A month ago, I decided to start bullet journaling. I’ve been looking for ways to become more organized, so figured I would give it a try. I’ve seen examples of them all over Pinterest and Instagram, and not gonna lie – I’m low-key obsessed.
Basically, a bullet journal is an organizational system that you can completely customize to tailor to your specific needs. It’s basically an all-in-one guide that you create yourself to become more organized, track daily habits, etc. Literally anything you want to put in it, you can. This is what appealed to me the most. I’m always buying tons of notebooks and stationary (I’m a sucker for a cute notebook) – one for work to-do lists, one general planner, a calendar, etc. Which also saves paper too, so yay for the environment! By creating a bullet journal, I can combine these all into one glorious journal and all my problems in life are solved! Well, okay obviously not, but I HAVE become just a bit more organized since starting the process.
Not gonna lie, I am TERRIBLE at following through with things. I start off strong with something, and then just tend to fizzle out and forget all about it. So, I decided to try it out for a month to see how I like it. The fact that I’ve actually still kept up with it is a good start, and says something about how easy it is to keep up with bullet journaling.
You can use any notebook, but using dot-lined grid journals are probably going to be the best (since you can easily outline grids and stuff). Amazon is probably going to be your best friend since it’s your one-stop shop for everything you need…and, ya know, it’s AMAZING.
Now, as I said earlier, you can put literally whatever you want in it, but there are some standard things that are included in all journals, no matter what you decide to put in:
Index – pretty self-explanatory; updated as you fill out your bullet journal
Future/Yearly Log – the year at a glance, where you can list important dates, events, goals, and more
Monthly Log – an overview of the month ahead that includes a calendar, things needed to get done for the month, trackers, etc.
Weekly Log – your week mapped out at a glance with to-do lists, notes, etc.
Daily Log – your entire day mapped out with to-do lists, notes, etc.
Those are basically the core things needed. Now, you don’t HAVE to use all of them. For example, I don’t include a daily log – I’m content with a monthly log, followed by weekly logs. I also started out my journal with a future/yearly log, but I hardly update it. Once you get the bare bones of it sorted, you can customize it with goals for the month, to-do lists, grocery lists, meal planners, trackers, etc. The list could honestly go on. Another thing I love about bullet journaling is that there is no set format. If you try something out one week, say a certain spread or something, and it’s not working for you, or you don’t fancy it, you can change it up the next week to something new. So far, I’ve been keeping the same weekly spread format of two pages, with a box for each day’s to-do list, but I might switch it up and try something new. We’ll see.
Back to the customized bits for a second. One of my favorite things about bullet journaling is the ability to keep a track of certain things. I currently only have a habit tracker in mine. I keep it in my monthly log, and fill it out each day as I complete the daily tasks, or “habits” that I am trying to mantain, such as exercise, new blog posts, studying, etc. But you can have a tracker for almost anything – spending habits, moods, fitness, and much more.
Bullet journaling is also great to get your creative juices flowing. You can leave it very basic, or can decorate it however you’d like. Little doodles here and there, quotes to get you inspired, washi tape, stickers – just go crazy. There’s tons of inspiration online. I get mine from Instagram by following the hashtag #bulletjournal. Follow that and you’ll see lots of pretty stuff like this:
Also, don’t think that you need to be an amazing artist to do this. I am nowhere near anything remotely close to “artistic” as you can clearly see by my “skills” (or lack thereof). And that’s completely fine by me. There’s tons of cute little tutorials online for doodles, and that works for me. Yea, you want it to look cute, but if that’s all you care about, then you’re missing the point.
Since bullet journaling, I’ve definitely noticed that I have been a bit more organized in the day. The weekly spread, to-do lists and habit tracker have been a big help for me. I can see at a quick glance how I am getting on with my daily habits (which as you can tell I’ve struggled this past month). There have been days when I wasn’t able to keep on top of things 100%, but it’s still a work in progress. Anything that I have not achieved in the month, I am simply rolling over to the next month to give myself another shot at it. Ya know, that way I don’t feel like a COMPLETE failure.
Have you tried bullet journaling? Let me know how you like it in the comments below!
xx Lauren
Love it! I was into bullet journaling for a while and kind of just stopped randomly – it’s very time consuming but always feels worth it when you have a beautiful finished product 🙂 This makes me want to get back into it!
It definitely is time consuming but I love it! It’s really calming!
That is really neat! I bought an Erin Condren planner this year and when I first got it I was using it all of the time. Now I am slacking. I need to get back to using it because I am so disorganized.
I’m nowhere near as organized as I should be, but this is one thing slowly helping me get there! Trying my best not to slack, either! lol