Motivation & Organization: Creative Journaling

February is my least favorite month of the year. Back in Canada, it’s the coldest month. February is also the month that I loose all motivation for school, exercise, eating healthy, and working hard. I don’t have any explanations for this. All I know is that in February I am sluggish. This is a bad time for this to happen because it is midterm season. The time when I need to be the most productive; but, I’m not. February is also the month when I become an unorganized mess – for me; this is a catastrophe. So for anybody lacking motivation one month into the new year. For those who have lost sight of their New Year’s resolutions, and just need a little push to keep powering through. Here are some organization tips and motivation techniques that should help put a pep-in-your-step!

Recently, Creative Journaling has become a method to organize and motive agenda users in their daily lives. I was recently on Facebook when I came across a video of an organized and visually appealing daily planner. It’s creator started doing this to make organizing fun and keep her motivated and on track with school, work, social activities in her life.

The journals are works of art. They have monthly goals, workout plans, class assignments, calendars, to-do lists, weekly schedules, checklists, all categorized and color coded. Her journal is a journal/planner is beautiful, neat, and productive. A lot of people are getting into the trend of creative journaling to get organized and motivated in a super fun way. This process is called bullet journaling: bullet journaling is a customizable way to organize.  You can make it anything you want to be or everything. But it will help you find a direction.

Not only do the aesthetically pleasing images easy to look and encourage motivation. This method of journaling allows the usually chaotic creative side to release some tension that may be pushed back by the academic/or workplace side of your life. This is a great way if like me you enjoy organizing that is visually pleasing and facilitates productivity. Of course, creative journaling does take some time to do, so making sure you don’t spend too much time designing our journal than ticking off the tasks you write is important to remember.

I also find that having playlists with mood music helps me get motivated to do things; when I’m thinking about staying in bed all day, I turn on upbeat, happy music playlists and end up dancing around and eventually getting out of the house. Music changes people of all types, so why not use it to transform your lazy side into a productive machine.

As science and our parents tell us, proper sleep plays a significant role in motivation and organization. Getting a decent 8-hours will help you focus, get motivated and get organized in your head and on paper. Also, try switching your routine from Night Owl to Early Bird. It has made a world of difference, I’m getting more vitamin D, I’m eating healthier and at more regular times, and I’m more pleasant to be around (ask my mom).

My final suggestion is to reward yourself. For me, finishing an assignment that I didn’t feel like doing, is a chance to treat myself to an extra hour of Netflix binging. Or if I go to the gym, I’ll treat myself to a cookie as a snack. Like with kids when you reinforce good behavior with rewards and discourage bad behavior with punishment. I practice this in my life with myself as well. Everybody suffers from a lack of motivation and organization at some point in their life, and sometimes you need the motivation to get organized and need to be organized to find motivation. The two go together like peanut butter and jelly.

Check out the video that inspired this post here

https://www.facebook.com/thisisinsider/posts/1664846337156091

By; Emma Edwards

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