My Favorite Magazines to Help You Achieve Your Goals

Writing things down by hand helps you remember information, set goals, and understand what you’re creating. Taking up journaling is a popular New Year’s resolution, but if you want to stick with it, finding the right journal for your needs is key. Here are some of my favorites that you can try in 2024, depending on the type of journaling you prefer to do.

Best Regular Magazines

As you’ll see, there are many niche magazine options out there, but sometimes you just need Old Reliable. Try these:

• A six-pack of small notebooks ($33.29) will give you the ability to organize your year. Assign one book for every two months and then stick to your plan to fill them.

• For journaling on the go (which is inevitable when you’re busy), try these three spiral notebooks from Zicoto ($17.99). The spiral prevents the book from getting beat up in your bag, and the thick pages are easy to write on wherever you go, and there’s even a handy pocket for money, receipts, or souvenirs.

Best Bullet Magazines

There are many uses for journals. Perhaps you want to write long, flowing passages about your thoughts and feelings, in which case one of the basic notebooks above will work for you. If you want to be more concise with tasks, observations, lists, or goal tracking, a journal with bullet points is a better option. That’s what they sound like: journals designed for bullet points. Here are a couple worth paying attention to:

• The Original Bullet Journal ($29.99) comes with page grids, a dot design, places to add calendars and special writing, and a sheet of date-related stickers, making it a great introduction to bullet journaling.

• Try the Rettacy Dotted Grid Marker Journal ($14.84 for two) for easy marking. Instead of lines, you get dotted grids on which you can structure your lists or quick notes. What’s nice about them is the index at the beginning that acts as a table of contents that you can fill out to keep the whole book more organized.

Best Dream Journals

Keeping a dream journal is a fun way to engage your psyche, or at least remember the weird things your brain came up with while you slept, so it’s helpful to keep a dream journal next to your bed.

• The Clever Fox Dream Journal ($19.99) makes dream journaling easy by providing you with prompts. You enter the date of the dream, note whether it was mundane, lucid, repetitive, etc., and even consider the quality of your sleep and the emotions you felt when you woke up before moving on to describe the dream. There are places to note key events, locations, dream weather and general mood, and then finally a place to write down your interpretation.

• To make it a little quirky, try the What the Hell I Dreamed Last Night Journal ($10.99). It only includes the date location and your description, which is less intimidating for new dream journalers.

Top financial magazines

Perhaps one of your New Year’s resolutions is to take charge of your finances, manage your money better, budget, or simply become more aware of how money flows in and out of your life. Try keeping a financial journal to start making these connections.

• Clever Fox Budget Planner Pro ($29.99) is full of features to help you feel better. There’s room for setting goals, logging monthly expenses, marking your monthly calendar, and even budgeting for special events like vacations and holidays. The kit also includes cash envelopes and stickers so you can put your money where your mouth (or pen) is.

• Try the Votorio Budget Planner ($9.95) if you can’t justify spending a lot of money on something that’s supposed to save you money. It’s easy to use and includes savings tables, four quarterly goals, and periodic analysis pages. There’s a place to record bills, credit card payments, investments, and income, and you can do it all weekly, biweekly, monthly, and/or yearly.

Best Journals for Goal Tracking

If tracking your goals is your motivation for journaling, try a journal designed for that purpose. There are many of them on the market, but here are some that have useful features:

• The Brain/Shift Journal ($25.99) is a 13-week undated planner and notebook that asks you to identify your “key goals” and then work through smaller steps to achieve them. Each week you are given behavioral information. Each day you are asked to write down how you want that day to go. Each day contains different clues about what you’ve learned and how you’ve grown, which can help you reflect in ways you wouldn’t normally do.

• The Goal Crazy Planner ($34.90) is also dateless, meaning you can start whenever you want, although the new year is as good a time as any. Each day is broken down into a morning preparation and an evening review, including prompts about your goals, what you’re grateful for and affirmations you’d like to set, as well as what you’ve accomplished and your most memorable moments.

The Best Gratitude and Wellness Journals

Planning can be stressful and keep you focused, but you shouldn’t forget to reflect on the good things in your life that all that hard work brings you. This is where gratitude journals come in handy. They are designed to help you enjoy the good parts of your day, rather than just focusing on the future and what still needs to be done.

• If you want a simple approach, try the Green Inspired Simply Grateful Journal ($12). Each day he asks you to list what you are grateful for and then gives you an inspirational quote. Nice! There are also prompts that encourage you to make lists, such as the people in your life for whom you are grateful.

• The Gratitude Journal Notebook ($4.99) is a budget-friendly book that’s worth the money. Tips include listing what you’re grateful for on a given day, reflecting on your accomplishments, and setting self-care goals that make it easy to stay on top of tasks that are solely for you and your improvement.

Best Grief Journals

Many journals focus on looking ahead, planning, and reflecting on daily life, but all of this is difficult to do if you are having a hard time coping with a loss. These journals will help you get through difficult times.

• The How to Heal Journal ($18.40) is a 52-week reflective notebook that allows you to process your feelings one step at a time by asking you to answer questions once a week for a year. You note what’s on your mind, what’s going well, and what problems you’re facing. Each page also includes a quote about loss and grief.

• If you want more in-depth information, try the 52-Week Grief Journal ($14.99) written by a licensed marriage and family therapist. Each week you explore a new topic, such as honoring your regrets or overcoming emotional numbness. The prompts are more wordy and thoughtful than in other journals, coming straight from a therapist who will really talk to you about grief and then encourage you to think about things like survivor’s guilt or how you were taught to cope with loss in your youth .

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