✱ Journal

✱ Journal is designed to capture your thoughts, reflections, and experiences. It’s also a powerful tool for planning and setting goals or themes. Whether it’s a daily log or a long-term reflection, it grows with you.

✱ Years Note

Years Note is where you reflect on your long-term progress, celebrate wins, and learn from challenges.

✱ Quarterly Notes

Quarterly Notes help you reflect and plan in broader timeframes, encouraging you to see the bigger picture.

✱ Monthly Notes

Monthly Notes give you space to set goals, track progress, and highlight key moments over time.

✱ Daily Notes

Daily Notes help you track your immediate thoughts, tasks, and reflections as they happen.

What about Weekly Notes?

There are no weekly notes in the Forever ✱ Notes system because weeks can’t be consistently linked to daily, monthly and quarterly notes as they change from year to year. The structure is designed around timeframes that remain stable (days, months, quarters, years), ensuring notes stay connected and organized in a consistent way.

If you need weekly notes in the Forever ✱ Notes system, I suggest creating dedicated weekly notes manually and linking them to your ✱ Home note.

Setup

→ Get the Apple Shortcut: Create ✱ Journal Notes in Apple Notes - Please note that Apple Shortcuts doesn’t support automatically creating note links. Therefore, the linking process must be done manually. While it may seem a bit tedious, if you make the linking a daily habit instead of doing it all at once, it only takes a few minutes.

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Create all Journal notes

• Create 1 note titled ✱ Years, 4 notes titled ✱ Q1 ✱ Q2 ✱ Q3 ✱ Q4, 12 monthly notes titled ✱ January ✱ February ✱ March, etc. and 366 daily notes titled 1 January to 31 December.

Add navigation links to Journal notes

Year note

1. In the ✱ Years note add the text ✱ Home • Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 and link to the respective notes by tapping on the text and selecting "Add link".‍
2. Add a new Heading with the current year and list your annual theme, highlights, important events, or accomplishments for that year. Each new year, create a new Heading above the previous one, and continue the process year after year.

Quarterly Notes

1. In the "✱ Q1" note add the text ✱ Home | ← Back • Next → and below it Jan | Feb | Mar and link to the respective notes by tapping on the text and selecting "Add link".‍
2. In the "✱ Q2" note add the text ✱ Home | ← Back • Next → and below it Apr | May | Jun and link to the respective notes by tapping on the text and selecting "Add link".‍
3. In the "✱ Q3" note add the text ✱ Home | ← Back • Next → and below it Jul | Aug | Sep and link to the respective notes by tapping on the text and selecting "Add link".‍
4. In the "✱ Q4" note add the text ✱ Home | ← Back • Next → and below it Oct | Nov | Dec and link to the respective notes by tapping on the text and selecting "Add link".‍
5. Add a new Heading with the current year and list your quarterly theme, highlights, important events, or accomplishments for that quarter. Each new year in that quarter, create a new Heading above the previous one, and continue the process year after year.

Monthly Notes

1. In the monthly notes add the text ✱ Home | ✱ Q3 | ← Back • Next → and below it 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31. Style it with "Monostyled" and link to the respective notes by tapping on the text and selecting "Add link".‍
2. Add a new Heading with the current year and list your monthly theme, highlights, important events, or accomplishments for that month. Each new year, create a new Heading above the previous one, and continue the process year after year.

Daily Notes

1. In the daily notes add the text ✱ Home | Month | Today | ← Back • Next → and link to the respective notes by tapping on the text and selecting "Add link".‍
2. Add a new Heading with the current year and day of the week and list your daily theme, highlights, important events, or accomplishments for that day. Each new year, create a new Heading above the previous one, and continue the process year after year.

✱ Home Note

1. In the ✱ Home note add a new heading "Journal" and below it

Today • Years
Q1 — Jan | Feb | Mar
Q2 — Apr | May | Jun
Q3 — Jul | Aug | Sep
Q4 — Oct | Nov | Dec

2. Link to the respective notes by tapping on the text and selecting "Add link".
3. We will link "Today" via shortcut URL schema after creating the shortcut in the next step.

Tags

• Add the tag #ForeverNote to the bottom of all ✱ Journal notes.

Access to Today's Daily Note

We want super fast access to the ✱ Home note, so we will set up shortcuts to this note.

→ Get the Apple Shortcut: Open Today's Note

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Steps to Create the Shortcut:

1. Launch the Shortcuts app on your iPhone or iPad.
2. Tap the ”+” icon in the top-right corner to create a new shortcut.
3. Tap “Add Action.”
4. In the search bar, type “Get Current Date” and select it.
5. Format the Date:
6. Tap the date action that was added.
7. Under the “Format” option, select “Custom”.
8. In the custom format field, enter this format: d MMMM.
   • d represents the day (1–31).
   • MMMM represents the full month name (January–December).
   • This will format the date as “1 January,” “2 February,” etc.
9. Tap the ”+” icon to add a new action.
10. Search for “Find Notes” and select it.
11. Set it to search for a Note where Name contains “Current Date” (formatted with the current date using the custom format from the previous action).
12. Set Sort by: Name.
13. Set Order: A to Z.
14. Check Limit and set to "1".
15. Add another action by tapping the ”+” icon.
16. Search for “Open Note” and select it.
17. This action will open the note you found in the previous step.
18. Tap the play button to test the shortcut and verify it opens the correct note.
19. Tap Done and rename the shortcut to “Open Today’s Note”.

Link "Today" in the ✱ Home note:

1. If you named your shortcut exactly "Open Today’s Note", copy this URL scheme: shortcuts://run-shortcut?name=Open%20Today%E2%80%99s%20Note
2. Highlight the word "Today", then select "Add Link".
3. Paste the URL scheme: shortcuts://run-shortcut?name=Open%20Today%E2%80%99s%20Note
4. Click "OK" to confirm adding the link.
5. Test the shortcut by tapping on the linked word "Today" to ensure it triggers the "Open Today’s Note" shortcut.

Add the Shortcut to the Home Screen

1. Tap the three dots (…) in the top-right corner of your newly created shortcut.
2. Tap “Add to Home Screen.”
3. Customize the icon by choosing the calendar icon and name if desired, then tap “Add.”

Now, whenever you tap the Shortcut on your Home Screen, it will directly open today's daily note in the Apple Notes app.

Add the shortcut to the Lock Screen Control

1. Press and hold your Lock Screen.
2. Tap Customize.
3. On the Lock Screen customization screen, tap the left Lock Screen Control area at the bottom of the screen.
4. You will see a list of widgets you can add.
5. Scroll through the list of available widgets and look for the Shortcuts widget.
6. Tap to add the widget to your Lock Screen.
7. After adding the Shortcuts widget, you’ll be asked to select the specific shortcut to display.
8. Choose the shortcut that opens your note called “Open Today’s Note”.
9. Tap Done to save your changes to the Lock Screen.

Now, whenever you tap the Shortcut on your Home Screen, it will directly open today's daily note in the Apple Notes app.

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Signifiers

Signifiers can add context and make your notes clearer. These visual cues make it super easy to see what’s what and keep your notes organized at a glance.

They are also easy to create.

Asterisk: Type ** (after creating the text replacemet)

Separator line: Type 6 x - + Space

Event: Type * + Space

Milestone Achievement: Click the "Make a Checklist" icon

Note or Thought: Type - + Space

Priority item: Type 1. + Space

Highlight: Select any text, click the "Aa" button, then tap the pen icon. Next, click the colored circle to choose from 5 highlight colors.