How To: Set Up Your Yearly Journal Pages

Welcome to 2026, from The Journal Club! For us, a new year definitely means a brand new journal. We've put together this handy guide to help you set yours up! We've included explainers on all of our yearly pages, giving you inspiration for your own journal. If you haven't got your 2026 Journal yet, be quick, as they won't be restocked once they're sold out. Hopefully our guide helps you kickstart your own journaling habit for 2026.

Title Page and Yearly Goals

This yearly goals page can feel quite intimidating, but don't worry! We're here to help. A clear way to use this page is to divide your yearly goals up into six categories. These can be anything you like - a few categories we use are: Personal,   Health, Financial, Fun, Academic/Career.

Once you've decided your categories, try coming up with a few yearly goals for each one. These can be as safe, or as ambitious as you like. Why not try having a mix of easy and difficult goals? This will give you a sense of satisfaction as you tick them off the list, but also allow you to keep working towards something. Some other ways of using the yearly pages are: to divide your goals up by months, using each box to represent two months; or to decide six goals, and then use the tick boxes as a way to break down each goal into smaller steps. 

Yearly Trackers

All of our yearly trackers can be used as much or as little as you like. There's no pressure to fill them all out every day, but you can if you want! Each tracker can be customised to what you need to use it for, so don't stress about altering your life to fit into the journal. The journal should fit you! Here are our tips and tricks for making the most out of each yearly tracker:

• A Year In Pixels: these trackers are most often used to track mood. Try assigning a different colour to each mood using the key at the side. Then, colour in each square based on your mood that day. It's a really fun way to see if seasonal changes affect your mood, or if there are any other trends you can spot
  
• Yearly Weather Tracker: like a temperature blanket, this is a creative way of keeping track of the weather outside. Use the symbols on the side of the page to decide your weather categories, and then colour code it to your heart's content. If you're not into colour coding, try drawing symbols in each box to represent that day's weather conditions. This is super fun to look back on at the end of the year
• Yearly Money Tracker: this is a super simple way to start tracking your finances. The best ways to use our spend tracker is using the key at the bottom to assign a range of values of money spent, e.g £0, £0-20, £20-50 etc - you could also flip this and do money saved instead if you were on a big saving year! If you want to make it more in depth, use the key at the side to make note of any particularly large spend days and what they were for, or alternatively use it to track your savings. 
• Yearly Step Tracker: this is another pretty self-explanatory tracker, focusing on the amount of steps you've done that day. The easiest way to use it is to get the data from an online pedometer so you can be accurate. Most phones have one built in, so don't worry about downloading anything new! If you don't like this, why not try using the step tracker as a way to track general exercise? Use the colour coding for intensity/time spent exercising (eg. gentle walk, long run, hard gym session) and fill it in that way

Blank Trackers

The blank trackers are some of our favourite pages in the journal! These can be used for anything you'd like to track. Some fun ideas from our customers include:
- Crying Log
- Period Tracker
- Birthday Tracker
- Shower Tracker
- Wordle Tracker
- Screen Time Tracker
- Coffee Tracker

If you're interested in more ways to use your blank trackers, we have another blog post coming out soon with more details. We can't wait to show you more fun ways to use your journal.

Reading Log

This reading log is like a physical version of book tracking apps, such as Goodreads or Storygraph. Colour code the rating system for your books (we've gone with a 5 star ranking). Once you've finished a book, write the title down on one of the spines of the books on the page. Next, colour it in with its assigned star rating. This is a really fun, low-pressure way to keep track of the books you've read, without having the pressure of reviewing them each time. 

Check out some of our alternative reading log printable options for those of you that want to track your reading by month, or give a 10 star rating, or typically don't read a huge amount over the year.

Other Pages

The Monthly Photo Diary is the perfect fit for polaroid-sized photos, giving you a memory from each month. If you don't have a polaroid camera, try printing off regular photos and cutting them to size.

The Highlight of the Month page is a nice way to reminisce on each month and see what went well. It's also lovely to look back on, and see how much progress you've made throughout the year.

The Song of the Month page is perfect for music-lovers, and gives you a ready-made playlist at the end of 2026 to describe your year.

The Blank Pages at the end of the spread can be used for anything you like. Our founder, Kira, loves to use them for her 'Doodle A Day' challenge, explained in the video below. You can buy a 'Doodle A Day' printable to put in your own journal here!

If that seems like a lot of work for you, try using these pages as a Brain Dump, or add in a few of our printables if you want more trackers!

So that's our crash course to using the yearly pages in our brand-new 2026 journal. If you've missed out on getting one of the 2026 journals but still want to plan, try picking up our Undated Journal. This has all the same pages and trackers as the 2026 edition, but with different themes. Also, it's undated, so you can start it at whatever time of year you like! Happy Journaling!

Find The Journal Club on TikTok and Instagram to learn more. 

Cover photo credits to @michaelajpeg on Pinterest, link here