Re-evaluating my Theme Journal

Posted on February 11, 2021

On January 1, I decided to try a Yearly Theme over traditional New Yearsabout resolutions, with a Theme Journal to track daily progress. After using this system for ~5 weeks, I decided to give an update on my feelings on the Yearly Theme and also how I’m going to change my approach to it.

I still love the idea of a Yearly Theme

I chose my theme as my “Year of Intention,” and for the most part, that resonating theme has allowed me to put that theme in the back of my mind whenever I have been doing anything. Whenever I have catching myself into poor habits, I am able to eventually recoup by reminding my self how I want to live this year more intentionally.

Theme Journal thoughts

I was really good about keeping my Theme Journal up to date for the first few weeks, but it became harder over time. Here are my thoughts on it now and what I’m going to change.

The weekly check-in’s are (mostly) great

I really appreciate checking in with myself every week to determine what I’m doing good, bad and also excelling at by denoting on what I’m proud of that week. Since one of my intentions is with health and weight loss, having a record of my weight every week (and only weighing myself) every week keeps me from over-worrying up plateau’s in the process of typical daily weigh-ins.

However, I decided to remove “screen time” as a metric from my weekly Theme Journal updates. I find that it can be misleading for when I’m on my phone. Furthermore, I also re-evaluated my relationship with Mastodon as not necessarily a bad thing when I spend too much time on it.

The daily themes were not so great

In my Theme Journal, I had a “Daily Themes” section that categorized the following themes on a scale from 1-10:

• Partner: Was I good to my partner today?
• Friendship: Was I good to my friends today?
• Self: Was I good to myself today?
• Diet: Did I eat well today?
• Finance: Was I good with my finances?
• Overall: How would I rate my day overall?

However, micromanaging this and scoring this on a daily basis felt very tedious and didn’ve really feel like it brought much value to my theme. I’ve decided to remove this entirely from my Theme Journal.

Moving Forward

I will continue tracking my Theme Journal, now only on a weekly basis, with only tracking my weight for data. Otherwise, I think the system is a great way to organize an over-arching theme. I will likely revisit my Theme Journal at the end of March, when the first 4th of the year is over.