On Bullet Journaling

All right, guys, I’m going to level with you. Last week, my great KonMari journey hit a bit of a roadblock, and that roadblock was: I KonMaried my kitchen with absolutely no inner conflict, amusing anecdotes, or great revelation.

Soooo…I can’t write about how I just cleaned out my kitchen, and it took 30 minutes, and now my pantry looks great. I mean, I get that these KonMari posts are on a dull subject anyway, and that’s part of the humour, but, come on.

So this week, I’m going to take a diversion and talk about another basic suburban Pinterest mom trend I’ve become obsessed with…bullet journaling.

Setting up my Bujo!

Bullet journaling is surprisingly difficult to explain. Google or Pinterest searches of the term yield insanely elaborate, artistic lists, trackers, and illustrations no one without a 2D Art degree could hope to aspire to. What the hell is bullet journaling, and why do it?

I’m glad you asked, rhetorical writing device.

Go on the original Bullet Journal website and you’ll see a bunch of pretentious terminology (rapid logging, future log,) that actually describes an incredibly simple method of keeping a planner. That’s what a Bullet Journal is: A planner. Depending on the person, it can be a planner/journal/diary, or a planner/diary/sketchbook, or a planner/ list tracker, whatever you would like. But the bones of a Bullet Journal are simple: It’s a very efficient way of task management.

As is my nature, I did a metric fuck ton of research before finally sitting down to start my Bullet Journal. I researched what sort of journal (lined, dotted, grid, blank) would be best for my style, what sort of things I wanted to keep track of, etc. By the time I bought my journal and sat down, I was a little intimidated. Where do I start? What if this isn’t the best format for my calendar? What if I mess up? What if I did all this research for something I’m only going to keep up with for a few weeks and then abandon? In the end, I just had to open the freaking book and start writing shit down. And that would be my advice to you, dear invisible/imaginary reader, if you wanted to start one. Actually, teaching someone how to start one is probably the best way of explaining what the hell it is, anyway, so I’m just going to do that from this point on.

Let me break down the bones of a Bullet Journal (or Bujo, as it is abbreviated, because BJ is too funny.) We have:

The key
The index
The annual calendar (the website calls this a ‘Future Log,’ I guess to try to pretend that they’re doing something much more profound than making a freaking calendar.)
The monthly calendar
The week at-a-glance page, if you want that.
The daily task manager.

That is literally it, guys. It’s that easy. The Gratitude Wheel, Book List, Mood Mandala, and other crazy pages you saw on Pinterest are just optional embellishments, depending on what you want to do with your personal Bujo. (Ha, Bujo looks like Cujo. That makes this less dorky, right? Am I cool again?....anyway…)

Here’s how I started my Bujo. I’ll post photos of my own journal to show you how boring and ugly it started out. The reason I started without elaborate illustrations or symmetrical banners was because that intimidated the hell out of me. I can be a bit of a perfectionist, and I don’t have the art skills to ever satisfy myself (phrasing) in that department. Since this is a daily journal for myself and I’m not planning on displaying it at a museum, I forced myself to let go of the search for “the perfect key page” or “the perfect index format” and just start writing.

FIRST: GET A JOURNAL

My journal, a plain dotted Moleskine.

            This isn’t really a step, just a thing you have to do, but I wanted to discuss the format of journal for a second. Most Bullet Journals you see in research are dotted. My personal Bujo is a dotted Moleskine journal, but many people use the more expensive Leuchtturm 1917 because it’s more durable as hardcover, and it has pre-numbered pages. The Bullet Journal website also sells its own Bullet Journals, which are numbered and have the Index already marked for you. In all truth, any journal works. You can use a lined one, grid, a totally blank sketchbook-style notebook, whatever you’d like. I decided on a dotted one because I knew I wanted to get a little fancy and artsy with my Bujo, but I’m not good at making straight lines or centering things on my own (thank you, dots!) As I’ll be saying a lot in this post, it’s all a matter of personal taste.

STEP 1: MAKE A KEY

Yes, this is my key page. Off center, ugly, and boring. But, much like a balding, hairy-armed foreman chomping on a cigar, it ain’t here to look pretty. It’s here to work.

The key page is where you decide on symbols for the various tasks you’ll be keeping track of in your Bujo. I went with a very basic one—black dots for general tasks that I X out when I complete them, etc—but there are a hundred thousand ways people have created their keys. It all depends on your personal taste. You can be as simple or as elaborate as you like.

My personal advice would be to start simply. You can always adjust, add on, or embellish later. For example, I added the work-specific task key and the photography task key a few weeks into journaling.  

