Softcover Book

DAILY JOURNAL

Teach and Inspire People in Jail or Prison!

Daily Lessons to Learn
Critical-Thinking Questions
Vocabulary Building Exercises

We designed this daily journal course to teach and inspire people in jail or prison. Every day features a new lesson, encouraging participants to document the journey. (Orders ship in December, 2020)

Prison Professors


Self-Directed Journal Course for People in Jail or Prison

Daily Lessons

Every day includes a lesson to prompt a person in jail or prison to think about steps to begin preparing for success.

Critical Thinking

Each day includes critical-thinking questions to prompt participants to think about strategies to prepare for success.

Vocabulary Building

Each day’s lesson highlights one word to show participants the importance of developing communication skills.

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Get the Earning Freedom Daily Journal

We designed the interactive Earning Freedom Daily Journal specifically for any of the following groups of people:

  1. People in jail or prison,
  2. People who anticipate that they may be going to jail or prison,
  3. People who have loved ones in jail or prison,
  4. Teachers or mentors that work with people in jail or prison.

By journaling every day, people develop a record of their achievements.


About the Author

Michael Santos

I made bad decisions as a young man. They led me to prison with a 45-year sentence. With daily journals, I documented the journey. That methodical process led to a successful journey through prison and to building successful businesses upon my release. I created this journal to help other people prepare for success.

“Develop the will to prepare for success .

How the Earning Freedom Journal Helps

My name is Michael Santos and I used daily journals to prepare for success while I climbed through 26 years in federal prison. Through these journals, I teach lessons I learned from leaders with hopes of teaching and inspiring others. With Earning Freedom journals, a person can show deliberate steps to prepare for success. Through this self-directed course, participants learn an essential tactic that will help them make progress during challenging times. Without direction, a person can lose hope.

Each day of the Earning Freedom Journal offers a story or lesson that shows a person how to pursue self-directed, personal development projects. I used this strategy to build self-esteem and restore confidence, preparing for the best possible outcome, given the challenges of my lengthy sentence. Others can use this same strategy to overcome the challenge of time in custody.

The course offers a new lesson every day.

Participants get a self-directed, personal-development course to help them build a mindset to overcome adversity.

The methodical process helps a person: 

  1. Define the best possible outcome.
  2. Create and document a strategy to succeed.
  3. Develop tools, tactics, and resources that build strength.
  4. Identify priorities.
  5. Make adjustments as necessary. 

The Earning Freedom Journal provides the participant with a year at a glance, allowing him to focus on what he or she can accomplish. Each day includes a series of self-directed exercises to prompt critical-thinking skills. 

Why Use the Earning Freedom Journal?

The Earning Freedom Journal will help each participant develop a written record of accomplishments. Each month will include a new series of exercises. Participants can record their progress for the exercises in one convenient location. The participant can accumulate these books to demonstrate how he or she has used a difficult time to prepare for success. Each year, a participant will have 12 softcover books that are filled with the participant’s words, showing that he did not waste time. Rather, the participant can show evidence of introspection, personal development, and preparations for success.

By journaling every day, people develop a record of their achievements. With Earning Freedom journals, a person can show deliberate steps to prepare for success. Daily journaling empowered me through 26 years.

Through this self-directed course, participants learn an essential tactic that inspires people to make progress during challenging times.

A self-directed person that is climbing through a jail or prison term, he will need to think about the challenges that await him. For example, he will need to:

  • Influence case managers or administrators that assess his worthiness of participation in beneficial programs that could influence his release date;
  • Build a persuasive case for a parole board or some other administrative action that may determine whether he is suitable for release;
  • Make a persuasive case on why he is a good candidate for a higher level of liberty after authorities transfer him to home a community-based program, like a halfway house or home confinement;
  • Persuade a judge to release him from community supervision and restore the rights of full citizenship;
  • Persuade an employer to see value in the way that he responded to a problem, rather than to the problem that led to his confinement;
  • Overcome the burdens and collateral consequences of mass incarceration.

How to Use the Earning Freedom Journal

A participant should use the Earning Freedom Journal as an essential tool to prepare for success. Each day will include a personal-development lesson. The person should read the lesson and use it as an exercise in the development of critical-thinking skills. The environment of a jail or prison will expose a person to negative thinking and hopelessness. Other people in custody will attempt to influence a person’s thoughts. Some staff members may discourage personal growth and development. Despite those challenges, a person must think about how to grow and prepare to overcome the challenges ahead.

By working through the Earning Freedom Journal, a person will develop more insight into the self-directed strategies that many leaders have used to overcome a life of struggle and challenges. After reading the daily lesson, the individual should consider each open-ended question that follows the daily lesson. The questions do not have a right answer or a wrong answer. Rather, the questions challenge a person to think independently and to grasp the ancillary consequences that follow each response.

Further, the questions will prompt the person’s writing and recording of thoughts each day. At the end of the week, the Earning Freedom Journal includes a recap. The person can use these sections to record progress he has made in reading, he can write book reports, he can record his progress with regard to personal health and fitness. A person can use these daily recordings to build stronger relationships with mentors and family members.

How the Earning Freedom Journal Helps

My name is Michael Santos and I used daily journals to prepare for success while I climbed through 26 years in federal prison. Through these journals, I teach lessons I learned from leaders with hopes of teaching and inspiring others. With Earning Freedom journals, a person can show deliberate steps to prepare for success. Through this self-directed course, participants learn an essential tactic that will help them make progress during challenging times. Without direction, a person can lose hope.

Each day of the Earning Freedom Journal offers a story or lesson that shows a person how to pursue self-directed, personal development projects. I used this strategy to build self-esteem and restore confidence, preparing for the best possible outcome, given the challenges of my lengthy sentence. Others can use this same strategy to overcome the challenge of time in custody.

The course offers a new lesson every day.

Participants get a self-directed, personal-development course to help them build a mindset to overcome adversity.

The methodical process helps a person: 

  1. Define the best possible outcome.
  2. Create and document a strategy to succeed.
  3. Develop tools, tactics, and resources that build strength.
  4. Identify priorities.
  5. Make adjustments as necessary.

The Earning Freedom Journal provides the participant with a year at a glance, allowing him to focus on what he or she can accomplish. Each day includes a series of self-directed exercises to prompt critical-thinking skills. 

Who Should Participate? 

The Earning Freedom Journal is an interactive course. We designed this course for people going into jail or prison. We also encourage the family members of people in jail or prison to participate in the project. For that reason, the Prison Professors YouTube channel features videos to show our response to the critical-thinking questions. Participants may also participate in our interactive webinars to learn how these journals work together with our self-advocacy courses.

To prevail over the collateral consequences that follow a jail or prison sentence, a person must document the pathway to success. As the story shows, I relied upon my sisters and parents to help me through the first 16 years of my imprisonment. Then, in 2003, I got married inside of a prison visiting room. My wife began working with me to help document the journey.

By building strong support networks, a person grows stronger and more capable of overcoming the challenges that accompany a jail or prison sentence. For that reason, we created the Earning Freedom Daily Journal. We hope it helps you.

DAILY JOURNAL

Lessons to Teach and Inspire People in Jail or Prison!

Orders Ship in December, 2020


We designed this course to teach and inspire people in jail or prison. Learn techniques to stay motivated and inspired while working to prepare for success.