What do you think?
Rate this book
Hack Your Journal: Stay Organized & Record Everything that Matters with One Notebook
Stay organized, write down important information, and compile your to-do lists with these eye-catching and practical customizable page layouts and spreads!
If you’re looking for clever ways to spruce up your diary or build a planner from scratch, Hack Your Journal teaches you how to design fun and functional pages that meet your needs. Every section showcases a set of layout concepts—for weekly planning, habit trackers, daily reflections, and more—but with unique variations and distinct artistic styles. Some require only a pen and paper; others feature elaborate ideas with ample opportunities to add color and embellishments. You’ll find step-by-step instructions to recreate these pages on your own, while sidebars provide quick tutorials on useful techniques to decorate and personalize each one. If you keep a planner, organizer, or diary, or want to begin, you’ll refer to this inspirational book again and again!
If you’re looking for clever ways to spruce up your diary or build a planner from scratch, Hack Your Journal teaches you how to design fun and functional pages that meet your needs. Every section showcases a set of layout concepts—for weekly planning, habit trackers, daily reflections, and more—but with unique variations and distinct artistic styles. Some require only a pen and paper; others feature elaborate ideas with ample opportunities to add color and embellishments. You’ll find step-by-step instructions to recreate these pages on your own, while sidebars provide quick tutorials on useful techniques to decorate and personalize each one. If you keep a planner, organizer, or diary, or want to begin, you’ll refer to this inspirational book again and again!
176 pages, Paperback
Published June 26, 2018
5 people are currently reading
260 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
August 22, 2019
Quick review for a quick read. This was one of those books that had great ideas and simple to follow instructions for journal layouts. I liked the aim and organization of it, particularly that they give you step by step plans to setting up monthly, weekly, daily and special themed layouts for journal pages. I wish they'd given specific credit to Ryder Carroll for the Bullet Journaling technique since some of the planning points follow that particular planning style, though I understood how this book was composed of various contributors and they were going for a general guide for journal techniques. I did find this a worthwhile read and will come back to it for inspiration in journaling when I need it.
Overall score: 3/5
Overall score: 3/5
December 20, 2021
I was very disappointed in this book. It’s not about journals at all. It’s about how to hand draw your own day planner. Since day planners aren’t that expensive I just buy mine. I can’t imagine why you would want to draw your own day planner since the real value of a day planner is to be able to plan future days and not overlap important events. She suggest you plan your week at the beginning of each week. For everyone I know that would Require that they keep a separate day planner to record everything that they need to know in order to sit down and draw their day planner at the beginning of every week.
The book does have really good illustrations. The photography is very sharp. There’s a lot of color in the book. And the book is well laid out I think. Except for one thing — the pictures that span the center fold are printed up into the spine of the book. So the photos of the suggested page layouts are about one third in the spine of the book where you cannot see them. Now it’s true if you look at the parts you can see, then read the description, then think about it and look at it again, you might be able to figure out what that part looks like. But I don’t want to do that much work.
Last but not least is that her formats contain so little space to list things that you need to do that only someone who had very little to do could use most of the layouts. That turns out to be a good thing because if you had very much going on in your life you wouldn’t have the time to sit down and draw your day planner every week.
It’s really sad that the book offered me no useful information. I was really looking forward to it because I thought it was about journals. I love the look of it. But it really provided me no value.
The book does have really good illustrations. The photography is very sharp. There’s a lot of color in the book. And the book is well laid out I think. Except for one thing — the pictures that span the center fold are printed up into the spine of the book. So the photos of the suggested page layouts are about one third in the spine of the book where you cannot see them. Now it’s true if you look at the parts you can see, then read the description, then think about it and look at it again, you might be able to figure out what that part looks like. But I don’t want to do that much work.
Last but not least is that her formats contain so little space to list things that you need to do that only someone who had very little to do could use most of the layouts. That turns out to be a good thing because if you had very much going on in your life you wouldn’t have the time to sit down and draw your day planner every week.