STEP 2: START YOUR INDEX

Your index is important, and I’ll use myself as an example as to why:

I have always been a compulsive list maker and note-taker. I love the physical act of writing down ideas, even though I’m a much faster typist than physical writer. My pockets are routinely full of scrap paper, post-it notes, and crumpled receipts with ideas scrawled onto the back in my tiny cursive. My Bujo has become my space for writing my lists and ideas now. Novel notes, dance ideas, and meal plans are scattered about the pages of my Bujo. I write my lists on the next available blank page, amongst my daily logs and monthly spreads. If I didn’t have an index telling me what page my Farm Share info was on, I’d never find the sucker.

Because you write as you go, an index for your Bullet Journal is absolutely necessary. This also means that numbering your pages is absolutely necessary. For some, this sounds like a lot of work, but seriously, it only takes an extra second to write down a number in the lower corner of the page you’re working on. Boom. Done. Not hard. In theory, you can number all of your pages at once, but I find that numbering as I go far more appealing.

After you create a page, write down the page number and title in your index. You’ll be grateful for it later.

Even this simple page has some space for personalization. I personally don’t write down every single thing in my index. I only write down my lists and the beginnings of each month. I don’t really need to go back and find my daily logs, and if I did, I only reserved two pages for my index, so I’d be screwed. My Index is full of lists and calendars because those are the pages I most often need to reference again.

My index is actually a good spot to show you how screwing up is okay. Look at my header. Look how nasty it is. It is the product of my having a much more creative idea, screwing up in marker, and saying ‘fuck it’ and colouring over it. It’s ugly as sin, but hey, it’s an index. I can make the index in my next Bujo pretty, but this one gets the job done, and that’s really all you need, despite what Pinterest and Instagram want you to think.

STEP 3: YOUR YEARLY CALENDAR

Your yearly calendar is just that: a space where you can write down events, birthdays, and notes about events that are coming up in the future. Because you write your Bujo as you go, it can be tough to keep track of future events: A doctor’s appointment scheduled three months in advance, weddings, etc. The yearly calendar gives you a space to do that.

Again, there are a hundred thousand ways to build up your yearly calendar. I did a take on the original 6-pack spread from the Bullet Journal website. I put three months on a page, separated by a dotted line, but then, on the opposite page, I created a big blank space called a “Brain Dump” where I can write down miscellaneous crap about those particular three months; events that should be happening around that time, but the actual date is uncertain, for example. I probably won’t do this in my next Bujo. It took up a lot of space that, for me, is largely unused. Next time, I will probably experiment with another format. And honestly, that’s part of the fun of a Bullet Journal. You get to play around with formats and find out what works best for you through trial and error.

STEP 4: MAKE YOUR FIRST MONTHLY CALENDAR!

            The excitement!

            Yet more hundreds and thousands of possibilities here, and it all depends on how simple or elaborate you want your Bujo to be.

            A few weeks ago, my mother expressed interest in starting a Bullet Journal, but said that she was intimidated by the enterprise, as many people are when they first try to research the method, including myself. I decided to be the best daughter ever and start one for her.

            Mom and I are a bit different in our Bujo goals. I like a bit of artistic flair, and I love tracking things like habits and spending and sleep. Mom just wants a single place to write down all the shit she has to do. Because of this, our Bullet Journals look very different, and our monthly spreads reflect that.

            I began my monthly spreads like this:

                              

            Following a format I found in my research, separated my days into mornings, afternoons, and evenings. I made a colour-coded key for the type of tasks and had a space for my monthly goals. My mom’s monthly spread is simply the name of the month and the numbered days running down the side of the page.

            But now, about four months into my journaling, I’ve found that a simpler spread may work better for me. I didn’t find the morning/afternoon/evening separation to be necessary for my life, and I ended up filling my Goals space with a bit more detail of the events on the calendar (“MAR 1: Lent starts. No sweets or junk food.”) Now that I’m going into April, I’m going to use a monthly spread that more closely resembles what I did with my mother’s journal, something like this.

Source: Instagram pages2plans

As with all things, how you use your monthly character is up to you. If you’re like me and have a perfectionist streak, rejoice, for if you find a format doesn’t work for you one month, you can just try another one the next month. You have 12 opportunities to find your groove!

STEP 5: WEEKLY…?

            The weekly spread isn’t in the original format of a Bullet Journal, but many people have found that a place to keep weekly events is helpful to them. I actually did my first weekly spread last week, and I loved it. I had a lot of random tasks going on that week (a charity pickup, vet appointment, etc) and I knew I’d forget to flip back to my monthly spread to look every single day. Then, this week, I forgot to start one. -_- It’s a process.

            Some people use weekly spreads in lieu of monthly ones. I wouldn’t be able to do that, personally, but many people find that planning week-to-week better suits their lifestyle. Others, who don’t write a lot in their daily logs, use a weekly spread instead of individual daily sections. I may try this idea on week and see if it works well for me. Try it out and see if it’s a good fit for you. If it feels like an extraneous task, scrap it.

