Bullet Journal Alternatives? 6 Notebook Reviews for Daily Journaling, Morning Routines, & Planning

Hi everyone, my name is Matt, and welcome to another Bullet Journal productivity video. In this episode, I'm going to be doing another set of journal reviews. Instead of just focusing on one journal like I have in the past with Clear and Self journals, what I'm going to be doing is showing you 6 different journals that you can use to kick off a morning routine, or reach goals, or just plan out your, plan out your day, week, month. Entire life. Some are more structured than others. You'll see a couple that are very much in like the daily weekly planner type. Those are from Nomadic and Clever Fox. There's one that's very focused on journaling, which if you've seen my videos recently, you know that I'm very big on just the daily journal practice. One is about how to kick off a morning routine and stay consistent with it. So there's a nice almost balance between like book and journal. I'm also going to be giving you a quick recap if this is your first time here on the channel of the Clear and Self journals along with these to kind of compare and contrast. All right, let's go ahead and get started. All right, everybody, I'm zoomed out as best as I can. I'm going to show you each and every one of these. Again, I already have full videos on the Self journal and the Clear Habit journal, so we're going to put those aside at the beginning here, and we're going to go in order of most topical out to the more like planner style. So we're going to start with the Mind Journal, which I have really, really liked. Let's zoom in. So the Mind Journal is focused on exactly what it says, getting your mind in the rhythm of journaling. And you know from previous videos that I've been doing that journaling is a really big part of my life. And so I was excited to dive into this one. I will say, like, the design, the typography, the COVID is flexible but durable. I really like how it's got a little bendy to it. Now, getting into the journal itself. This journal is broken into 3 stages: warm-up, and then there's hurdles, and then somewhere in here is strength. Strength, I found it, is right here. Nope, that's not, that's not it. Stage 2 is hurdles and Stage 3 is somewhere in here. Okay, going back to the very beginning. So we have our Stage 1 warmup and it has these great quotes throughout it, nice prompts and reminders. So the whole thing on the Mind Journal, and to back up for just one second, I should say that this journal is very focused on men's health and mostly men's mental health. So it says right here, I can try and zoom in a little more. Probably see a little bit right here. This journal has helped thousands of guys to achieve their biggest goals, live their wildest dreams, and face their scariest fears. Dang, that sounds pretty great. 98% of this could be applicable to, you know, either or any gender, but you know, it's that 2% of being dude-focused that would throw off anyone who's not a guy. Just to give you a heads up on that. When you get into it, you have a daily check-in. You have the date timestamp. It has these 3 kind of prompts: what are your intentions and achievements, 3 things you're grateful for today, and your happy hour. And the happy hour is this chance to plan a moment that's just for you. Cool. I like moments just for me. I like a little me time throughout the day. It's normally at about 5:30 AM, except when you're your 3-month-old decides to join you, then it's not as much me time. Anyway, I will say this is a lot of feelings. Zoom in. How do you feel today? I would guess that most guys are, I know I don't have these many feelings, or like a lot of these are kind of variations on the same, on the same feeling. So, you know, if this, if this was me, I would pare down to maybe core feelings and leave more custom feeling spots. Like, there's 2 right here. God, there's a lot. I didn't count them. But yeah, I just wonder what maybe the 10 most common— if I was doing this, I would have like asked for people to send their journals in. I guess that would go against the whole 'this is private' thing, but I'd be curious, like, what are the most common feelings? Do you have a prompt for every day? So, what would you like to get from writing this journal? What are your goals? I think it's a really solid prompt here. So, I will say that there's plenty of room. There's plenty of room to be journaling. Every single day has another prompt. What does home mean to you? I think there's one. What are you grateful for? There's one that's like, yeah, what's your role as a man? Meaty topic. So, it is focused on men's health, men's mental health, and there are 3 phases that make up the first half of the journal, and then the rest of it is just the daily check-in and blank pages. So that's the entire Mind Journal. I think it's pretty great. I liked it, am liking it, would recommend. The next one, also in the same vein of a journal with a topic, something to kind of coach you through something that you want to achieve in your life. And this one is, maybe you can kind of see it, I'm trying to get the light to catch it. This is the Morning Sidekick Journal. So this is focused on helping you get up and get after it in the morning. Even though I will say, it's somewhere in here. Yeah, this. When should I wake