Every spring I go back through the journaling templates and rebuild the parts that stopped working. This year’s refresh is smaller than last year’s — three new pages, one removed property, and a quieter set of covers. Here’s what changed and why, in case you’re deciding whether to re-duplicate.
**The covers got duller, and that’s on purpose.**
Last year’s covers leaned floral and saturated. They looked great in screenshots and slightly loud on the page. When you’re journaling at 10pm in a dim room, a bright cover is a small assault. This year’s set is mostly paper tones — oat, clay, dusty blue, a soft charcoal. There’s one botanical image in the whole set and it’s desaturated enough to read as texture rather than decoration.
If you liked the old covers, keep them. The PNG pack includes both sets. I’m not going to pretend the new ones are objectively better. They’re just better for the way I use the template, which is quietly and at night.
**I removed the “productivity score” property.**
This one I should have removed a year ago. The old daily page had a 1–5 score for how productive the day felt, and after looking at my own entries for six months I noticed something: I only ever filled it in on days that went well. On the days it would have been most useful, I skipped it. A number that only appears when things are fine isn’t data, it’s a reward.
So it’s gone. In its place there’s a single yes/no toggle: “Did I do the thing I meant to do today?” One question, no scale, no implied judgment about the rest of the day. You can answer it honestly on a bad day, which is the point.
**Three new pages.**
First, a “slow morning” page — a short list of things you can do before you look at your phone, with a checkbox for each. Mine has five items and I usually do two. That’s fine.
Second, a “what I’m reading / watching / listening to” page that’s actually a small database, so you can tag by mood and filter for “comfort” when you need it. It’s the least practical page in the set and the one I open most.
Third, an end-of-season page. Not a review, more of a clearing. Four prompts: what I’m carrying forward, what I’m leaving, what I’m curious about, what I’m tired of. I wrote mine in twenty minutes and it did more for me than any quarterly review I’ve done.
**The setup got simpler.**
The old template had a dashboard with a linked view for each database and a quick-add button for each one. It looked tidy and I never used the buttons. The new dashboard has three linked views and no buttons. Everything else lives one click away, where you’d naturally go looking for it.
If you’re re-duplicating: your existing entries won’t transfer automatically. The easiest path is to duplicate the new version into a fresh page, then drag your old entries into the new archive database. It took me about ten minutes with two years of entries, so it’s not the chore it sounds like.
The refresh is live now, and the updated link is in your original purchase email. If you bought after February, you already have it.