STEP 6: DAILY LOGS—THE GOOD STUFF

            Now that you have effectively set up your Bujo, it’s time for your daily logs, where you write down your tasks, events, and notes for the day. There are infinite possibilities with your daily logs. You can do whatever you want. This is, however, where your key comes in. Be sure to keep uniform with your key for simplicity’s sake.

            My personal daily log is constantly evolving thanks to my Pinterest habit. I’m always seeing new formats I like.

How they looked when I began in January.

Evolution...

The way I currently do my daily logs.

That’s really all there is to Bullet Journaling! It sounds like a lot of work, but once you find a groove, it’s as easy as compulsively scrolling through you Facebook newsfeed, and a damn sight more productive.

However, if you want to do a bit more with your Bujo than the bare bones…

LISTS, LOGS, AND TRACKERS, OH, MY!

            This is where the crazy stuff you see on Pinterest and Instagram comes in, and again, the possibilities are endless. My very first page after my annual log is a list of my 2017 Resolutions to keep me motivated. I also have a page for books I want to read, movies I want to watch, and all sorts of other things.

            You have probably noticed on some of the example links I’ve posted, and in my own Bujo pages, that people like trackers. Habit trackers, water drinking trackers, food trackers, sleep trackers. They’re on monthly, weekly, and daily logs. Sometimes they have their own pages. If there’s something you’d like to keep track of passively, your Bujo is a great place to keep track of it. I encourage you to take to Pinterest or Instagram and add a tracker or two to your Bujo experience. You’ll find that some of them stick, and others may not. My daily logs used to include my food and my tea intake. While I loved drawing the tiny teacup, I didn’t always keep up with it, and in the end, I didn’t really see the point. I’m not trying to lose weight or counting calories, nor am I trying to break any nutritional habits, so I stopped logging my food intake. I will still occasionally track my teas, but it is almost exclusively because I feel like drawing that tiny cup. I also started my bullet journal with an “In A Word” wrap-up of each day, but I found that the ‘word’ I ended up with was how I felt at the moment of writing it, rather than the feeling of the entire day. I’ve recently started keeping track of the Best and Worst of the day, and so far I enjoy doing that. It makes me force myself to think of something good that happened when I’ve had a rough day, and usually when I see the worst written down, it’s not as bad as it made me feel at the time.

            Just after my monthly spread each month, I have a Memories Page, a spending log, and a full page habit tracker. These are, by far, my favourite things about my Bujo. It’s weird, but I love it. It has helped me keep track of where my money is going (and yes, I know that banks do that for you, but seeing it on paper seems to help me more than seeing it on the screen,) and it took a couple months, but I find that my habit tracker is motivating me to try to fill every day with colourful cubes. This helps me keep busy, which is very important for someone with an anxiety disorder. I also keep a sleep log, which has helped show me my natural sleeping habits, so I know how much sleep I need to function like a non-zombie. (my body likes 9 hours of sleep…she’s a bit high maintenance.)

Memories page!

            So, that is my best explanation of what a Bullet Journal is, and how to get started. Honestly, I absolutely adore it. I have always had a hard time keeping track of tasks, and it feels great to write them down and know that I can wake up in the morning and have a neat list of what I need to do laid out in front of me. I’ve never had the patience for keeping a diary, but it’s easy to write little notes about my feelings or a mini event in the margins of my daily log. I also love the experimental and fluid nature of a Bullet Journal. Nothing is set in stone. I can try a new monthly format, change the habits I track, or abandon an idea (“daily gratitudes,” for example, are not for me) without screwing up the whole journal.

            There are some pitfalls to Bullet Journaling, of course. There is no alarm for an event, and if something changes, like a work shift, you must remember to change it in your journal. It’s not as streamlined as your cell phone calendar. But once you get yourself into the habit of logging every day, these pitfalls tend to dissipate. I love that I can unplug from my laptop and fill in my daily habit tracker in my Bujo while my Hubby plays video games, or set up my next day while we watch a new episode of something on Netflix. Sometimes it feels like being a kid again. I set up my markers and my coloured pencils in a neat row and try to haphazardly plan what colours I should use for a new page, draw dots and triangles along the borders, and yet it’s more productive than colouring a mandala to de-stress (no offense to those who like to do that, I just have a constant need to be doing something “meaningful” or “productive” at all times.)

            I highly recommend a Bullet Journal for anyone who thinks they might have fun doing it; the list makers, note takers, habit trackers, the absent-minded but insanely busy among us. It doesn’t need to be artistic at all—just look at the original website! It can be as simple or as elaborate as you like, and once you get into the habit, it truly is a ton of fun.

            Check out the original Bullet Journal Website for more information, and also this Buzzfeed post, which I found extremely helpful when I was first starting out.

            Go forth and journal, my dear invisible ones!