My Bullet Journal
I have kept a diary or journal since the eighth grade, and albeit profoundly embarrassing to read with its tunnel vision on TIM, the boy on whom I had a crush, and excruciatingly detailed descriptions of every sighting and conversation with TIM, I am pleased that I kept them. It is fun to remember who we used to be.
Looking back on high school entries, I am shocked by how many things I do not recall, even once I read them again, so it is interesting to have those, and bring back a life I don’t entirely remember. Over the years, my writing has become less frequent, and less a recording of my daily life (I realized that was pretty boring to write about), to more random reflections on significant life events, relationships, celebrations, world events, my battles, lists of goals and resolutions, and other random things. Since I had children, my journal has become much more about them: their milestones, my hopes and dreams for them, and their antics, personalities, and the things we do together.
I have also always been a list-maker and planner. I like looking over calendars, and imagining my months ahead in any given year — it feels like a bunch of boxes of possibilities. As far back as I can remember, I have made short, daily lists because I can barely keep track of the next hour, let alone the whole day, and I easily get sidetracked. I am all about the spontaneous moment, but I can really get lost in a day without a list. In my pre-children days, when my summers were entirely my own, I made what I called “Big To-Do” lists which I kept on cardstock folded in half and with goals divided into categories such as HOME, WORK, and WRITING and SELF-IMPROVEMENT (or some such thing).
When my first marriage was difficult, and it mostly was, I started keeping a gratitude journal, which I learned on Oprah is the key to happiness. I tried to put my troubles into perspective by focusing on gratitude for what I did have.
So, basically, I had lists and writing all over the place.
I had not heard of a bullet journal until, one day in class a couple of years back, I had my journal on my desk, and a student asked if that was my bullet journal. I asked her what that was, and she told me all about hers. I felt compelled to check out this trending thing. So I looked on Pinterest to see if there was anything there. Wow. There were so many, and they were so different, but I realized I had kind of been doing my own version of a bullet journal for awhile…I had lists in there, writing, weight checks, resolutions, but I had a separate planner and to-do lists, a bucket list (I found one from when I was 27 or so!) and financial lists all separate. The bullet journal was an enticing amalgamation of lists and writing. The little boxes appealed to my sense of order (and are a lot like yearbook design picas which define my professional adviser life). With those boxes, lists would be straight, writing would be straight. What a great idea to put that all together.
So in 2018, I made my first attempt. I bought my first bullet journal from Zen Art Supplies and started, but by early February, I did not like the way it looked, and started all over. The new one reflected a sense of focus I was working on after reading Creating Your Best Life, The Ultimate Life List Guide. Using that book as my guide, I honed in on my true priorities, not just stuff I needed to do. My title page, although not really pretty, shows the areas of my life where I defined priorities. In the months that followed, I would go back to these goals as reminders to choose tasks that fit those priorities, but I think I had too many. I experimented a bit with layouts, adding habit and food trackers, listing priority goals for each month which served to meet my priorities, but I still did not love it.
By 2019, I started differently. I developed a theme: Define Direction & GO! I made fewer goals in broader categories. Here is the title page to my 2019 Bullet Journal:
This was an involved process and required some soul-searching which I will discuss in a later blog, but I ended up creating six priority areas: Habits, Creativity, Focus, Family, Income and Space. I had goals associated with each one; for example, in the “Space” category, I had “de-clutter all my rooms” and “fix back yard,” both of which had many smaller tasks that would be necessary to meet that priority.
Then, each month, I have a “title page,” on which I write my priority goals and a calendar. Priority goals can include things that have to be done, such as taxes, but also include at least one “thing” from each of the categories — an achievable, specific goal — a step toward achieving a priority. For example, with the family category, I might define two activities we will do as a whole family during the month. For “Space,” I might have “remove all clothes from master closet and dresser drawers I haven’t worn in the past year and take to donation center.” It has to be achievable and has to relate to a priority area.
For my weekly pages, I look back on the priority goals for the month and start building these in to my week, setting aside time for the things that I say matter, instead of just getting through each day. “Finding Time” is another post of mine, wherein I share how I have made some time for my priorities; it does, of course, take sacrifices of other things, but if we say something matters, as I did for years, we are not fulfilling our lives if we do everything BUT that something (which I also did for years).
I also changed the way I worked with my bullet journal. First, I created a morning routine that focused on my priorities, and that morning routine is always the first on my list for the day. During that morning routine, I make my coffee (which got me out of the habit or drinking Coke Zero upon waking — yuck!), I meditate briefly, and then I spend time planning and writing. Every morning, I sit with my journal and reflect. I look back to the priorities from page one, and make sure that my priorities each month are not just things that have to be done, but focus on the priorities that I have defined. I could probably spend each night with my family and then grade for hours. My bullet journal reminds me that I have bigger things that matter after my children go to bed. Grading will always get done (and I have implemented some ways to reduce grading a bit), but my priorities have to come first sometimes, or they are not priorities. Later last year, I added more structure to my journal, making a weekly space for gratitude and for reflections, which provided a consistent journaling space. I wrote more last year, due to all that was going on in my life, so I would have 2-3 random pages in the middle of my journal, in between weekly pages, and I did not like the way it looked, so setting aside a weekly space for writing looked nicer. It also beckons me to write when I might be inclined to skip that.
Did I fulfill all my goals for last year? Hardly. But that was not because the goals were wrong or the time was limited, it was simply that priorities radically changed. My mom passed away and that meant the summer was not spent as I had originally planned, but in settling her affairs, packing, moving and reorganizing her possessions, and planning her memorial. I also lost my step-father and my mother-in-law, all within one month. Dealing with our losses emotionally was one thing, and then of course, there was more travel and re-prioritization, so I have to go easy on my self for having many repeated goals for this year.
This year, I have a new light pink planner. I love it, but did not realize until it arrived that I had ordered a larger page size. I did not know what to do with this space and considered sending the journal back, but I felt the space calling me to try some new things this year. I came up with a theme and title page:
Here is my new weekly layout. It will need some tweaking, and it’s more work and planning than I am used to (nor am I entirely sure I will like), but I am taking it one layout at a time. My bullet journal is simpler than many, mostly because I do not want IT to become a source for eating up my time. I enjoy the creativity, but am not an artist, so simple is best.
My goal is to share some of my monthly and weekly pages as this blog develops, and plan to publish “daily bullets” once I get a handle on the timing and regularity of such a thing.
I really admire this. I set up a notebook to start a bullet journal last year, and barely even used it with the way our year went. I just didn’t have the focus , motivation , or desire to plan . I also didn’t like the way it looked, and being a very visual person, I would spend time rewriting even lists I had already made to make them look better. I do make lists, but they’re mostly to-do lists & grocery lists. I keep my grocery list in my phone, and my appointments & things to do on specific days in my purse-size daily planner. I like the way you have yours set up, and I’m glad it works for you! You’ve always been better at frequent journaling than I have. I need to try again to find what works best for me… something that is a help to me rather than something that I spend too much time puzzling over & feeling compelled to “perfect” each day.