Binders are like mail baskets: one day they are empty, the next they are overflowing onto everything around them. If you don't figure out how you want to organize your binder from the start you are setting yourself up for disaster. You can always re-organize at a later point in time if things change. For our discussion, we are considering the different ways to organize your health journal binder.

First, you want to determine how many people will be included in the binder. If more than one person, get creative and use folders, page protectors containing a title page, or more prominently decorated colorful tabbed dividers. Even if it's only for one person, get creative figuring out how to divide the sections.

Clear page protectors offer a way to personalize title pages for a section, but colorful bright dividers with tabs can make it easy to find color-coded sections of information. Folders are great because they offer storage for extra documents and pages that you can't hole-punch and file in the binder. There are also tabbed dividers with pockets that offer the best of all the worlds.

Once you determine the different sections to divide your binder into, you will know how many dividers you need to get.

A health journal can be divided in many ways, and a lot will depend on how active your wellness journey is. Someone frequenting doctors regularly who also takes medication will have different needs than someone who is just doing annual wellness checks.

An easy way to divide the binder is by data type – Doctor Visits, Medications, Vitals, etc.. You can also divide chronologically by year in the order by which things occurred.

When figuring out how to organize the pages, there are different approaches you can take to chronological order. One approach is oldest in the front and newest (most recent) in the back like a book you read left to right. Another is to file newest pages in the front so that the most recent activity can be found easily and quickly. Think of how you view your social media and digital newspaper timelines, usually the most recent posts appear right up on top and as you scroll down or click to the next pages you encounter older posts.

Regardless of how you decide to order the sections, the first thing to print is the Snapshot to Get Started, punch some holes and place as the first few pages in front.

How you divide your health binder is to be determined – don't be afraid to get creative, but also don't be afraid to keep it simple and evolve with time. With dividers, page protectors, and folders the possibilities are endless.