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.