If you know me, you’ll know that I never go anywhere without my diary/planner. This because I am constantly juggling so many balls that without it I would be lost. I know that lots of people opt for utilising the calendar on your phone for to keep track of your life, but for me I have to be able to see my month laid out in front of me. My motto is ‘if it’s not in the diary, then I’m not going’ and I have tried many different styles of diary over the year with nothing really meeting all the needs I have for one. I then came across bullet journaling and thought why not give it a try.
For those of you that may not know, a bullet journal (or BuJo) was created by Ryder Carroll and is a method of personal organisation aimed at helping you live more productively. A bullet journal can aid with streamlining all of the chaos going on in your into one place and can be moulded to suit your needs and lifestyle. It’s essentially a notepad of dotted paper that you can use to create you own style of diary/panner. This can include to-do lists, trackers, notes, quotes, pictures, drawings, calendars, lists etc you name it!
I first came across the notion of bullet journaling on social media by watching lots of caligraphy videos as I find them soothing. The BuJos on social media are soooo atheistically pleasing and artistic. I can’t say I am a naturally talented drawer, but handwriting is something I have typically been good at and was interested to see if I could pick up some pretty fonts and have a creative outlet alongside an ideal way of organising my life.
I got a bullet journal with a little elephant (my faves) on it from Amazon for £8 and have been using the arts and crafts stuff I already had at home to get started. I did a little bit of reading into how to start as this was definitely the most daunting part and decided on a few pages for the beginning.
- A Key – where I log all of the symbols etc I use in shorthand and what they mean
- A Future Log – somewhere I can see an overview of the year
- Masters Overview – an overview of my final year of the MSc Clinical Psychology
- Assignment Calendar – somewhere to see upcoming deadlines and my progress on them
- Reading and TV Logs – to capture what I’ve been reading and watching
It was midway through September when I decided to start bullet jounraling so I used September as a practice month. I chose the theme ‘nature’ as I thought drawing a few leaves cant be that hard right? I was very wrong and it is not the prettiest but it was helpful is seeing what kind of weekly/monthly spreads work for me.
I then used this to have a proper go at October. I love Halloween and Autumn so I went for an orangey, autumny, halloweeny theme. Please excuse my dodgy drawings of a fox etc but I was pretty pleased with this as a beginner using some old pens and a my imagination.
We will see how this month goes and hopefully my November I will have a pretty good idea of what I like and what is missing from my spreads!
Let me know if you bullet journal or are interested in having a go.
Meg xo
