One Month On: Bullet Journalling

One Month On: Bullet Journalling

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.

bujo year

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…

bujo month

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!

bujo weekThen 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.

bujo booksIn 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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