If you have not heard of it, it's basically a way of organizing your to-do lists and planners into one customizable, expandable system. At first it seems complicated, but once you start (and especially if you strip away the fancy stuff) it's actually quite easy. Trust me on this, because I'm the kind of lazy-yet-obsessively-organized person who will go to your click-baity list of "The 10 Absolute Best Ways to Organize Your Life That You've Never Heard of Ever" and get overwhelmed two steps in. I love organization, but I also love simplicity.
There are many resources online for starting your own bullet journal. I stuck to the basics and read the ~official website~ here and these Buzzfeed posts here and here, but there are countless others who have posted their tips and tricks. Lots of these are along the lines of how to make your journal pretty, which again, being of the lazy variety, I stuck to doing a little decorative pen work with my headers and colored pens and that's it. I do like pretty, but I'm not about to spend an hour on one freaking page.
Here's how I got started:
1. Get a journal and some pens. The popular journal among bullet enthusiasts has dotted graph paper pages. I used a journal that I got for free as a vendor gift (that was one great thing about advertising - the free stuff!). It happened to have graph paper pages, which I found really useful. As for pens, I have five different colored gel pens and a black pen.
2. Plan your "modules" first. These are the different lists and planners in the journal, from month/week/day planners to lists of movies to see, places to go, etc. I started simple with a monthly "overview" of the year and then gave each month its own section. I have different types of to-do lists, including movies, books, sewing projects, and of course checklists for applying to schools. During classes I keep a separate planner for assignments and exams, so I left that out here. I think though if I worked full-time this would be a great system to also track projects and work-related to-dos.
3. Make an index and number your pages. To me, this was kind of the genius of the bullet system - why it's different from making random lists on separate pages - because it's all in one journal, but you can keep it organized by indexing it all. While making the index, I also figured out how many pages and what order to put the modules in.
4. Make a key. This is how you note the different types of things on your to-do list, like tasks, events, appointments, etc. Some people take this part to insane levels. I kept it simple at first, then added a few as needed, such as the $ for something I need to purchase. I wrote it down on the index page of my journal, but some put it on the back, or on the inside cover, on a bookmark, etc.
5. Get fancy - or don't! Now to start filling the journal in. Most of my pages are just lists, so I had a little fun with the titles, and that's about it. I'm using this journal to keep organized and ultimately save time, so multi-colored highlighters and washi tape dividers are not my priorities. The hardest part for me was the monthly pages. There are so many different ways people do this, it's almost overwhelming. I started simple and gave each month two pages and only filled
them in a few months out so I can figure out what works for me. Each month has a
page with each date listed for "to-do" kind of things like events and appointments, and a second page of the dates so I can write in things I did that I want to remember, such as made an appointment, contacted someone, took Ginny for a walk, etc. Some of the more intense bullet journal junkies go as far as to track daily habits and even what outfits they wore and what the weather was that day. To each their own.
So that's it - how I started my own no-frills bullet journal. So far, I like it - it's much better than writing things down in random spots or in memos on my phone. I've always been a planner, so I like how this condenses calendars and the restrictiveness of store-bought organizers into just what I need, with room to add on when I need more.
Have any of you tried a bullet journal? How do you like it? Let me know below!
Here's how I got started:
2. Plan your "modules" first. These are the different lists and planners in the journal, from month/week/day planners to lists of movies to see, places to go, etc. I started simple with a monthly "overview" of the year and then gave each month its own section. I have different types of to-do lists, including movies, books, sewing projects, and of course checklists for applying to schools. During classes I keep a separate planner for assignments and exams, so I left that out here. I think though if I worked full-time this would be a great system to also track projects and work-related to-dos.
4. Make a key. This is how you note the different types of things on your to-do list, like tasks, events, appointments, etc. Some people take this part to insane levels. I kept it simple at first, then added a few as needed, such as the $ for something I need to purchase. I wrote it down on the index page of my journal, but some put it on the back, or on the inside cover, on a bookmark, etc.
5. Get fancy - or don't! Now to start filling the journal in. Most of my pages are just lists, so I had a little fun with the titles, and that's about it. I'm using this journal to keep organized and ultimately save time, so multi-colored highlighters and washi tape dividers are not my priorities. The hardest part for me was the monthly pages. There are so many different ways people do this, it's almost overwhelming. I started simple and gave each month two pages and only filled them in a few months out so I can figure out what works for me. Each month has a
So that's it - how I started my own no-frills bullet journal. So far, I like it - it's much better than writing things down in random spots or in memos on my phone. I've always been a planner, so I like how this condenses calendars and the restrictiveness of store-bought organizers into just what I need, with room to add on when I need more.
Have any of you tried a bullet journal? How do you like it? Let me know below!
