Bullet Journal Series: Further References

I promised I would put up a post addressing further references in your endeavor to start up a bullet journal. So, here goes!


Very first reference to put up is the original creator’s own YouTube video.

He details everything in a very minimalist fashion. This is Bullet Journaling at its core.

The website for Bullet Journal is found here.

This next video is great because it’s similar to mine but in my opinion, you do not need to write more than one entry in the index for one month. However, (and I cannot stress this enough) the Bullet Journal is all about what works best for you. If you want to be super detailed in the index like the following video, then by all means.

This next video is very thorough and very detailed. I liked how she walked you through most everything.

To finish off, you can always visit Tumblr for good ideas for your Bullet Journal by simply search the tags bulletjournal, Bullet Journal, or visiting bulletjournals which is a collection of a bunch of different bullet journals for inspiration.

Have fun, lovelies!

XOXO

Bullet Journal Series - Day 3: Daily Block, Lists, and Important Notes

How exciting! You are almost able to begin a Bullet Journal of your own! After today's post, you can go ahead and get started.

So, we've covered the cover (haha), reference page, page numbering (ever so briefly, yesterday), index, and monthly spread.

Today will be about the daily blocks, lists, and important notes.

This is what your daily blocks will look like once you've finished your monthly spread. There are some people that set up a whole page for each day because they organize it similar to a Filofax, as there are people who just take it as it comes. I'm in the latter group. I like to leave space for the unknown. I believe allowing your page to fill up as it may, without a structure, is the beauty of the Bullet Journal. I like to but the day of the week followed by the date for redundancy. I have a terrible memory, so this helps.

Daily Block

This is my block for today, thus far. Since I took this picture, I have already added 3 tasks and one explore. I have one "incomplete/started" task that was carried over from yesterday at the top, and I have an upcoming event (which just means it doesn't fall under this month) at the bottom of my block. These are all symbols that were introduced in the first post of this series. And, as with anything bullet journal related, you can customize the daily block to your liking.

Lists & Important Notes

Here is an example of a list. I did this because I had stream of tags for my first post and I needed to make sure that #mine was in the first 5 tags so that the post would show up in the page for Mine on my Tumblr (only the first five tags are read for pages), and there was no way I could memorize all those tags, so I wrote them down.

After you write in your list, you have to place it in the index, so that you can easily find it anytime afterward.The page number for this list is 50.

I also have an important note on the top of this page in my Bullet Journal.

I, also, need to document this in the index...

And there they are. I highlighted them for you all to see them. You would put the name of the note or the list followed by the page number you can find it on. It is absolutely okay for the list or note to be found on two different pages. Just make sure to put the page numbers in the index.

Tomorrow, I will be posting up resources for Bullet Journaling, including the video of the original creator, Ryder Carroll.

Happy Journaling!

Bullet Journal Series - Day 2: Monthly Spread

Hey there, again :)

Today, the Monthly Spread will be addressed. This is the second largest chunk for me but it only takes a couple minutes to set up and then you're good to go.

Once you complete the reference and index sections, the next thing you want to do is number all of your pages. You can do this in any style you'd like. Arabic numbers, roman numerals, etc. This will make listing all of the parts of your Bullet Journal in the index that much easier.

The monthly spread is your calendar. This is where you write in events that you've bulleted in your daily spread. If you recall from yesterday's post, the event bullet is a circle. This is what my spread looks like:

My spread is 3 pages long, as you can see. I have the monthly set-up and then I have three extra sections: weekly goals, monthly goals, and monthly reminders. But we'll get to that in a minute.

"Calendars"

This is where you update the events that can occur in your month and keep track of appointments and birthdays.

The first thing you want to do, when setting up your month, is writing in the month; and I like to add the year in for good measure. I usually like to write in the month and year on every page of the Monthly Spread but I'm trying a minimalist thing this month, so yeah. 

Then, you want to write in the number of days in that month. Spacing is totally up to you, when it comes to this part. The original Bullet Journal creator puts all the days on one page of the Bullet Journal. I tried that but it is nearly impossible for both my handwriting and life. This is a slow month; but some months, my Bullet Journal is the most chaotic thing you will and have ever seen. I'm even seriously considering bumping up the spacing to three lines, not just two.

Great, so now you've got the number of days written in. Next, you want to write in the first letter of the day of the week for that date. This will help you recall dates better and make taking a quick glance at your calendar a lot easier.

Awesome! You've nailed that. Now, if you're as anal as I am, you will have your Google Calendars all synced up and a written pocket calendar updated for good measure. So, filling the month up at the start of every month is just clockwork. But if you are a normal person instead, start to fill-in the calendar with the dates that you already know are important. Odds are you will be coming back to this section more often than you think. Any time an event gets bulleted in your daily block, always remember to add it to your monthly spread, too. 

Goals and Reminders

The bottom half  of any of my "calendars" is my Weekly Goals list. This is where I get to plan out goals that I want to complete each week. 

