All About Bullet Journals

My bullet journal is my little book of everything. If you know me in real life, chances are you’ve heard me going on about this little book at one point or another. For those of you who don’t know what it is, a bullet journal is essentially a diary/to-do-list/organiser that is completely customisable to you. Many people, me included, have found it to be an absolute lifesaver.

Whether you’re a busy mother, a chaotic student, a global traveller, or simply someone who wants their life to be a bit more organised, the bullet journal will help to get things in order and keep you on track.

The most exciting thing about the bullet journal is that you can use it however you want. Some people like to cover their pages in beautiful colours and decorations while others prefer to keep their pages clean, filling their pages with tidy lists and no-fuss to-dos. Personally, I like to get creative with mine but that normally just means drawing a nice looking layout and adding a bit of colour.

I have found that the bullet journal works for me because it makes me want to keep using it. The freedom and creativity it allows me prevents me from getting bored or forgetting about it. I love creating the pages and writing about whatever I want. I love giving myself patterns to follow and not follow within my layouts. It's every organised and non-organised person's dream.

I’ll do my best to explain the system from the start but I recommend you take a look at the official bullet journal website if you want to get a better idea of the concept.

The Key

 

I started my bullet journal with a key which I use to help categorise and check off my to-do lists. As you can see in the picture, a square is a task to complete, a circle is an appointment to go to, a triangle is a university-related to-do, a star is social media related and a heart is friends and family related. If I complete the to-do, I put a cross in the shape. If I decide not to do it anymore, I put a line through it, and if I decide to do it on another day, I’ll put an arrow to indicate that I’ve forwarded it. A bullet point is for any notes I might want to jot down during the day.

It's up to you how you choose to customise your key, if you want to use one at all. I highly recommend you do because it really helps to keep you focused and organised.

Contents

One of the standout things about the bullet journal system is that you number the pages as you go and then log the pages on your contents/index page so that you can easily find it again in the future if you need to. When you start, you’ll want to leave a few blank pages to fill in later. I left five pages for my contents and I’m halfway through the fifth now so you might want to leave a few more. It’s just another simple method that adds to a more organised life.

Year Overview

After you’ve written out your key and left a few blank pages for your contents, it’s a good idea to create an overview of the year. This way, you can easily note down any future plans that you can then refer back to when you create that month’s spread.

Back in April when I started bullet journaling, I created a map of my goals for the year ahead. I decided to split my goals up into categories and it’s only been a few months but I’ve already accomplished most of them. Just the act of writing them down settled them in my mind and I’ve made a conscious effort ever since to do work towards them. Looking back now and seeing just how many of them I’ve done is so rewarding.

Month Overview

After your yearly overview, you might want to create monthly overviews. This is where you can map out your upcoming month in more detail. In April, my sister was due her baby girl so I decorated my April spread accordingly. I wrote the days down the left side then split each day into morning, afternoon and evening tasks. I also wrote a list of goals that I wanted to accomplish by the end of the month.

Week Overview

The weekly overview goes into even more detail than the monthly overview. I like to make little lists of my goals for the week, projects that I’m working on, a few to-dos that I need to complete, and sleep trackers. On the next page, I map out my week and all of the tasks and appointments I have planned.

I’ve tried a lot of weekly spreads over the months, but when summer started and I didn’t have university to take over my life anymore, I found that I could ditch the daily spread all together and instead I migrated my daily to-dos into this weekly plan. When I go back to uni and have more to do again, I’ll go back to dailies but for now, this weekly spread is enough for me.

Dailies

When I was at uni, my bullet journal was an absolute lifesaver, mainly because of these daily spreads. I would draw my next day out every night before I went to bed, although as you can see here, I would sometimes accidentally skip a couple of days.

The timeline at the top of each day was a plan of how I wanted my day to go, then I would list everything I planned to do that day. I also drew a little box in which I wrote what I planned to make for dinner.

When you’ve got a lot to do or a lot on your mind, it’s so helpful to sit down and invest a little time in getting it down on paper. When it’s laid out in front of you, it will all look so much easier to accomplish. It will help you to set realistic goals for your day and your future, and more often than not, you will also find yourself achieving much more than you originally thought you could.

Other Pages

This page is my habit tracker for the month. As you can see, I’ve not been the most attentive with my good habits. I even missed out almost an entire week, but it gives me something to aim for, and I can see when I’m slacking and what I’m slacking in, and pick up from there.

I’ve tried doing weekly habit trackers on my weekly spread before, but I’ve found that I prefer the monthly version because there’s much more room to add to it if I want to start tracking something new. For example, this month, I’ve started working on the miracle morning routine (more on this in a future blog post), so I added that to my tracker.

The possibilities of the bullet journal are endless. You can use it however you want, for whatever you want. Everything is entirely customisable to you. If you find something isn't working, change it. If you find yourself needing something new, add it.

These are only a few of the pages in my journal. There’s so much more in there but the thing about bullet journals is that they’re immensely personal. I scribble my entire life into mine. However, there are so many sources of inspiration for the bullet journal all over the internet. I’m part of the Bullet Journal Junkies group of Facebook, which is a constant source of inspiration where hundreds of very talented and organised people share their thoughts and pictures of bullet journals every day. Also one of my favourite ways to spend free time is to scroll through Instagram and Pinterest, where so many photos of beautiful bullet journal pages are posted. There are lots of YouTube videos about them, too. One of my favourite bullet journalists on the internet – and an inspirer to hundreds of other dedicated bullet journalists – is Kara from Boho Berry. I highly recommend that you take a look at her blog if you want to know more about them.

Some lovely, talented bullet journalists have allowed me to share with you some photos of their own bullet journal spreads. If you want to see more of their stuff, follow the links to their pages. I hope this blog post has inspired you in some way. Would you like to start a bullet journal? Or if you already have one, how do you customise it to suit you? Let me know in the comments; I’d love to have a chat about it.

Photo by @annaslettering on Instagram.

Photo by @nittany_bujo on Instagram.

Photo by @painted_illustrated on Instagram.

Photo by @thepinktravellerblog on Instagram.