Docs
Every block in the studio comes from research. The methods library has 44 docs, one per journaling or planning method: what it is, where it came from, what the evidence says, how to set it up, and where it goes wrong.
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ADHD Journaling and Planning
ADHD journaling is planning built for a brain that struggles to hold the future in mind. Barkley's model treats ADHD as a problem of self-regulation and executive function, which makes it a disorder of doing what you know, not of…
Art journaling and junk journaling
Art journaling means making pages that mix pictures, colour and words about your life or feelings, without needing to be "good at art." Junk journaling is its thrift cousin: you build or fill a book from paper other people throw away,…
Autistic sensory journaling
Autistic sensory journaling is a quick, low-text log of how loud the world was, how full your body and brain got, and what helped. It borrows the four sensory patterns from Dunn's model (low registration, seeking, sensitivity,…
CBT thought record
A thought record is a worksheet for catching a thought that made you feel worse, and checking it. You write down the
Commonplace book
A commonplace book is a personal collection of passages and ideas worth keeping, copied by hand (or typed) under headings ("heads") and made findable with an index. The name comes from the Latin loci communes, the "common places" or…
DBT diary card
The DBT diary card is a one-page weekly grid that a person fills in every day during Dialectical Behavior Therapy. It
Digital daily notes
A digital daily note is one page per day, made automatically from a template, stored in an app or as a
Dream journal
A dream journal is a habit of writing down dreams right after waking. It does three separate jobs, and it matters which one you want. First, it trains recall: most people forget almost everything within minutes, and a log makes you…
Dutch door spread
A Dutch door spread takes its name from the stable door that opens at the top while the bottom stays shut. In a notebook you cut the inner pages of a spread short (usually a 1.5–2 in. strip off the top, or a half-width strip off the…
E-ink journaling and templates
E-ink journaling means writing by hand with a stylus on an electrophoretic screen that looks like paper,
Emergent Task Planner
The Emergent Task Planner is a single printed page for one day. Down the left side is a day grid where you write the hours you're awake or working. At the top right you name three important tasks, estimate each in 15-minute bubbles, and…
Expressive writing (the Pennebaker paradigm)
Expressive writing is a short experiment that turned into a method. You write, continuously and privately, about your deepest thoughts and feelings on one difficult experience, for 15-20 minutes on each of about four days. You do not…
Five-Year Diary
A five-year diary turns one habit, writing a line about today, into a slow comparison across years. Each page is a
Full Focus Planner (Michael Hyatt)
The Full Focus Planner is a paper planner that lasts one quarter (about 14 weeks of undated daily pages). It links three levels of goals. You set up to 8–10 annual goals, choose three per quarter, choose a Weekly Big 3 in a guided…
Gender euphoria journal and HRT log
A gender euphoria journal records the moments you feel right in your gender: being called your name, a sentence in your voice, a mirror glance, a stranger's "ma'am". Research defines gender euphoria as "a joyful feeling of rightness in…
Getting Things Done on paper (David Allen)
Getting Things Done is a system for getting every commitment out of your head and into a trusted set of lists, then deciding what to do next based on where you are, how much time and energy you have, and what matters. It has five steps:…
Gratitude journaling
A gratitude journal is a list of things you are glad about, written on a schedule. Researchers have tested it more than
Habit Tracking
A habit is a behaviour that runs on autopilot when a familiar context cues it. Research says habits form through repetition in a stable context, not through willpower, and that it takes longer than people think: in Lally's 2010 study, a…
Hobonichi Techo
The Hobonichi Techo is a dated, lay-flat planner printed on very thin Tomoe River paper, with one page for each day
Interstitial journaling
Interstitial journaling means writing a short, timestamped note every time you switch tasks or take a break. Each entry does three jobs at once: it closes the task you just left (what happened, where you stopped, how you feel), it logs…
Jibun Techo (KOKUYO)
Jibun Techo ("jibun" = myself, "techo" = pocket planner/notebook) is KOKUYO's "planner for a lifetime". Hideaki
Mood tracking and Year in Pixels
Mood tracking means giving each day (or each few hours) a rating on a fixed scale and keeping those ratings where you can see
Morning Pages
Morning Pages are three pages of longhand writing done as soon as you wake, before the day's demands start. You write whatever crosses your mind: complaints, lists, worries, dreams, "I don't know what to write." They are not meant to be…
