Whether creating a health journal for yourself, a family member, or friend you care for, the first thing you want to figure out is where you want to organize important health information.

For many, building a health journal with a binder organized into different sections and printing pages as needed is the best solution. It allows flexibility to shape the journal for the individual. As time goes on our needs change and sometimes unexpected things happen, so you may need to add types of information to your journal that you didn't expect to need before.

For example, if you only take a few vitamins with breakfast every day then you probably don't need a medicine log or schedule. However, the day may come when due to unfortunate circumstances or a newly discovered healthy issue, you find yourself taking several supplements, prescription and OTC medications. All of a sudden the 1-page Medicine log comes in handy.

Creating a binder and printing as you go will require some supplies to get started like a binder, hole punch, and maybe some section dividers or folders. This assumes you already have a printer, ink, and printer paper, which become recurring supplies you buy again later. Don't get me started on how long printers and ink last (especially when you don't print much).

A benefit of using printable pages with a binder is that you can create a binder for several family members and scale to more binders over time as you outgrow the space. There are plenty of great reasons to combine a good binder with easy-to-read printables to keep track of your health journey. However, not everyone has or wants a printer and all the supplies that come with it. You may find that dealing with printers and punches is more than you can or want to handle depending on what else you are juggling in life.

For those people, buying digital books and trackers may make more sense because you can upload the book to your favorite note-taking app. At the moment, digital books are on the roadmap for future offerings so stay tuned.

Alternatively, sometimes an old-fashioned printed book is all that is needed to stay on track. My Paper Chart evolved from a series of health tracker books sold on Amazon that were created as an experiment to learn about publishing on the Amazon platform.

Which is right for you? I'm not sure, that is for you to decide.