{"id":839,"date":"2019-01-21T17:03:00","date_gmt":"2019-01-21T17:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silverknife.co.uk\/my10k\/?p=839"},"modified":"2021-06-15T17:12:26","modified_gmt":"2021-06-15T17:12:26","slug":"handmade-quick-daily-journal-part-1-research-and-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silverknife.co.uk\/my10k\/2019\/01\/21\/handmade-quick-daily-journal-part-1-research-and-development\/","title":{"rendered":"Handmade Quick Daily Journal – Part 1: Research and Development"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This is a \u201cRerun\u201d post from the original blog \u2013 I\u2019ll be putting these up here and there alongside the new posts but with their original date of publishing.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve never really been able to stick with a journalling habit consistently, although I’ve generally enjoyed it for a while whenever I’ve tried it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have, however, had very good results from the 5 Minute Journal<\/a> – a quick mindfulness journalling exercise based around a set of well-written, structured questions. I copied the questions into text files and filled them in morning and evening for a long time, and they genuinely brought me a lot of joy and awareness and improved my headspace noticeably.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As my daily routine changed, I decided I wanted to avoid turning on the computer first thing in the morning and keep my head out of screen space until I left for work, so I wanted a physical journal to fill in. At the time, however, I had very little disposable income and I wasn’t willing to pay the exorbitant price of over twenty pounds for each six month journal, so I decided to make my own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like most projects, I first sat down and defined the parameters the journal would have to meet to make me really happy with it. It had to be smart-looking and durable, a satisfying object to hold and use so I would be motivated to pick it up and fill it in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I’ve mentioned before<\/a>, I love the elegantly simple Field Notes notebooks, and I decided I would crib some of the elements that make them so satisfying for me – the stiff card cover with rounded corners, the convenient size and form factor, the use of bold clean fonts and (in my personal preferred variant) the gridded pages. I wanted to introduce some colour though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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cof<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

First, I had to figure out a page design that would be aesthetically pleasing and ideally printable without going to a commercial copy shop. Unfortunately my cheap home inkjet wasn’t able to print clean gridlines as thin as I wanted them, but luckily I was working at the time in a college print room with access to a decent colour laser copier, and after a lot of experimentation I found a thickness and saturation that would print fine, faint gridlines. (Note from the future: I’ve since acquired a cheap desktop laser which does the job perfectly too<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I picked a nice, clean and readable font with a bit of personality –\u00a0Andada<\/a>, from the great free selection at Fontsquirrel – and experimented with text size and grid spacing until the headers and questions lined up nicely, then carefully noted down all the details so I could recreate them later if needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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