Speaker 1: So today I'm really excited to talk about one of my favorite products the push journal and if you follow me on Instagram which you should I'm at grad life grind then you've probably heard me talk about the push journal a million times because I'm obsessed and in this video I'm gonna be talking about why I love it why you need one and give you all the information that you need to make a decision before you make a purchase welcome to grad life grind if you're new to this channel thank you for checking it out and if you're already a subscriber thanks for being back again my name is Arielle and I'm a PhD student in clinical psychology and in this channel I bring you information about the mental health field and talk about my journey as a PhD student so let me just start off by saying I love planners I'm a very organized person I love to write down everything that I do and need to do I'm a checklist person I'm a calendar person I'm a to-do list type of person so that will speak to why I love the push journal and I'll explain more in a moment. So that's what initially attracted me to the push journal. Just the way that I am is totally compatible with the push journal. And I used to use a yearly planner and I would go to Barnes & Noble and all these other places to find the prettiest and best planner. I had a phase where I made my own planner because I couldn't find a single one that had everything that I wanted in it or didn't have all this unnecessary stuff that I didn't want. I've done the ones with the stickers. I've done the ones with the quotes inside i've done yearly ones i've done so many different types of planners and then when i started graduate school i decided i wasn't going to use a planner at all because i was like i don't want to be making appointments with people or trying to set up meetings and then being like hold on let me pull out my big heavy you know yearly planner and let you know when i'm available so i started doing everything on google calendar and that worked for me for a while i still use Google Calendar and I love it, but I was still missing being able to write down everything and I was just making lists on random notepads and everything was kind of disorganized. So I finally found the Push Journal and the founder is Chalene Johnson, who I'm actually obsessed with for all things business and lifestyle. She has a podcast. She is an amazing business coach who I love, but she created the Push Journal system based on what worked for her. So I'll explain a little bit about that but first I want to show you what these journals look like because they're so cute. Push journals are 30-day journals so they come in three packs for 90 days and you can buy a single one or you can buy the three pack but the three packs are so cute and like color combined so that's why I always buy the 90-day packs. So this is what they look like. This is a brand new collection that I just got and they were doing a big sale so I had to stock up. So part of the reason why I love the push journal is because it's only 30 days and I was so tired of carrying around a yearly planner and by the time I got to like August it was already falling apart like one time I had a yearly planner and then I had in my backpack for college and I got caught in the rain and literally when I got home I took it out of my backpack and the binder like the bind piece was falling apart because it was like a cardboard cover and it was just done and then I was like everything was wet all my plans were like all messed up and everything that I had written was all mush and I was so devastated because I spent so much money on the journal on the planner and then it didn't even last me the whole year so anyways I love the push journal because it's only 30 days so inside the push journal you have a month view and another thing that I love about it is that it's not dated so it's not January 2021 it's just blank and you can write in the month and you can write in the days and it's the same for the daily planning or daily schedule part that it has if you miss a day you don't waste pages in the journal because you just write in the month and the day and you circle the day of the week which I'll show in a second but I love that I'm not wasting pages because I missed a day or it was a weekend or I was sick I can make the most use of every single page and like I said I'm a really organized and goal-oriented person so the other cool feature about the push journal is that there's a 30-day personal inventory and you're basically journaling a little bit about what your goals are what you need to do in order to accomplish them and what you need to not do in the next 30 days in order to accomplish your goals so I love that it has this self-reflective piece because I want to stay aligned to my purpose and this journal helps me do that the next thing that it has in the journal is a week at a glance and obviously it has a few of these for each week and like I said it's a blank so you can write in the dates and you can The way that I use this is I just write in the big things that are happening in that week so that I can keep track. Then we have my favorite part of the journals. The whole reason why I love them is the daily tracker. So I'm a daily schedule type of person. I need to write out everything that I need to do and I need to write the time that I'm going to do it because that is just what keeps me productive. So the daily tracker looks like this. At the top, it asks your push goal, which I'll get into in a moment. There's a whole push goal system. and then it has the