Normally, I'd having something like, "Go to the gym 3 times/week," here but I am recovering from that ER visit, still. So, I set the goal of walking from the Starbucks in Fordham Plaza (because I am bound to go at least once a week) to my house. That's about a mile of walking which is great cus I can't do a great deal more. Then, there are my chores (bathroom and stove duty), and my room is a given but I do have a tendency to get messy; setting a reminder to tidy up doesn't hurt. I read my devotional on a weekly basis because mine is not a daily devotional. I am also a teacher for Sabbath School in Seventh-Day Adventist Church, so I have to have my teacher's plan set by Friday nights.

Things like that are good to have in your Weekly Goals list.

My Monthly Goals are just a list of things that I know could not possibly be completed in a week's time. Don't ever be unrealistic with your goals because it will just breed disappointment at the end of the day. I think it is necessary to remain objective in setting goals and tasks.

Monthly Reminders are things like bills to pay, or an automatic transfer that goes out on a specific day every month. In my Monthly Reminders list you can see that I use three of the symbols I introduced yesterday. The regular bullet point is used here because reminders are like notes, and the denotation for a note in the Bullet Journal is a bullet point. I use the circular arrow to show that this is a reminder that is recurrent until completed. And I use an arrow to show that my Spotify Membership ends in March which is ahead of February.

Multi-Colored Scheme

Here is what my Monthly Spread looked like when I was using the color-coding system:

So, there you have it! My Monthly Spread.

Again, I encourage you to customize the format to your heart's content. I have seen people use a two page "monthly calendar" format for this section of the Bullet Journal. It looks nice and it's similar to how school planners and agendas are set up. However, I needed space for last minute events to get penciled in and I found the layout I use to be a lot easier to glance. But, that's just me.

Join me again tomorrow for Day 3 of the Bullet Journal Series in Tumblr and Blogger.

Bullet Journal Series - Day 1: Cover, Reference, and Index

Welcome to Day 1 of the Bullet Journal Series!

Today, I will be tackling the cover, reference, and index sections of my personal Bullet Journal. Let's get started!

Cover

The cover is the first stop of this Bullet Journal being your canvas. You can get a pre-decorated notebook that you fell in love with at that store you visited the other day; or you can get a notebook that you can decorate on your own (like mine). I purchased a pack of 4 or 5 MUJI plantation paper notebooks. The covers make for great customizing grounds. The MUJI store in Astor Place has a table set-up toward the cashiers that have these really cute stamps. Once you purchase the notebooks, you can then proceed to the stamping table and stamp your notebook to your heart’s content. It’s a good idea to put some type of contact information on the cover as well. I put mine along the bottom of the cover, which is what’s blacked out in the picture.

References

The reference page is the key to your Bullet Journal. This is where you keep track of your “bullet” denotations. Bullets are meant to help you discern the different things that can go into your journal. I suggest you leave a whole page empty for this because you are likely to come back and add or change the denotations. Here are mine:

As you can see, I have two different keys. I changed my key about 2 months ago. I started my Bullet Journal wanting everything color coordinated.

Each “bullet” had an assigned color. While it made for a very pretty Bullet Journal, it was not the most practical option for me. I did not have time to sit down and write out everything with that much care and attention every time I had to make a new bullet. The Bullet Journal needed to be something I could use in time crunches, too. 

So, I opted for a monochromatic scheme.

This allowed me to be organized, precise, and efficient. I can still find my bullets easily. Writing everything by hand helps with remembering where I wrote them down and remembering where they actually are. Customizing the key is very easy.

task - This is a “to-do” box to add to your daily layout (which we will tackle Thursday).

event - This denotes an event. A meeting, date, premiere date, etc.

appointment - Doctor’s appointment, waxing, spa, etc

ideas, inspiration, quotes - Anything that passes through your mind or maybe something you heard that hit home with you.

notes - Things that you need to remember for that specific day.

deadline, due date - This is for any assignments that you may need to hand in at school or work. (There’s a reason I didn’t write “exam” here. I’ve made a whole new sign for that**.)

important - This denotes anything that may be important. It can be paired with any of a previous signals.

explore - This denotes something that I’d like to explore further. For example, if someone says a word that I don’t know, I could bullet the word with a question mark and come back to it later.

**exam/quiz/test - I put an arch to denote an exam, quiz, or test. I needed a different mark for that because I have a lot of them.

checkmark - shows that the task is completed

slash -  shows that the task is underway, or incomplete

strikethrough arrow - shows the bullet was migrated to a later date

strikethrough - shows the bullet is now irrelevant

arrow - either put before or after the bullet, shows that this is an upcoming task or event. I use it to mean that the event is not in the current month, or a note.

circular arrow - this denotes something recurrent. If you have a set appointment every month, this would be good to use. Maybe you have some bills that need to get paid, this helps with that.

\ “list name” / - The slashes help me differentiate the lists in my Bullet Journal from my daily blocks

Index

The Index is your “table of contents”. This will help you keep further track of where everything is relatively located.

You can see here where I stopped doing the multi-colored thing, too. This is where you keep track of your months and your lists, and I’ve found it’s useful for special notes, too. Once I started my monochromatic scheme, it became a little harder to differentiate everything. So. I used a slash to point out lists, and dots to denote important notes. In other words, I used the same marks that I use for their bullets. Notice that my February doesn’t have an ending page. Leave those open-ended and fill them in once the month is done. This is part of the beauty of a bullet journal: space is not limited.