Bullet journals are pretty much all the rage with "Pinterest Moms" right now. The original design by Ryder Carroll was meant to be a minimalistic rapid logging approach where all you needed was a notebook and a pen. This approach consists of tasks, events, short sentences and bullets. So of course this simple idea has become way out of control.
Instead of being simple and useful things, Bullet Journals are now terrifying masterpieces of art, washi tape and habit trackers. Which is all well and good. Pretty things are nice if you have the talent, time, ability, and discipline to upkeep them. Which I absolutely do not.
From only needing a simple notebook and a pen, there is now a whole industry dedicated to producing stamps, stickers, printables and notebooks. Don't even get me started on the pens! There are entire blogs and YouTube channels dedicated to bullet journals.
But I digress.
I got into bullet journaling because I was sick of carrying around a giant planner, not having my planner with me because it was giant, not being disciplined enough to use an ePlanner, and writing notes to myself on pieces of paper which I promptly lost, and because bullet journalling seemed like a simple and elegant way for me to keep everything flowing.
Today's blog is a simple explanation of what works for me in terms of Bullet Journaling. The beauty of the bujo system is that it is completely adaptable. You can be as fancy or as minimal as you like.
When I first started searching for teacher bujos, I found a lot of US based ones. While they gave me some ideas, American schools require a lot more detail from teachers in their planners than NZ does. I didn't want to be lugging around 5 whole courses worth of work and a markbook, and an attendance register (those are all digital, anyway). I found a lot of daily and monthly spreads, but again, those weren't quite right. The weekly spreads I found didn't really give me enough space for planning notes as well as admin things. So when I didn't really find anything that would work for me, I made something up.
First things first, I use an A5 whitelines notebook. It's a good size for carrying around, is ring bound so the pages are easy to tear out if needed, and comes in both squared and lined. Squares make things easier if you're drawing boxes and stuff. The pages are pale grey with white lines (which is actually pretty nice on the eye), and has an app which scans and uploads pages as pdf files (brilliant for when sending handwritten minutes to our typist). It was surprisingly difficult to find dotted or squared notebooks where I live, and even harder to find cost effective ones. I got this at Warehouse Stationery for less than $15NZD.
This is my current monthly spread. As you can see, it's quite simple and allows for events and other things as well as a to-do list. You will also note that I am not an artist or good at writing. That's ok, because this is MY book and I'm the only one that needs to read it! I glued in the little calendar at the top there, but I used to draw up my own. I use any black fineliner out of preference more than anything artsy. And highlighters. Because highlighters.
Finally, below you will see my weekly spread. This is the best way for me to see all of my classes, have brief notes about them, and keep track of all of the other admin I need to do each week. (The little month calendar sticker is new and I haven't worked out how to add it in nicely yet). But you can see how events and tasks are shown as bullets with notes beside them. As each one is complete, it gets X'd or > if it's moved.
Any other notes get their own pages, which is nice because you're not bound to a date per page or a week per page as in some diaries.
Below is last week's spread (and my attempt at being pretty). You can see my week on one side - minus classes because I didn't have them then - and on the other side are my meeting notes.
On a side note, I don't use mood/money/health trackers or want to watch/read/craft/bake lists in here because I have other tools for those. Also, because I use this for work and personal, those aren't things I want other people accidentally seeing. I could have a work and personal one, but honestly... I'm too lazy to keep up two and I'd never remember one or the other at some important moment. Again, this is what works for me.
If you want to take up bullet journaling, I highly recommend it. But
DON'T be intimidated by all the full-on, artistic, track everything, specialised stationery, craft-splosions out there!
DO make it work for you. You're more likely to keep it up if it's easy and doesn't make you feel guilty for not doing something.
Deanna x
(Edited 4/2/18 to add: the printed calendar is from dearcrissy.com)