How to Plot Out Your Life through Art
How to plot out your life using vision boards, commonplace journals, and logbooks.
Your life is your masterpiece. You can create anything within the canvas of your days, and the only person holding you back from the life you deserve is you! So start keeping records of your days, design a vision board, devise a 5-year plan, keep a diary, and create a commonplace journal.
Here are some steps that you can take to plot out your life;
Keep Records of Your Days
Austin Kleon, the author of “Steal Like An Artist” issued out an endless treasure cove of advice in his book, from “Always have paper on you” to “Chase every reference. Study everything there is to know about who inspires you.” But the most relevant advice when it comes to this article is:
“Keep a logbook of what you do every day to inspire activity and recall. Keep a calendar to do one little task that assists in adding to a larger project with time.”
When employing this method, I wrote down every meticulous, adventurous, monotone, and creative task that I did every day. Doing so allows you to remember your days more clearly and inspires you to achieve more than just sitting around indulging in nonsense all day.
Design a Vision Board
This was a tactic I began little by little on Pinterest, which is an amazing hub for compiling aesthetic, inspiring, and artistic visuals. Recently, I finally dived in and collaged a physical vision board and pasted it up in my living room, plotting out my ideal habits and the future I desire. On your vision board you can employ aesthetics, personal photos, and achievements, people you admire, places you wish to travel, inspiring quotes, and more. The page is yours to peruse. It can be fashioned in a journal or on a poster board, or even online- even Pinterest suffices.
Devise a 5-year Plan
Consider what your goals will be spanning over a period of 5 years. What do you want to achieve? What do you want to learn? Where do you want to be? And who do you want to become over a course of 5 years?
Keep a Diary
Record your thoughts, experiences, and momentous events in a diary. Romanticize your life. Write as if your life is a grand story infused with lessons and beauty, and you are the main character. Maybe, just maybe, someone might come across your diary someday and devour it, clinging to every page- utterly inspired and bewitched by your life story. Bring to mind Anais Nin, who became a well known literary figure due to her controversial yet beautiful diaries.
Create a Commonplace Journal
One of my favorite and most sentimental objects to date is my commonplace journal. I have two. One that encapsulates artistically influential quotes and excerpts from books and blogs, alongside things that inspire me creatively. The other one houses self-help quotes and is a tool for my self-development. I also have pages dedicated to my ideal subjects to study (from tasseography to the ancient Greek language) beside pages dedicated to stuff to do when I’m bored, creative ideas, affirmations, and a whole section dedicated to the writers who influenced me, and lines by them that have impacted my own writing. I also organize the quotes and pages by color-coding them and utilizing index tabs.
With these new habits and mediums, you can begin to plot out your life more in depth and learn to further romanticize your life and make it the ideal masterpiece you’ve always dreamed of. Good luck!
Sincerely,
Dharma Bum Poetess