Paper and Grids (page ruling as a method)
Every journal method borrows a ruling, and the ruling quietly shapes what you write. Lines say "write sentences here"; dots say "write, draw or make a table, your choice"; squares say "align, count and chart"; a Cornell page says "take…
Passion Planner
Angelia Trinidad designed Passion Planner after college (2012) as "the one place for all your thoughts": an appointment calendar, journal, goal-setting guide and to-do list in one book. She funded it on Kickstarter in October 2013…
Planner, sticker and deco culture
Planner culture treats a paper planner as both a tool and a craft. A week is planned, then decorated with stickers,
Pomodoro log (the Pomodoro Technique on paper)
The Pomodoro Technique cuts work into indivisible 25-minute rounds (a "Pomodoro") followed by a 3–5 minute break, with a longer 15–30 minute break after every four. Most people stop there, but Cirillo's original is a paper system with…
Progoff Intensive Journal
The Intensive Journal is a method for looking at your whole life, not just today. You keep one binder with about 16 sections (21 after Progoff added meditation work in 1980). Each section is a different way in: a Period Log for "where…
Prompt journaling
Prompt journaling hands you a question so you don't have to start from nothing. It ranges from a one-line
Rocketbook and scan systems
Scan systems let paper stay paper while a phone does the filing. They all solve the same three problems: find the page (corner markers, a frame, a QR or Data Matrix code, or a hidden dot pattern), know what the page is (a code that…
Safety planning
A safety plan is a short, personal, written list of steps to follow when a crisis starts, made on a calmer day so it is
Shadow growth journal
Jung used "shadow" for the part of your personality your conscious self does not recognise or does not want: traits,
Spoon theory and energy accounting
Spoon theory is a story. In 2003 Christine Miserandino, sitting in a diner with her best friend, gave her twelve spoons and asked
Stoic journaling
Stoic journaling is the habit of checking your own judgments in writing, usually twice a day. In the morning you run through what might go wrong and remind yourself what is and isn't up to you. At night you replay the day, like Seneca…
Symptom tracking
Symptom tracking means writing down, at the time or close to it, how your body and mind are doing: pain level and where
The Alastair Method
The Alastair Method keeps one list and marks when (or how, or where) each item happens with a dot in a narrow column, instead of rewriting items into separate sections.
The Bullet Journal Method
The Bullet Journal is an analog system for tracking tasks, events and notes in one notebook.
The Eisenhower Matrix
The Eisenhower Matrix sorts tasks on two questions: is it urgent (does it need doing soon), and is it important (does it matter to your goals and values)? That gives four boxes: do it now (urgent and important), schedule it (important,…
The Five Minute Journal
The Five Minute Journal (5MJ) is a book of pre-printed daily pages with five prompts. In the morning you list three things you're grateful for, three things that would make today great, and a daily affirmation ("I am…"). At night you…
The Ivy Lee Method
At the end of each workday, write down the six most important things to do tomorrow, and no more than six. Rank them by real importance. Tomorrow, work on only the first until it's done, then the second, and so on. At the end of the…
Theme System journal
The Theme System swaps a New Year's resolution for a Yearly Theme: a word or short phrase, like "Year of Reading" or "Year of Less", that names what you want more of and points in a direction instead of setting a target. Its central…
Time logging and lifelogging
Time logging is writing down, in short words, what you did in each block of the day, then looking back to see the shape of your week. The best-known paper version is Laura Vanderkam's 168-hour log: one sheet, seven columns, half-hour…
Time-Block Planner
Time blocking means drawing your working hours as a column and assigning every part of it to a specific task or kind of task, instead of working from a loose list. Cal Newport has used and written about it since at least 2013, when he…
Traveler's Notebook
The TRAVELER'S notebook is a slim, roughly cut cowhide cover with a single elastic cord threaded through the spine,
What the evidence levels mean
- Evidence: Strong
- Several controlled trials or systematic reviews support it.
- Evidence: Some
- A few studies, or good evidence for a closely related practice.
- Evidence: Anecdotal
- Widely used and described by practitioners, with little or no formal research.
- Evidence: None
- No research on the method itself. The doc says what is known about its parts.
Levels describe how much research supports a method's claimed benefits, not whether it is worth trying. Each doc says so plainly, and cites its sources.