I've been cultivating quarterly planning and treating each quarter as its own year according to the "12 week year" since last year and I came across the Finisher's Journal at a perfect time to further reinforce living each quarter to its fullest.
I've been using the Finisher's Journal 3.0 for almost two months now and it's been my productivity companion that I rely on the most on a daily basis. I appreciate the weekly review and planning pages at the end of each week. It has helped me understand that I work best when I plan one week at a time. Asking for the highlight of the day and reminding to update the habit tracker makes those tiny and yet important habits visible, which is so important. There is much more to compliment, but I shall focus on what could be developed further.
I'd like to focus on the details where I see room for improvement:
- Habit tracker: One page per month with each month offering enough slots for eight habits is very limiting, which may be a good thing to be sure. I would appreciate more habit tracker pages in total to give people the freedom to choose their optimal number of habits to track.
- Habit stacking: It would be very cool if there was a section where one could build a habit module made out of habits that are ideal to be done in one block, plus a section for designing a roadmap from the current to the final habit stack. That way, the detailed habit stack is there for later reference and that module could be listed as one line in the habit tracker. This may reduce the clutter in the habit tracker overview.
- Could be included in the habit stack planner: Room to define morning routine and evening routine. Or alternatively room to define different "menus" that are designed to be executed depending on the energy level of a given day. (Inspired by a YouTube channel whose name I can't recall right now...)
- Habit tracker: The example used to demonstrate how to use the habit tracker could be replaced with something far more basic, like "Checked habit tracker today", or "started evening routine on time", or "squeezed in 1% improvement anywhere", ...
- The hours displayed in the timeblocking section of daily planning does not fit my daily cycle: I usually am active from 9 or 10 o'clock in the morning until midnight. This crucial part of the daily planner lacks the kind of flexibility to make it perfect.
- Speaking of daily planning: I think "must do" and "might do" (as it's formulated in the 1-Page TimeBoxing Planner) is more to the point than "primary task" and "secondary task". Just a personal observation.
- Speaking of the 1-Page Timeboxing Planner: It would have been brilliant if Saturday and Sunday had also been included instead of just Monday through Friday. Here, the time window offered for timeboxing is also misaligned to my own rhythm, unfortunately.
- I suggest including a new symbol for recurring tasks in the template: an arrow that is drawn around the check box of a task. To make the recurring tasks more visible during weekly review and planning.
I already have my four Finisher's journals for 2025 and am looking forward to using my time more consciously and deliberately with the help of them! Thank you to Javier and all those that made Finisher's journal what it is today!
Best wishes