up? I don't think enough people make this point, myself included, it's often overlooked is that a common misconception is mixing up waking up early with doing a morning routine. Whether you start your morning at 5 AM or 11 AM isn't nearly as important as completing your morning objectives. Amen. Really good there. So this one is kind of broken up almost like a book that you write in. So it's 66 days, still 3 phases, but 66 days of like establishing a really strong morning routine, habits, the kind of things that you want to do. YouTube alert. Good for that guy. There's also these commit pages. Y'all know, people that have been a part of the channel for a long time know I'm a big fan of commit pages. And I even like— I'm just kidding. I'm not going to rip it out. Not going to rip it out. Inside joke for people who have been fans of the channel for a long time. Time. Every day you have something to read, a little something to read, and then tonight I'll sleep at, tomorrow I'll wake up at, magical moments, my morning ritual. So all of these different, these different parts, and there are actually 40-ish pages of content before you even get to the first daily entry. So this will be— if you have a goal of wanting to have a better morning routine, or a morning routine, this, the Morning Sidekick Journal, would be a really good, would be a really good fit for you. I will say the outside of this feels like a football, so that's fun. Now getting into, this is the Nomadic Planner, and Nomadic makes some wonderful bags, and I had actually reached out to them asking about a notebook and a bag, and they sent me a notebook. So if you want me, YouTube friends, to also review their bag, put in the comments— you can put whatever you want in the comments— but tell Nomadic that you want to see their bags reviewed by yours truly. So you open, you open up the Nomadic Planner. They have a nice little motivational message at the beginning, and you might think, as I did when you first open this, that this feels a little out of context. I don't really know what this means. And you would be right, because maybe like me, you didn't look at the user manual because you don't think of notebooks as having user manuals, but inside of like their 4-page little pamphlet, you can see their goal, like how you say goals, the related tasks. So similar to some of the stuff you already know. Now the difference between, the difference between this and like either of these journals or even the Bullet Journal itself, and certainly like the SELF and CLEAR Habit Journals, is this one and the next one we'll talk about The Clever Fox are more planners. Now, I will say you're either going to really like this or you won't like it at all because you either want an unstructured bullet journal. You may be like my wife and you really love this. Like, my wife really liked this journal and the one we'll talk about next because she, she likes this month at a glance and she likes all the boxes. She doesn't want to have to redo an entire layout every single month and every single week. So she, she really liked this one.. But you can see just a regular month layout, and then you go with a kind of daily/weekly spread right here, 6 AM to 10 PM. She likes this because she could say like, taking the kids to school, here are the priorities I have for the day, here are the activities, the goals that I have, notes, anything, anything that she wants to add. So it really depends on what kind of planner and journal you want to have. This one I would say is much more of a planner than a journal. There are blank pages and lined pages in the back. So there's not, there's not a single dot grid in this and everything else is monthly, weekly, daily spread. A couple of things that I wasn't as big of a fan of in this, some of the ways that they kind of smush the notes in, like I don't really understand that right there. And why it's supposed— am I supposed to write sideways? It just feels shoved in as I wrote. So I would put like this monthly focus way up here. Like give it— give monthly focus this whole window. Write down your activities. Your activities reminds me of Step Brothers. We have so many activities together. And I would just expand this whole thing so you could talk all about your activities. And then they have their goal to task layout down here. Anything— what your big goals are for the month, and then right here for the week as well. I think there— I feel like there's a little bit of a disconnect towards how you would plan for a monthly goal and task versus what you need to do for the week, because as a lot of you know from seeing the 2019 planning video, that usually the thing that you want to do for a month is broken down into what you need to do each week. So there's definitely a connection here the way that I think about them, but it's not as clear in the journal, in the planner. One other little thing for the Nomadic Planner that I liked is they have these— you can see them— they're like whiteboard sheets. And so I think they come apart. You guys know that, again, going back to the couple of disastrous moments in the Self Journal review, I don't know if these come apart to like stick or not, or they're just supposed to be in here. I don't know, and I don't want to like have you dislike me because, well, I just couldn't figure it out. Much