My bullet journal set-up
I have used the bullet journaling system for almost a year and for that time I have used a more visual approach similar to normal calendars. If you are not familiar with the concept of a bullet journal I suggest checking out the creator’s website here. I hope this post can give you some ideas to how you can do bullet journaling.
I have 4 time categories when organizing my journal:
Monthly, weekly, daily and the future. My thinking on the first three is that the detailed information increases as more specific you get. For a month you just want a brief overview with the most important events.
The way i organize my bullet journal is that I do one monthly spread, then making a new weekly spread as a new week approaches.
Monthly spread
I use a similar layout to monthly overviews commonly found in calandars. I put down the number of the week as well as a section for goals and notes. This is for getting a brief visualization of the coming month and the most important things happening.
In the monthly overview I write down birthdays, exams, tests, hand ins, appointments.
In the sidebar I put down goals, notes and other misc things.
Weekly spread
For each week I use one spread. The left page for a weekly overview and the right one for what I need to do and notes on each day. I usually make the next week’s spread the weekend before.
The weekly overview
This gives me a look on what kind of dues I have this week and what’s happening. I use the typical bullet journal icons with bullets, squares, circles.
I put down homework, assignments, dues, hand-ins, tests and appointments. In addition I write down social activities happening. The big difference compared to the monthly view is that I include homework dues and social calls.
In the right column I write down random notes, goals and shopping lists.
The days
For every day I do the typical bullet journaling with lists of to-dos, events, notes and such. I also like to write down if something particular happened that day. If there’s things to do within a certain subject I just indent that line. One page have worked perfectly for me but if you do really long lists you can just use the page after.
Future
A problem I first discovered with bullet journaling was that I didn’t know where I was supposed to write down homework for next week. Now I solved that by having one small post-it on each weekly spread where I can write down homework and stuff for next week. I kind of use it as a mini overview of the upcoming week. Then when making the next week’s spread it’s easy to just move and copy the information down. As the whole point of a bullet journal isn’t that you make all your spreads in advance.
Final words
This is not the only things I use my bullet journal for! I use it for far more than planning. I plan lessons, make shopping lists, plan events, write down movies I like and so, so much more more. That’s what so fantastic about the bullet journal: you can customize it endlessly to your needs.
Also, details on the notebook I use: Leuchtturm1917 Medium (A5) hardcover, dotted ruling, cornflower blue (249 numbered pages). I’ve used it since January 2015 and I have no complaints.
I’m nowhere near as aesthetically organised, but this does sound like a useful idea.