It’s really sad that the book offered me no useful information. I was really looking forward to it because I thought it was about journals. I love the look of it. But it really provided me no value.
January 27, 2019
Lovely book filled with ideas about how to create your own hard-copy organizer. My issue, if I had time to create my own I wouldn't need to.
January 27, 2020
This book is all about the photos. It's a fantastic wealth of cool layouts and cleverly designed pages that will inspire anyone interested in bullet journaling. Unfortunately most of the text is really not necessary or useful to the reader since it's, in my opinion anyway, a needlessly detailed step by step of how to draw what you've just seen in the photos. I'm not saying it's unnecessary because I could just whip up these beautiful layouts with my amazing bujo skills, only that it doesn't really offer any further help in learning to set up your pages than the photos already do in a more useful way. I think the text would have been better devoted to discussing how to adapt the different layouts to a variety of different uses. Nonetheless, it's a really enjoyable way to get to check out a ton of beautifully executed bullet journal pages and to learn what bullet journaling can be. I'm not sure I've got the hang of it after reading this book, but I'm definitely glad to have this on my bookshelf as a reference tool.
October 1, 2018
The one thing I love about Christmas..is that I get to start a new diary.
Being a list maker I love the process of having a dedicated plan to my days months and year.
Hack your Journal, is brilliant for a girl like me. It is filled with ideas, set ups and plans for cool useful planner.
You do not need a special expensive book to get started, just a simple notebook and a desire to get creative.
Habit trackers, Room makeovers and a Food Diary spread are just some of the suggested plans for you to start with.
Hack your Journal is a colourful and realistic guide to organising your life and becoming more imaginative and practical. It is both inspiring and inventive.
I would have loved it to be spiral bound, this would have made it easier to use, but that said it is the perfect guide to journaling and there is even some Practice Pages at the back to plan your layouts before you insert them into your book of choice.
I loved it.
Being a list maker I love the process of having a dedicated plan to my days months and year.
Hack your Journal, is brilliant for a girl like me. It is filled with ideas, set ups and plans for cool useful planner.
You do not need a special expensive book to get started, just a simple notebook and a desire to get creative.
Habit trackers, Room makeovers and a Food Diary spread are just some of the suggested plans for you to start with.
Hack your Journal is a colourful and realistic guide to organising your life and becoming more imaginative and practical. It is both inspiring and inventive.
I would have loved it to be spiral bound, this would have made it easier to use, but that said it is the perfect guide to journaling and there is even some Practice Pages at the back to plan your layouts before you insert them into your book of choice.
I loved it.
October 14, 2024
Good for people who have already done some form of bullet journaling--a little over-stimulating if you're new to it. "Dot Journaling" is another book on bullet journaling I would recommend first for beginners as that one is very easy to read and helpful for getting into the basics of bullet journaling.
This one is good for more visual ideas as well as going very in-depth into the nitty gritty of bullet journaling. I got a few helpful ideas from this one. The fun thing about books about bullet journaling is that you can get different ideas from different books as each person goes about it differently.
This one is good for more visual ideas as well as going very in-depth into the nitty gritty of bullet journaling. I got a few helpful ideas from this one. The fun thing about books about bullet journaling is that you can get different ideas from different books as each person goes about it differently.
March 21, 2019
This is a book about bullet journaling that pointedly does not mention bullet journaling or use bullets per se, because someone trademarked bullet journal. (Kind of like the stinkin Boy Scouts trademarking Pinewood Derby so no one else can use that either.)
Anyhow, this is a great book with layouts from seven different journalers for different stages of life (e.g. students, workers, parents...) for different types of trackers/calendars. Very positive and upbeat about 'do what works for you.' I've been doing this planning method for two years now and it's really helped me get things done!
Anyhow, this is a great book with layouts from seven different journalers for different stages of life (e.g. students, workers, parents...) for different types of trackers/calendars. Very positive and upbeat about 'do what works for you.' I've been doing this planning method for two years now and it's really helped me get things done!
