So when I saw this thing called a Bullet Journal that can be the Notebook to End All Notebooks, an ultimate do-it-yourself, customize-able planner and list depot...I was intrigued.
My intrigue has gotten to the point where I have actually bought supplies.
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| Behold, the fancy-schmancy, often-cited-in-bullet-journaling-pins Leuchtturm 1917 notebook, with the two ribbon bookmarks and the pretty Nordic Blue color! |
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| Look! The inside, which I'm not sure you can clearly see, which has a dot grid pattern and pre-numbered pages! |
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| I am a sucker for great pens, and so when this set was recommended by bullet journal people (and it showed up in my Amazon recommendations when I bought the fancy notebook), I could not resist. Look at all the COLORS! And they are TRIANGULAR so they don't roll! And apparently you can leave them uncapped accidentally forever and they won't dry out! |
I haven't actually gotten the layouts and pages and trackers and all that stuff from my head to the paper, though, despite literally HOURS of researching "bullet journal" on Pinterest. (My favorite, most snarky and profanity-laced upshot: WTF Is A Bullet Journal?) There is a LOT of info on this, and it appears to be real popular with a) people who work in social media and b) stay-at-home-moms who are religious. I am really neither of these things, and yet I really want to have a bullet journal, for these reasons and more:
1) One Notebook to Rule Them All
2) I get to design the pages and it doesn't matter necessarily what order they go in because there's a handy-dandy index at the front that you fill in as you go.
3) I am a list-lover, and I am a PAPER list-lover. I enjoy the Google Keep app for lists, too, but no anthropologist is going to pore over a dead smartphone in the future to see what people did with their lives (not that I think that I will be fodder for anthropologists in the future, but that would be a great perk). Long live the actual paper journal!
4) Along those lines, how lovely to have a year encapsulated in beautiful notebooks, so you can look back at the lists and the things that you did and what mattered to you, and sort of relive those moments for better or worse? I love going through old agendas or notebooks full of to-do lists for that reason. Now it can all live in one place. In theory.
5) It can be a creative outlet that helps me be more organized in how I spend my time, my money, my calories, my creative efforts, my projects...
My fears with this thing are that it will be a time-suck and difficult to keep up with. The #1 advice on this is "schedule time in your bullet journal to bullet journal" which seems deliciously meta to me but will I do it with fidelity? Maybe with my lovely desk/office space I WILL! Will I be too perfectionist to actually get started, because I am afraid of messing up? Hmmm, that's a tough one. My goal is to get at least 4 pages done today so that maybe I have a hope of actually having a January in this thing.
Anyway, what do you think about bullet journaling? Have you tried it? Did you love it, hate it, love to hate it, hate to love it? Share links in the comments if you've posted about this thing before and I am suffering amnesia, because I swear I first heard about it from Loribeth at The Road Less Travelled but I couldn't find it when I searched.
I hope this tool helps me to be more organized and productive in this brand spanking new year!
Want to read more #Microblog Mondays, perhaps ones that actually play by the rules? Go here and enjoy!
I'm not one for bullet journaling. I'm barely one for blogging.
ReplyDeleteI am finding that at least starting it is more time consuming than I thought... Go figure based on the ZILLIONS of pins and links and things about this journal! :) I guess you find what works for you.
DeleteI remember Mel I think talking about bullet journals. Yes, here are two of her posts about it: https://www.stirrup-queens.com/2014/05/hello-little-red-notebook/
ReplyDeletehttps://www.stirrup-queens.com/2014/05/charlotte-and-her-friend-notability/
I do have a lovely notebook I'd like to use for something other than scribbles, and I love having good pens. I'm wondering if I'd use it. But this year (or at least, January!) has so far been the year of trying new things, so I might give it a go!
Good luck!
Oooh, thank you for sending those links! Now I feel like I need to name my notebook, my slate blue notebook. :) I am enjoying this process, although there's a bit of a learning curve and I am discovering (rediscovering I guess) things about me that make the bullet journaling both easier and harder. I will say I'm a fan so far, but I'll see how I'm doing with it in March. I do agree with Mel that it is a place to put the spinning plates, and I feel a little more like I'm chronicling my life better, more fun things to remember that might have gotten lost in the ether before. And it's a creative outlet, so there's that. I'll post a little more about it when it's not sort of consuming my "free" time... :)
DeleteI think Mel is a bullet journaler. Now you both have me curious. Could I trade in my weekly calendar for a bullet journal? I'm now in my 39th year of journaling a little something every. single. day. Let me know what you think of this -- maybe I'll make the switch in 2019.
ReplyDeleteYes, I found the posts from 2014 thanks to Mali! I have to say, I use this more than a weekly calendar (so far) because I made it, because it's completely customizable, because I can change the layout week to week if something didn't have enough space or I found myself going, "you know, I'd like to have more space for..." I also like that you can start it any time, although I totally get wanting to start something new in a new year. Hard to switch systems midstream... :) It's a project in progress!
DeleteI tried to do the planner thing for a while and I just found it to be too time consuming and too much pressure. If you look up planner stuff on Pinterest it gets to be ridiculous the amount of stuff they want you to buy or the different spreads that people come up with.
ReplyDeleteAt the end of the day I've found that digital formats just work better for me. My Google calendar, and blog are great tools and I don't have to keep track of paper. Makes me sound like a total millennial LOL!
