Have you heard of bullet journalling?  I. Am. Hooked.

I came across it on Instagram one day about a month ago, and was highly intrigued.

It’s a combination calendar, to-do list, diary, daily inspiration, goal tracker, fitness tracker, (ANYTHING tracker), and, one of my favorites: a place to keep important info.

Did I lose anybody there?  Probably.
The first step is admitting you have a problem, and I have a calendar problem.

The bullet journal can be all of those things above because it starts with a blank notebook. I went with a grid lined spiral notebook.  Spiral, because I like to be able to rip out pages if I need to, and have no trace left behind.

There’s lots of official terms and ways of bullet journalling, but here’s the breakdown:

You start with a yearly calendar (aka “future log”…I refuse to call it that), including big important dates, holidays, birthdays, and the like.

Then, you drill down…

Next is the current month.  Here I put big dates that weren’t likely to change–although the erasable Frixion pen I have has been the best thing that ever happened to bullet journalling, in my opinion.

In August, I tried using a page to track things I was grateful for on a daily basis.  I started off fine, but about mid-month I starting missing days–which irritated me, because I put 31 spaces to write things.

This month, I’m going with a more flexible “happy moments” tracker.  This way, I can write more than one–or none–in a day.  The leaves I don’t fill, I can just color in later!

Then we have the weeklies.  I’ve made five weekly spreads now, and each of them has been different.  I think this is why I like bullet journalling so much.  After a point, I figured out how much room I really needed per day, and discovered some things I could insert to fill the rest of the spread.  Things like fitness trackers, dinner planning, weekly goals or tasks, inspirational quotes, and a few times now: space to doodle or color in.

In between these planning pages, you can add anything you want.  Some extra pages I’ve added are a Dinner Ideas List, Books I’ve Read/To Read page, and now that I’m learning to read and write Japanese, syllabaries for hiragana and katakana.  すごい!

To keep track of all these calendars and random pages, you create a table of contents (“Index”) at the beginning, and number each page.

Only a few weeks before I started bullet journalling, I looked longingly at some planners at the bookstore, but I knew better than to buy them.  I have never had any luck using a regular planner. I always liked the idea, but never stuck with it.

The obvious benefit of using a journal like this, is (personally) when I write down a task, I feel like I’m committed to completing it.  So when I wrote “Write more blog posts” as a goal for September…well, here we are.

I can see how it appeals to bloggers and people who are lucky enough to work from home.  Perhaps some day that will be me! #AmWriting

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