My bullet journal
I use the bullet journal method for over three years now and I can only recomment it. The basic principle is really simple, it starts with 3 signs for marking events, to do list and thoughts. I always enjoyed writing by hand, but as the high school ended, it was not so significant anymore. I heard about the bullet journal much sooner than I actually started using it, partly because why would I use an analog system in the digital world, especially if I am not a painter to turn it a beautiful piece of handcraft. Later I participated an event called “ Career day” on my university and one of the workshops was about the bullet journal method. This gave me the missing courage to buy one on the very same day. I use the “traditional” dotted notebook for this purpose, usually with a hard cover to protect it from possible damages caused by smashing it to any travelling bag. It is a place, where the system is immediately customized to my taste and use, the absolutely blank pages gives great freedom. There is no wrong way of building it up, if it works it’s good and if it doesn’t, then the pages leave space for changing. For me it is a safe space and a place for meeting reality. There are some “self-developed” collections and other methds merged together in my version. Here comes a brief summary of how I use my bullet journal:
Index
As in every book, my bullet journal also starts with an index, so I (or anyone else) can find everything fast and effectively, when needed. I reccomend to use this, regardless what are you using the bullet journal for.
Future log
A place for “I didn’t make the monthly log yet for this, but important to remember”. In my case it takes 4 pages to see all year round, so when someone comes with a christmas project in June (with musicians it can easily happen), then I have a place to jot it down, so it is poking the back of my mind, when an another project comes up later for the same time period.
Busy or chill?
It is an enterpreneur tool originally applied in excel, but I have a colournig version in my bullet journal. In this section I see which week is busy on which part of my life. With more part time jobs, university, own projects and personal life at the same time, this became a crucial part of my planning. Ideally my goal is to let it be busy (marked as red) only on one part of my life. For example when I have exams, then the school is the main focus, but when I am on holidays, I am focusing on getting new experiences.
Mothly log and habit tracked
For me, these pages are linked together. I write the bigger events, concerts and traavelling in this log and tranck my habits right next to it, so I can see immediately why was it easier or harder to keep up with the new habit on a particular day. To surprisingly big extent it helped me with continuousity, that I have a box to color each time I do the task.
Life wheel
This is the newest page in my bullet journal. It is a tool for monitoring my feelings and relations to different fields of my life. I do the life wheel once a month to see the balance of my life. I heard about this on the Youtube channel of Ali Abdaal, so go and check it out, if you would like to hear more about the topic.
Weekly and daily log
In the weekly log I see the whole week with upcoming events and deadlines. For a long time I didn’t use daily log, I wrote all of my to do lists into the weekly log. Now this list got so long, that I needed a separate daily log, where I track only thing to do and sometimes one or two sentences of reflections of what just happened (always with current time). It is a good way of memory recording, it is fun to reead those little notes years later.
Collections
The collections are a section to be use for absolutely anything. Usually I start from the back of the book, so it doesn’t disturb other sections of the book. I use it to log books I read, to capture ideas and to make notes on worshops I attend to.
If you would like to get more information about the bullet journal method, you can find their Youtube channel here :
https://www.youtube.com/@bulletjournal/videos
Thank you for reading, see you in the next post!