like the pen holder, there are two rubber bands on this. You could do a little bit of this, do a little bit of that, and then make it real easy. Nomadic Travel Planner, I do like it. The last new one that we're going to be going over is the Clever Fox Daily Planner. You can see like it has gratitude and self-awareness, What am I passionate about? Daily rituals, affirmations, my vision board. And they gave— it came with all kinds of stickers that I don't know if I would use personally, but I do like stickers. So vision board, I could like hot glue gun some stuff to this, use some two-sided tape, and just think about what kind of things are important to me. Put my dream house up here, maybe a little Toyota Land Cruiser from the late '80s that I'd really like. Anyway, And then you talk about your goals. So you have goals here, focus. I'm not really sure why mind map has the dot grid. Is it more map-like? These are super tiny dots. I'd have to write, write really small, or just use them like instead of, you know, this size, it'd be like, yeah, this is probably more like it. Hey, mind map. So these are the main, like, free-flowing pages right here to kind of center you. And then you have— this is the month, the monthly layout. So you would have to, you know, you write in what days, what days, days of the month or each year, habits, skills. I do think again, like similar to the Nomadic, that this feels a little busy and shoved in. I don't know if I could write all the habits that I want to adopt. And even if their intent here is to try and get me to keep it simple, that's not clear to me. Places to go, people to see, things to avoid. How about people to avoid? I'm just kidding, or not. This month's goals, wins, how I'll improve next month. So I do kind of feel like I would maybe expand this and then put all of this on another page. But here we go. We have the entire— we have all the months right here. So you have your whole like kind of year at a glance in the front. And then it goes into the week. So I really like this, like this week's main goal. I think this part is great. It gives you like, hey, reward if achieved, treat yourself, and, you know, work to-do list. I would also say like, need more space for this. Or note if it's high-level to-dos that you can like break down in the day today. And then, then you have your daily schedule. So today's main goal, priorities, schedule, and then the next day to-do list, rate your productivity, how I'll improve. Again, similar, sometimes similar. I think this was something I forgot to bring up in the Nomadic that like some sometimes I have trouble with even on something like the Self Journal, which I've really liked, is when I go through a journal like this and I don't use all this space, to me it just— I, I feel like, I feel like I've wasted it. And so that's always a struggle I've had with more structured daily planners like this, is like if I don't put anything on Sunday, I feel like I could have maybe at least used it in a different way. But Yeah, that's the difference between a planner and a journal, and one of the reasons that we do like— a lot of us like the unstructured bullet journal. But if you want a more structured planner so that you don't spend as much time drawing out weekly, daily layouts, then like something like the Nomadic or this Clever Fox is something that is probably going to serve you really well. And that's pretty much the entire journal. So we've got, you know, um, oh, I will say that I do like that they have like, again, super tiny dot grid, but it's a nice section for weekly notes. You know, if you've seen some of my recent videos, that I will also have like a week or a month review page. So comparatively, like, here I would put a monthly log and it spans a couple of pages, and then this is one that you could do for weekly notes. I also really like this right here. It's a nice use of a review page. I could see it being ignored by people because I like that it says this week's main goal, wins, what tasks were not completed and why, which habits did I not pursue and why, what have I learned, how do I feel about my progress. And how will I improve. I think this is a really great end-of-week review page. So this is the Clever Fox Daily Planner. This thing is beefy. It is thick with multiple C's thick. And look at, look at this thing. I think my previous thickest journal was the Self, and you can see the difference right there. I don't know, 40% more thick. Many, many much more thick. That is the Clever Fox Daily Undated Planner. For the last two, I'm just going to give you a really brief overview of the Clear Habit Journal and the Self Journal. I do have complete solo reviews of both of these, so make sure you check them out in the description below. But if this is your first video here, then I want to give you a little bit of of a heads up on these, and if you're interested, I would watch the full video. So, the Clear Habit Journal is developed by my friend James Clear. I was fortunate to get an advanced copy and look at this a while ago, even before it was even in this form, and really liked it. I'll say, like, it has a really clear quick start guide. I think James did this as well as anyone. It combines a lot of things that I love with a notebook and habits and journaling. So it has a one line per day. The notebook