Oh yes, Pinterest is a COMPLETE RABBIT HOLE of zillions of ways you can make your lettering more perfect, or your spreads more artsy, or track this or that and you can lost in it and never actually get started. I had to pull the trigger on actually starting or I wasn't going to ever fill any pages! :) I am finding that I have a lot of supplies I can use from my rubber stamping days, yet another moment where I can say "HA! This is why I don't throw things out!" to Bryce. :) The two things I've bought so far are just the fineliner pens and the notebook, and I'm thinking of adding to my supplies as I go but not in any super ridiculous way. I think you can make it as minimalist or as fancypants as you'd like.
DeleteI get the digital format working better for you, and I feel like having the Google calendar on my phone is great for reminders of appointments and things. I like this more as a place to dump my thoughts, to plan my meals, to try to organize the chaos that is my brain. :) But I think there's a lot of online tools that do similar things, so now I just feel really old and old-fashioned to your millennial statement... :) LOL indeed!
Nope, wasn't me (although I will admit I was tickled that you THOUGHT it was me...!) -- but I second (third?) the suggestion to check out Mel at Stirrup Queens, because I know she swears by her bullet journal.
ReplyDeleteI have never had a bullet journal, and I haven't kept an actual journal/diary in years (although I have had good intentions....) -- but I will confess that I share your passion for pretty blank books (I got rid of a TON of them when we moved...!) & coloured pens. ;) :) I have been using a Filofax week on two pages diary/datebook for the past 25 years or so, along with plenty of coloured pens & post-it notes ;) and it still works pretty well for me. And yes, I keep all my old datebooks. They have really come in handy over the years!
Looking forward to hearing more about your bullet journal and how it's going...
Oh, I'm glad you were tickled! It WAS Mel but I don't think I saw those posts unless I was still a lurker then. :) I need to name it! :) Maybe because it's Nordic Blue it can be Sven, or Hilde, or Sonja...
DeleteI feel like I used to journal more often (although still sporadically) before I started blogging, and blogging doesn't cover a lot of other aspects of my life, so I like this idea of having a place to hold and organize many kinds of thoughts and things that are important to me. Keeping old datebooks is great, and what if there was more in them? So far I'm enjoying the process. We'll see long term if it's sustainable.
I just read your post and googled it - the third search item was "WTF is a bullet journal?" - but still not clear on it, and I'm a bit befuddled because I think it's what I do already. IE: you keep one notebook and have bullet-pointy lists of the stuff you need to do?? My urgent things have an asterisk or are in red pen, and when I've done the thing I tick it off - am I bullet-journaling? I've been doing it since forever so it seems I invented it - hoorah! My 'bullet journal' is beside me right now. I even number the pages. And a 'future log' is, er, a diary. I for one couldn't have functioned in a full-time office job without a 'bullet journal', but I foolishly called it a notebook... I won't be reverting to the new name any time soon, for I have a stubborn resistance to new vocabulary when we already have decent words for the thing. But yeah, I do feel adrift and uneasy if I don't have some sort of listy, planning journal on the go. The trouble is you acquire piles of these notebooks because you never want to throw them away, they seem too full and valuable somehow...
ReplyDeletePS not slagging bullet journaling, just found the online articles on it funny is all
Ha, that's one of my favorite little articles on the bullet journal! You can get totally lost going from link to link to link on this topic. I feel like the bullet point list of things to do with the ticking is one part of bullet journaling for sure (congrats on inventing it, ha ha!). What I like is that you make your own spreads and pages and so you can adapt weekly, monthly, and daily (although I feel like doing all three is overkill) to meet your needs and if it doesn't work out for you and you want another category, you can change it the next week or month. I like that better than a standard engagement calendar or diary. I feel like it's a little like Bridget Jones' Diary, and she would have been totally into the habit tracker (I keep thinking of "alcohol units: THOUSANDS" from her Christmas moment). I love the acquiring of the notebooks, looking back at stuff could be useful. If you're not a saver-of-things or not sentimental in that way though I could see how it would seem like just generating a pile of paper.
DeleteI didn't think you were slagging it at all (and I LOVE THE WORD 'SLAGGING'), you crack me up! Feel free to slag away! :)
What a cool concept. I currently keep three (3) journals on a fairly regular basis. One is mostly text. One is my visual journal (all media). One is a mix. Of the two. I love the idea of a nonlinear journal...i’ll Google Bullet Journals and see if I want to start a fourth.
ReplyDeleteIt is neat, especially since you can make it whatever works for you -- there's no one template. I am loving how it organizes my thoughts and I can capture more things but without a huge time commitment. I'll look forward to seeing your thoughts on this! I could see you enjoying it.
DeleteI would not be a very good bullet journaler, I don't think. While I keep a lot of journals, they are kind of all over the place. Maybe I should try. ;-) My son and now my daughter are both passionate about their Passion Planners which sounds a lot like bullet journalizing with dates. ;-)
ReplyDeleteLast year I looked into "Write it Down, Let It Go" journaling and "a worry relief" journal...and decided rather than buying a new journal, use a journal I currently have and transform it. ;-)
I prefer paper to digital. And oh yes, it is ALL about the pens! :-)
I'm always writing to do lists for myself! Sometimes I'll sort it in terms of things I have to do (e.g make a dentist appointment) and things I'd like to do (e.g make a photo book of a recent holiday). Do you plan to use different colours for different tasks? Have fun coming up with some project ideas!
ReplyDelete