My January Set-Up & Monthly Challenge

Calendar & Tasks

In the past, I've made monthly title pages. With the minimalist design I've started in 2021, I didn't feel inspired to create a title page so I went directly into my month calendar.

I've used a Paperchase sticky note month calendar, rather than drawing out the boxes myself or using a vertical calendar. As this is a generic month calendar, I've labelled the days of the week at the top. It can be confusing with the week day starting on a Friday, but I've used these sticky notes for a long time and I've gotten used to having the month start on days other than Monday or Sunday.

It's also a very small calendar. This is has its benefits as there a lot more usable space around the calendar. Unfortunately, this also means that it's impossible to write any meaningful thing in the boxes. This is why I use a code. BD is birthday, E is event, and TD is to-do. I have my list of birthdays, events and to-dos on the page so I can easily look across for the details. As to-dos and events are completed, I cross them off the list.

I've also made a list of my on-going projects. This is more of a reminder to work on them every day.

Trackers

I've found that tracking gratitude really helps me try to find positives in every day, even if it's just being thankful for the motivation to get out of bed, or to eat a fulfilling meal.

My habit tracker page is more traditional for the bullet journal, with my own spin. I have the checklist of habits that I want to keep up: my morning and evening routines, taking medication, tracking when I work (as my work is very sporadic, keeping up with my monthly challenge of no spending, and 1 hour of sewing and blogging so I can make progress on ongoing projects.

Below that, I have space to track sleep, water, steps and mood. It's easier to have a graph tracker for these because I like to see the correlation between them. The graph goes from 0 - 12. For sleep, this is in hours; water is in 250ml glasses; steps is in 1000s. For mood, I will judge my mood out of 12, and I've drawn some faces to help me judge how I'm feeling. I've used this method of tracking for a few months now and I've found it a great incentive to keep habits going so that I can check them off.

And finally, my spending tracker. At the top, I compare my savings amount on the 1st to 31st of January. Then I go into income (date, amount, and where it's come from). And expenditure (date, amount, and what it went on). At the end of the month, I colour code and total up what was spent on survival, luxuries, treats, gifts and savings. This allows me to see where I can cut costs and what I absolutely need to spend each month.

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January Challenge

Rather than try to do new year's resolutions and epically fail within the first two weeks, I do monthly challenges. For January, I will try to do a no-spend month. The exceptions to this rule are necessary spending, things I would consider survival costs like rent, utilities and groceries; and subscriptions that I'm already committed to like Netflix and Spotify. This should mean that, if I stay on track, I will completely cut out all "treats" spending.

As a reward, I've set myself treats for 50% accomplishment, 80% and 100%. I haven't chosen what these will be yet, but I have a whole month to decide.

What are your goals this month and how are they going? If you're doing new year's resolutions, how are you keeping up the motivation?

- Content Bill