tasks that you need to get done and your daily schedule. This is the most important thing to me. And at the top, it also has what you're grateful for. So the idea is that you're doing micro journaling, just writing a few things that you're grateful for. And I'm a psychology student, so there is research to show that there is great benefit to writing out what you're grateful for. So I love that piece as well. After the two pages that have your goals and your to-do list and your daily schedule, there is another two pages for that same day. And one page is notes, which is really helpful for me. So if I have phone calls or meetings or whatever, I can take notes in this spot. And then a game changer on this side is a health tracker. And you can track the meals that you eat, the water you drink, the exercise that you do. And it even helps you track self-care at the bottom, which is amazing because I'm always talking about how self-care is key for graduate students so this health tracker helps me keep track of like what I'm eating if I'm skipping meals which I do way too often how much water I'm drinking even though I know that there are apps and stuff for that so it also helps me keep track of my exercise and it forces me to put in one thing that I'm going to do for myself in the day for self-care it also helps me track my sleep so like I said earlier I'm somebody who likes to write everything down and i'm someone who likes to keep track of everything so yes there are apps that'll help you track your sleep your water intake your exercise and stuff like that and i use apps like that i use my fitness pal sometimes to track what i'm eating and i've i've used a bunch of different apps to track my water but i love writing stuff down so this is a journal for somebody who prefers that if you don't need this stuff then maybe it's not the right journal for you because you're gonna not even use those pages you're gonna just skip over them and if that's not the best use for you then that's fine. My goal here is not to convince you to buy something that you're not going to use. My goal is to show you what is in here, why I love it, and if you love it too then I hope you buy it but if not then find something that works for you. So the majority of the push journal is comprised of those daily trackers for your daily schedule, your tasks, your goals, and your health tracker and notes. That's the majority of the pages in here and there are a few pages with little quotes for those of us who love that aesthetic and want to see something that'll motivate us. This one says, to achieve your goals, you need to be disciplined, and if you cannot hold yourself accountable, find someone who will. The way that it keeps me accountable is by the 30-day personal inventory at the beginning of the month, but also with this 30-day review at the end of the month, and it helps you reflect on what went well and what didn't. And again, I love that because I'm super goal-oriented. If you're somebody who is not keeping track of your goals that specifically or that meticulously then maybe this isn't right for you but for me I love it and I have a lot going on as a PhD student in clinical psychology so I have a lot of moving parts to my life a lot of different things to get done and this helps me stay centered on what's important just for those 30 days and when I have three journals it helps me stay accountable for what are my 90-day goals and as somebody who is literally on a quarter system in school the quarterly nature of the post-journal system works really well for me. The last few pages of the push journal also have some blank note pages, which is kind of helpful for me to just write down random things. Sometimes if I have a monthly to-do list, things that I need to get done over the course of that month, I'll put that here, just small things. And it's just extra space. There's also, for those people who are into bullet journaling, there's some dotted pages in the back as well. So here's the thing about the push journals and why I love them. I haven't even gotten to why they're so awesome and effective. Yes, they look cute. Yes, they have all the things inside that I need. Yes, they are sturdy and lightweight and just fabulous. But what's really valuable about these journals is this. So this is the instruction manual that comes with the push journals. And it's based on a push goal system that was developed by the founder, Chalene Johnson, and she can explain it way better than me, but I'll just quickly summarize. The idea behind the push goal system is that you will align your values and then create goals based on those values, but the idea is that you will take a look at your values and what's important to you and how you're doing in the different areas of your life. Then you will decide on which area or areas of your life you want to focus on for the next 30 or 90 days and then you will set goals in order to do that and you will set a push goal which is one goal that will propel you towards all these other goals that you have and that will be the push goal the push goal is something that you do three 10 to 15 minute activities towards every single day and this instruction manual helps you come up with that and chalene johnson has done a number of podcasts on this push goal system she helps you take inventory in the different areas of your life. She helps you identify the problem areas or where you want to focus. She helps you think of the goals that might be helpful, and she helps you come up with a push goal. So I'm going to link to those two podcasts that help me walk