Let me take you back to the last time I wrote, strategically glossing over a couple of missed posting opportunities, and remind you that I mentioned incorporating some daily intentions pages into my Filofax setup. Well, now that I’ve been using them for a week I reckon it’s high time to give a bit more detail on what they are, why I bought them, and how am I finding them.

The pages are from William Hannah and are supplied punched for their A5 disc-bound notebook system (compatible with other discbound systems and will also fit in the Filofax loose-leaf Notebooks). Because I wanted to incorporate them into my Filofax, I sliced off the punched left-hand edge and added suitable holes with my Filofax brand hole punch. These particular pages can be ordered as dated inserts or the undated style I bought, in both cases the are sold in a pack of 50. I wanted to give them a try, but wasn’t sure exactly how frequently I’d want to use them, so the undated version made sense to me. They are printed in a crisp mid-grey ink on William Hannah’s usual lovely, natural white 115gsm paper which expertly handles fountain pen ink. To round out the “what” I’ll run through the areas provided in the layout.

• Front of page
  • Checkboxes for:
    • Meditation
    • Exercise
    • Read/Learn
  • Space to write Date
  • Blank boxes for:
    • Today’s Happiness Level
    • I am grateful for
    • A positive from yesterday
    • Yesterday I learned
    • A creative or positive idea
    • A thought around one of my goals
    • Today’s critical action
    • Two further key actions
    • A stretch target for today
    • My intention for today
• Back of page
  • Thoughts for today
  • Checkboxes for:
    • Critical Action
    • Key Action 1
    • Key Action 2
    • Stretch Target
  • Thoughts for tomorrow

And now we’ll cover the “why”. Having come to the conclusion that I like a weekly diary view, but was in need of a bit more motivation, I was impressed by the thought that had gone into the design of these pages. The layout gives just the right amount of guidance without being overwhelming or feeling dictatorial. Before my order arrived I had two ideas about how I would use the sheets. In the short term I was looking for a deeper focus and structure to my days to help me over a particular hump, so I liked the idea of using these for a month or two as a remedy. My second idea was that these might work as weekend pages in a system which devotes less space to those days.

Now we’ll move on to how I’m using the pages. I am actually still finding my feet with a few of the sections. I’m rubbish at logging gratitude, although I did fill a mini book with a gratitude thought each day a couple of years ago so I know I can do it. I don’t do meditation as such so I fill that checkbox to denote that I’ve written in my journal every morning. I need to push myself to do more exercise and start being able to fill that checkbox every day. The part I struggled with the most to begin with was Today’s Happiness Level. I asked some advice on this through the William Hannah User community and one useful idea was to log your happiness level at the beginning and the end of the day. The first couple of days I tried to do it as a score out of ten but, like most numbers, that didn’t really mean anything to me. Then I hit upon the idea of putting down one word which described not, perhaps, my happiness level so much as my mood at the beginning and end of the day. That’s much more “me” and quite enjoyable as I like to find different words each day.

Funnily enough, a few days after I started using the pages, the hump I’ve been experiencing suddenly resolved itself – perhaps the pages are a miracle! There’s still some nitty-gritty details to iron out and I think these sheets are going to be useful as I go through the process of getting from where I am to where I need to be – establishing my own “new normal” – but if I decide I don’t need them right now they will happily wait for another hump to arise.

As well as the intention pages, I treated myself to three new rolls of washi tape from Note and Wish – these are so pretty and a worthy addition to my tiny stock. I tend to sit on a fence a mile wide when it comes to decorating or not decorating my planner and journal pages. I love the prettiness of the well-decorated pages I see on social media, but I have the feeling that once you start decorating your pages it detracts from the words which you are writing. This is reinforced by a secondary issue: my lack of aptitude in the visual arts. I struggle to even place a sticker on a page in a way which impresses me and we don’t even want to talk about using glue to add items to paper! However, adding a strip of washi tape to the outer edge of each Daily Intention Page has brought an added level of pleasure as I sit with my Filofax beside me.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little explanation of how these pages have slotted into my weekly diary/planner routine. Now, let’s see if they help me to actually write a decent number of blog posts this week!

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I don’t have any affiliation with the shops I’ve mentioned in this blog post other than being a happy customer and on the rare occasions I manage to express an opinion, it will be my very own. If you’d like to take a look, you can find the shops at:

William Hannah (UK web shop)

Note and Wish (UK web shop)