A couple of weeks ago, I took the plunge and purchased a Bullet Journal on Amazon for $8.99. I first thought “hmm, you might want to upgrade your life” when I was taking all of my notes on a small legal pad. Not the best for writing down appointments to remember or notes in pencil, among other things. I found that although I was carrying my planner around, and that it has a lot of room for notes, I wasn’t reaching for it. I knew it was time to merge the aspects of my life into a single place. Then I had a choice: do I want another planner, do I just want a notebook, or do I want a bullet journal?
I searched online, I looked up bullet journaling on Instagram and on blogs (okay, I was already following everything I looked), and realized that the bullet style page is actually really useful for basically everything. I have never been a huge fan of ruled papers, mostly because I write much smaller than wide ruled spacing but no matter how hard I try I can’t not write on the lines. I didn’t think my artistic skills were up to par with a plain page notebook (like a sketchbook) so I went with an official Bullet Journal. And now I am so in love I cannot figure out what I was doing before.
My bullet journal has a lot of fun pages, some are complete, some are not. My favorite page is my daily tracker. Seeing what I am good about staying on top of and seeing what I am not so good at staying on top of has already been really useful. On top of that, getting more boxes checked is an incentive to stay on top of my sh*t, so there’s that aspect too.
My second favorite part is my weekly spread. I am more attentive to putting everything in this spread, much more so than my planner. To be perfectly honest with you, I think it is a layout thing. My planner had an hourly layout, without the times. So, I would try to order everything as it would happen during the day. This wasn’t really working because, where do all day events go? How do you distinguish between things that require you to be at work and things that require you to be at home? The short answer is that there is no good way to do this. Although I used the same colors in my planner that I am using in my BuJo, I notice them much easier. I also separate by side, until one or the other fills; the left hand side is for work and the right hand side is for play.
The other great thing about having a multi-purpose place for everything to go is that I can take notes on the personal development books I am reading, and I can take notes about my knitting projects in the same place. This means that anywhere my bullet journal goes (and it can go pretty much anywhere with me), I am able to jot down ideas. I can make a list of books I am highly anticipating/very excited to read, and I can make a spread of yarn weights and notes (still not finished yet…). I can fill the pages with anything and everything, and I just flip to the next page whenever the page is full or I am done with it.
The other really nice thing about this, is that there is no set number of pages between months. All of my May notes, are after the May calendar. All of my June notes, will be after the June calendar and so on and so forth. This offers me much more flexibility in organizing my bullet journal. I have no idea if it will take 6 months or 6 years (okay, I seriously hope not) to fill, so I cannot put a full year’s worth of calendar pages in it now. This also means that I can design each monthly layout with whatever I am feeling at the time, I can use the space at the top for banners to include my favorite quote of the moment, and any drawings that I choose. The great thing about this is that it is always making me smile. I wonder if I had designed it sooner if I would feel so happy about it, probably not.
Some people get really into bullet journaling, and that is totally alright. I don’t think I am going to be one of those people though. I really just enjoy having a streamlined place to put everything and do everything. Also, that the place is much smaller than my planner was so I don’t feel weighed down by taking it everywhere with me. I am sure that as time goes on, I will find more uses for my BuJo, more pens to decorate the pages of my BuJo, and much more. For now, I am just enjoying the simplicity of the matter.
She’s Got a Whole PhD 