through that process in the description for this video, but just know that when you receive a push journal, you're getting a manual for how to follow those steps, and it really helps you use the journals to their maximum capacity. And what I really like about the push goal system is that it's based on aligning yourself with your values and what's important to you. And we can set all the goals that we want, but we're not going to be motivated or inclined to achieve them if they're not consistent with what is important to us. So the key here is not only are the journals cute and lightweight and useful and super organized or at least designed for super organized people, they're also grounded in a system that is designed to help you achieve your goals and propel you towards the things that you want to achieve faster. So I love that so much. So now that you know all the reasons why I love the push journal, it's important for you to also know some of the cons so that you can make a decision that's right for you. So one thing that is challenging about using a push journal is like I said it's only 30 days and so while that keeps me really focused on the next 30 days in front of me it makes it a little bit hard to plan ahead. So one of the awesome things about a yearly planner is that you can look at the entire year. I happen to use google calendar in addition to using my push journal so it's not an issue for me but if you are someone who wants to have the whole year or six months or just time ahead right there in front of you on paper, then the push journal might not be right for you. One other con of the push journal, depending on how you look at this, is the price. So they used to sell push journals just by themselves, one journal for 30 days, but I think because the push journal system is really designed to be a 90-day goal setting and goal achieving system, now they're only selling the three packs. And you get three journals for $68.95 which is quite a lot of money for a lot of people. So the cost is one thing that might turn you off from the push journal and it was something that made me wait a while to try the push journals to be honest with you. I was interested in them. I thought they were really cute but I was like that's a lot of money. I feel like I can spend that $70 and use it for a yearly planner. I could even get a yearly planner for less than that and so I waited for a while. I hesitated on buying them but there was a sale and I took advantage of the sale and then I started using them and I was like it is so worth it to me. So I can totally understand if the push journals are not for you because they're too expensive for you and that's totally fine. One thing to help with that though is if you decide to shop and get a push journal or a push journal system you can use my code GRAD10 for a discount. I also recommend stocking up on push journals when there's a sale so on Black Friday even though I had some journals left I bought some more because they were on sale. So that's another way to kind of work through that system But I just want to be honest with you and let you know that as much as I love these journals and I'm raving about Them they are pretty costly, but the best things in life are not free lastly, I don't think that the push journal is for the average person and I say that because as you can see there's a lot going on in there. There's a health tracker. There's a daily schedule There's all these checklists and goals. There's the push goal system. There is the 30-day review and the 30-day personal inventory there's a lot in there and so if you're not the type of person that is insightful about your goals or on top of your goals you're if you're not the type of person that likes to write things down and stay really really organized and it might not be right for you if you're the type of person that glances at your schedule and one time a day and then you're like and you go through your day and that works for you then great but it might be a waste of money to get a push journal if you're the type of person that's highly organized and goal-oriented then this is right for you but it's not for everyone no one product is for everyone so just think about the type of person you are before you choose to buy something like this if you're type a i think you'll be fine but if you're not then it might be a waste of time and money so this has been my review of the push journal as you can see i really love them but i cannot ignore some of the cons and i want to make sure that you can make an informed decision and put your money into something that's going to be useful for you so like i said if you choose to buy these you can use my code grad10 for a discount and you can shop using the link in the description for this video and I hope that this video was helpful for you if you're somebody who follows me on Instagram and you're constantly seeing me talk about the push journals I hope that this clarifies to you why I'm always talking about them and sharing about them if you're not following me on Instagram then you need to do that right now I'm at grad life grind and I'm always posting about grad school life grad school application tips and just some other fun stuff so I hope that you'll follow me there you can also follow me on TikTok at gradlifegrind, and I really hope that you will like this video and subscribe to my YouTube channel. Thank you so much for watching. Again, my name is Arielle. My goal is to inform you, to inspire you, to spark an interest in you, and hopefully also entertain you, so I hope you'll be back soon.