is really well set up. It has these— you can't, can't really see them, but it has these nice little split grid markers. So it makes it really easy to split up the page and then a habit tracker. So normal index right here. And then it's the one line a day. Journal, again back to that journaling method, and then it's a whole lot of notebook pages. So the majority of the notebook, and this is what I like about it, the majority of this notebook, even though it has structure at the front and then habit trackers and toolkits, tool set, toolkits in the back, the majority of it is still an unstructured journal. So you have habit trackers right here. And then these toolkits, which are a way to think about how you're going to apply the things that you're learning. So there is the habit tracker toolkit, decision-making, productivity, and fitness. So it's just a couple of pages on how to be an effective habit tracker, how to create a decision journal, and a couple of like decision-making mental models for making progress and better decisions in your life. So that's the Clear Habit Journal. Can't recommend it enough. It's one of my favorites. I definitely think you should check it out in collab with Baron Fig. To close, let me just go over the SELF Journal for you. And if you didn't get my inside joke about ripping the commit page in the other journal, make sure that you watch this and read the comments. You don't have to make a comment because enough people have said have let their feelings be known about the thing that I did that everyone was so upset about. Mercy. But in the Self Journal at the beginning you have these, you have each weekly plan that this, the Self Journal is set up for 13 weeks at a time. So you go through week by week and it gives you a really nice structure for these are my milestones, what's most important, a nice quick overview, what's the happiest event that happened to me, what were my big 3 wins. Also a small habit tracker right here. So a lot of similar things to the Clear Habit Journal. Where I think the Self Journal sets itself apart is it is, as you can probably— it's very goal-oriented. So these are for the weeks, and this one, these are the daily spreads. So you see Day 1, Week 1. I would like to see, just, I don't know if Catherine and her team will watch this one, but I would like to see like a nice little reference to like the page numbers. Like, so week 1, where would week 1, day 1 start? Here, page 40. So I might say, I might write page 40, day 7 week 1, day 8 week 2. So I might go page 40 to 53. So that's for the self journal. Here is the daily agenda. This morning I am grateful for notes and ideas. This is my goal for the day. Today's targets, lessons learned, wins, and tonight I am grateful for. So some, some dot grid pages, really well-spaced dots in the back here. But other than that, you can see like this is pretty much the whole, the whole journal. There's a little bit of setup at the beginning to give you a heads up on everything. There's a quick start guide online. The beginning also gives you like a big 13-week roadmap, like what's your big goal. They really encourage you to start with one big goal and then kind of go— it even says optional right here, just so you can really focus on what that main goal might be and how important it is to you. And then you can kind of look at your, your weeks and months right here. But again, this is more— this is not set up to necessarily be a planner, but more of a, a goal journal really focused on what you want to do for yourself. What I love about these journals is that each one offers its own way and its own system for helping you make progress on the things that matter to you. If you want to focus on journaling, Mind Journal is amazing. I'm really liking it and have enjoyed it. You can also, if you want like even more structure and motivation and research, the Habit Nest journal on morning routines is really good. And if you just want like some more like daily, weekly structure, you don't have to make like a ton of layouts, then the Nomadic and the Clever Fox planners are excellent as well. And don't forget the Clear Habit Journal, which is probably one of my favorite journals still. I just love how it gives you the tool sets and a really good balance of structure with still plenty of blank open pages. Make sure you check out the entire video for the Clear Habit Journal and the Self Journal in the description below. I'm going to have them linked right there. And again, the Self Journal is one that I have loved for a really long time. It was my first big foray, if you will, into goal setting through a journal. And Catherine and her team do an amazing job at BestSelf putting that journal together and keeping it fresh. If you enjoyed this video, make sure you give it a thumbs up and comment, subscribe below if you are brand new here. This is the kind of thing we talk about every single week on this channel, how to get your head out of your apps and start to work and focus on the things that matter to you most in life. We use journals, note cards, bullet journals specifically a lot of times to reach and achieve the goals that we have in life. So hope you enjoyed this. Please leave a comment below, let me know what you thought, and I will see you in the next episode. Thanks everyone, have a great week. Bye.