July 24, 2020
Neat ideas. I used to Bullet Journal and then got lazy and starting using pre-printed planners. This makes me want to get back into a blank dotted journal and completely customize my planner again. We’ll see what January brings... I may just keep using my pre-printed planner and then just add some of the tracking ideas that are in this book
January 4, 2021
Average. It's not bad if you know nothing at all about bullet journaling, however, most people who want to try it have at least a bit of basic knowledge, which is the focus of this book. There were decent examples of things you can do with a bullet journal. However, I was looking for more than the info you can find on the internet.
January 11, 2021
This book is very informative about making your journal yours. It had very creative ideas on how to day to day things and how to add pictures of your own. It also gives information on how not to get stuck and keep on writing. Anyone who wants to journal and do it in their own way this would be helpful. I think the thing I love the most is the pictures that help you organize your thoughts.
December 28, 2019
Love everything about this book! I look forward to using it as inspiration for my new journal. The practice pages are a good idea. I also liked the step by step instructions for the different layouts.
April 30, 2020
Great book to give inspiration on journaling. My only problem with it is that the spreads were across too pages and went into the binding so you couldn’t see everything in the spread. But otherwise a very good and helpful book.
January 3, 2021
3.5 stars... Some great ideas here if one is prone to using a journal to track nearly everything you can think of! I am not, I'm more minimal at the moment. I did buy it hoping for some ideas to boost my creativity, so I will be referring to this one more over time for ideas.
March 21, 2022
This is a really cute guide for creatively using a bullet journal. It has a ton of layouts and tips, and includes helpful supply suggestions. At the end, it has several blank pages for practice, which is a really nice addition.
October 21, 2018
A good basic intro to bullet journaling for those who haven’t tried it before. Nice photos of examples.
June 5, 2020
Great ideas!
August 23, 2020
If you're looking for something to hold your hand, step by step, this is the book. Otherwise way too much "how to" and not enough examples.
Read
September 15, 2022creative layouts for journaling, I could have used this 4 years ago!
November 7, 2023
A little too practical and not quite creative enough for my taste.
May 8, 2023
I am in love with this journaling book. I originally got it from the library but then went and bought my own copy from Amazon so that I could always reference my favorite spreads and ideas. I’ve bookmarked pages with washi tape and cracked the spine so that it lays flat while I look over the high-quality color photos.
The book does a great job going over the fundamentals, which I didn’t need but always enjoy a refresher, and then has a lot of knew spread/layout ideas I had not seen before.
In January 2023 I dove deep into bullet journaling and started voraciously reading about it and trying my hand at my own BuJo. This book has helped tons and I’ve used a lot of the ideas, adding my own twists.
The book does a great job going over the fundamentals, which I didn’t need but always enjoy a refresher, and then has a lot of knew spread/layout ideas I had not seen before.
In January 2023 I dove deep into bullet journaling and started voraciously reading about it and trying my hand at my own BuJo. This book has helped tons and I’ve used a lot of the ideas, adding my own twists.
July 18, 2023
It's a cute inspiration book. I liked how there were tips for every layout on how to make it your own, and they were a little more creative than many similar sources. Still, it's more aimed at people new to journalling, or people who are willing to put a lot of time into creating layouts. I am trying to spend less time on maintenance right now rather than more.
January 17, 2019
Huh. An entire book about bullet journaling that NEVER ONCE uses the term "bullet journal" or references Ryder Carroll, who came up with the method. Yes, I know this book covers a more artistic approach to the method than Ryder's minimalist style, but still... really???
May 29, 2025
Need to purchase this one. I’ve reached my renewal limit at the library. For me, this is a great resource book.
Read
October 7, 2018There seems to be a lot of these types of books being published right now. I think I have 3 more coming from the library. This one seems to be a collection by "contributors" so there's no overarching voice. Therefor, it does have a variety of ideas, a couple of which I found interesting...
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews