Why I Love the Bullet Journal
Not even a little fancy.
If you spend any time on Pinterest or Instagram, at some point you’ll come across bullet journals. These beautiful, elaborate, artsy journals that people have obviously spent a ton of time on. And while they were something I wished I could do, they never seemed like a thing for me. But the name “bullet journal” caught my interest, and I was wondering why exactly these art books are called “bullet journals.”
Despite all the awesome designs people have done, bullet journaling very little to do with the artsy side of this trend. It is simply a framework to organize all your thoughts and to-do items, using bullets as a key. And while there is some setup work to do, the technique itself doesn’t require a ton of planning. I don’t need to know what weeks I’m going to be busiest. Or how many pages of playlists I’m going to need to jot down. It goes from one page to the next, with an index to keep you straight.
Finally. Something that works the way my brain works. I bought a notebook and got started, and instantly loved it. It allows me to track all my random thoughts, and then find them again! I’m not doing all the official pages. For example, I don’t need a daily log since things I need to do rarely have a date. And I’ve added some things like time and habit trackers. But after struggling for so long to find something that feels natural, I’m so happy I’ve given the bullet journal trend a try. I even have a notebook just for work stuff, and I was able to find the notes I had when I needed them!
If you don’t have a method that works for you, I seriously recommend giving the bullet journal a try. You don’t need anything fancy, just a basic notebook and pen. It’s a pretty low risk for something that just might work.
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Nicole is a Software Quality Engineer, music collector, and chronic project starter. In her free time she enjoys reading trashy romance novels, catching up on her game backlog, and bourbon.
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I just started doing this. I used to keep all my journaling in one big gigantic binder for the year, but it was getting out of control, so I’m restructuring. I am splitting up into three: daily journaling, reading, and dreams. My daily journal starts with a monthly calendar, a health/habits tracker, a weekly calendar–and then after those three “bullet” pages, my daily thoughts/writing for the week. On Monday, another weekly calendar page breaks it up before the next week of writing. I have a feeling I’ll be adding more “bullet” pages as I go, but I can’t quite figure out how to structure them all. The problem I’m running into is I am very linear. I love all the pinterest pages, but since they are just pictures, I can never quite figure out how people do the full journals. Maybe I should search for youtube videos.
Here’s a the tutorial that worked pretty well for me. But that being said, my brain isn’t super linear. So having a page of to-do items, followed by a list of songs I want to add to a playlist, followed by a list of things I’d like to design for my printer, isn’t an issue. What has been an issue was finding these things later. So the method of adding an index to the front has been helpful. I’m also considering colored tapes to mark different page sections to find something quicker.