Everything I Learned From A Year of Bullet Journaling
Since I started doing bullet journaling, many of you have been asking me for tips and suggestions and I thought about the best way to do it, and I think it’s through a series of disjointed bullet points. I thought about doing the usual five key points and elaborate on each of them type of post but it just didn’t feel right. This will make sense when you get to the conclusion. So without too much preamble, here is everything I have learned from a year of bullet journaling.
1. Look at the Ryder Carroll YouTube channel for information FIRST and consider everything else you see on Pinterest and Instagram (all the pretty illustrations basically) as simple suggestions for what your bullet journal could be, but not what it HAS to be. The fundamental concept of Bullet Journaling is to organize the chaos your brain and life can be, not to do floral illustrations around your to-do list that will take longer than the ACTUAL items on your to-do list. But of course, if you find repetitive floral illustrations great for your anxiety, go right ahead! You do you, boo. This is a what works for you zone.
2. Washi tapes are cool. You want just the smallest touch of design on your page? Washi tape. You want to bookmark a certain page to flip to it for easy reference? Washi tape. You made a mistake in your header and want to hide it? Washi tape.
3. It’s important to have a healthy relationship with trackers – it’s not about the fun colouring part or the creative drawing part, it’s about whether it actually offers any data. So with mood trackers, yes, I’m starting to see patterns in my mood and behaviour which have been revelatory and crucial in me feeling less like a crazy person and more like a relatively stable adult who’s aware of her “triggers” and knows how to manage them. Now, tracking whether I woke up at 6 am? Just, why? But, let’s say you have depression and a hard time getting out of bed every single morning. You’re trying to take the first steps towards coming out of that hole and for you, it’s getting out of bed and you want to track the time you get up for say, warning signs, or just to make you feel more accomplished, please, go ahead. Track the time you wake up and see what it means for you! Otherwise, if you are trying to get up at 6 am but it’s a goal with no why or intention to it, which makes you less likely to work towards the goal, you are not going to tick off as many boxes and you’re going to feel a lot worse about yourself. Which is completely counterproductive.
4. This is usually what it’s like when I’m bullet journaling: there’s a candle or diffuser lit, some soft music (folklore, of late) playing in the background and just my thoughts washing over the back of my mind while I set up next month’s spread. Whether it’s bullet journal or say, cross-stitching, having some quiet time to yourself is so very important. Just to have some awareness of your unheard thoughts, and let your brain breathe. We live in a very consumptive world, where we are constantly consuming Netflix or social media which gives us very little time to our voice and ourselves. We give very little time to our brain to simply be, instead, finding this need (probably due to the ready availability) to be entertained ALL the time. I used to do my next month’s spread with a Netflix show in the background and I realized I don’t know much about the show at the end of it because I’m seeing my journal, not the show. I think having this sort of time and space for your thoughts could be especially helpful for people who can’t bring themselves to meditate, and letting your thoughts … I want to say, breathe? Finding some form of passive hobby could do wonders for you.
5. On that note, journaling has also been immensely helpful in just watching my thoughts. And the more aware I become of them, the more I can see the ways I talk to myself negatively, or the ways I get caught up in my own head, and thus, become my own barrier in doing something. Which then helps me see how I can overcome them. Essentially, my bullet journal has become a scrapbook of my life; I can see what I did in a day, and how I felt that day and it has been really helpful in anchoring me more in the moment rather than to get caught up in the past, or with the promise of the future.
6. The more you try to structure life, the more chaotic it gets. When I started this year, I had my bullet journal daily spreads down to the hour. I had time regimented for waking up, showering, breakfast, working on my blog, projects, dinner, everything under the sun. This means I never factor in the spontaneity factor. I take a call from a friend and now whoopsie, my time to work on something has gone, time to move on to the next task on my list while this guilt eats at me for not finishing the thing I was supposed to. Instead, having things to finish for the day, at any given time has just been so much easier to actually do the things I intended to and to feel more accomplished and productive at the end of the day.
7. I love stationery and this has been a great new way to channel said love.
And while we are on everything I’ve learned, here are some things I’ll be doing differently for my 2021 bullet journal:
· I’m nixing the content page. I know, I know, it’s the MUST HAVE of BuJos but I use washi tapes to flag out the pages or the page ribbons that come with the notebook so I’ve never used the content page in my current notebook. Other than to fill it out simply because it’s there and leaving it blank felt … rude.
· I’m nixing the future log as well because I did it up and promptly never looked at it ever again. I still use a Google calendar to sync meetings with other people, to log something that’s happening in the future rather than right now, or for times when I simply can’t carry my journal with me, so I don’t see the point in having a future log. It didn’t come naturally to me to go fill it in there later either so I’ve stopped.
· I will no longer create pages simply because other people suggested them as a way to “fill up” your notebook – for example: workout ideas.
· Seeing bullet journal less as a way of “controlling” my life to give me a false sense of accomplishment and like I’m on top of things and more like a way to simply document my day to day events, to be aware of them and to be more present in them.
And that’s it! At the end of the day, bullet journaling is kind of like life. There is no one way to do it, especially, no one “right” way to do it and you kind of figure things out as you go – you think what you want is an hourly daily system but what you actually need is rapid logging. So, go ahead and have fun with it, make it yours!
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