my journal than writing gratitude, then the planning section outgrew the gratitude part in a few months. 

And that made me move to the next journal with many pages left. 

I was also uncomfortable that I "had to" fill the planned sections. 

This is against the ThinkGym Journaling Method philosophy, which is the ultimate freedom. 

If you are ok with the cons of such an approach or think you will not have such a problem like me, then you split your journal into equal parts and start from it. 

To do this, you decide what topics to write in your journal and split it. 

For example, you can divide your journal into five main sections: Growth, Reflection, Well-being and Emotions, Problem-Solving, and Learning. 

You can also add special sections relevant only to you, for example, Business, Family, Traveling, Parenting, and so on. 

Here is how to do it in practice. 

If, for example, there are 100 pages in your journal and you have five sections, then you will have 20 pages dedicated to each section. 

Each section starts from the cover page. 

In the middle of it, you write the name of a section in capital letters. 

So you can have three sections beginning with cover pages with words in big capital letters like BUSINESS, LEARNING, GROWTH. 

This, of course, will help you to navigate between sections. 

I also came up with another simple approach to organizing my entries that you can use if you feel comfortable. 

I call it a "Tagging" approach. 

It works similarly to hashtags in social networks. 

Using this method, you journal sequentially - there are no sections in your journal. 

All you need to do is to put a hashtag with the journaling topic near your entry. 

For example, tags like #Learn, #Remember, #Gratitude, #Goal, and #MyWhy. 

Then later, when you reflect on your entries, you can easily recognize entries by their topics. 

It also gives additional variety in naming your entries while there are a limited number of section names.  

Use whatever method you like more. 

You can use the section or tagging approach. 

And by the way, you can combine two techniques and have sections and more detailed tags inside cells. 

Assignment 

Before moving forward in this lesson, I encourage you to put what you have just learned into practice. 

Take your notebook, divide it into sections, or start writing some entries and put tags and dates near each entrance. 

Here are some ideas about what you can write about: 

• Things you are grateful for in your life
• What are your plans for tomorrow 
• List of 10 ideas for your project

With that being said, let's wrap up this lesson, and in the next one, we will discuss how to organize the front and back cover of your journal.