I thought I was excited about my bullet journal last month, but now I know what excited feels like! I changed up some things this month including my gratitude log, extended my habit tracker, and brought the weekly plan back into play.
Cover Page I have my month at a glance, with important dates highlighted. I used different colors (orange – holiday; blue – birthday, pink – wedding). The affirmations were a late addition, and I say them aloud to myself every time I see them. It’s great having them next to my habit and mood trackers (see below) so I see it quite a lot. I also moved my notes section to my cover page since I didn’t use the full page last month and decided it wasn’t necessary.
Mood and Habit Trackers I was so ready for fall that I made my mood tracker an apple tree. What surprised me was how well the colors fit both moods and apples, but I may be a bit biased. “Rotten” was a late addition, because it was the best way to describe how I felt that day. I have only used it on the day I added it in, which is a bit hard to see (Sept. 5, thanks PMS). However, I’m glad I added it because I think it’s important to be honest with yourself, particularly if you’re going to go back and look in the next month and see if there are any themes. Speaking of themes, this is the most I have used happy and productive in a mood tracker since I started tracking moods. I will honestly attribute this to finding a workout program that I can do on an almost healed sprained foot. I have not skipped a single day in 2 weeks and I am over the moon with this program.
As far as my habit tracker, I added a few items in from previous months, particularly those at the bottom. I wanted to try to see how much I’m doing things that I more or less love. I also wanted to do a gradient color scheme. I saw a photo of one while searching for layout ideas, and I loved the monochromatic habit tracker. I loved the look and feel of it, and really thought that implementing it would increase the amount that I track, and I was correct. As before, green is positive habits and pink is negative habits. My tracking has definitely made me second guess all of the negatives that I can control, and skipping the positives.
Gratitude Log Again with the fall theme! I wanted to do a gratitude log that allowed me to write more than one item a day if I was feeling it. I also wanted something that flowed easily. My thought was not so much that I would want to go back to it, like my mood tracker, but that I would embody the quote on the page. I want the words on the paper to bring me joy in the moment and keep me happy. Thus far, this has been very successful and I am really happy with the way I’ve been tracking. I’m not as consistent as the other trackers, but I do find that it helps me whenever I’m feeling even the slightest bit down.
Weekly Schedule I am not the biggest fan of the weekly spreads because I am such an avid user of my Outlook calendar that it doesn’t matter too much for my day to day. However, it does help me tremendously on, say, a Sunday when I’m looking at what my time looks like. I have also added weekly goals which help me work towards something. Currently, I’m focusing these on fitness and nutrition because I need to do that.
She’s Got a Whole PhD 