Levitha Mariam

Namaskaram,

I recently came across BulletJournals, which has been all over social media for months now and had so many questions going through my head. Like what even is a BulletJournal? Is it a planner a diary or just a doodle book? It’s a journal to track the past, organise the present and plan the future. I saw so many different types of BulletJournals, such as very fancy ones with loads of colours and pictures and then just very simplistic black and white ones. Once I started digging deeper into this concept, I found out that the BulletJournal was created by Ryder Carroll who is a digital product designer based in Brooklyn. After looking at a few pictures of sample BuJos, I literally got obsessed and couldn’t take my eyes off them, so I decided to make and start my very own one.

This is the official description from Ryder:

“The Bullet Journal is a customizable and forgiving organization system. It can be your to-do list, sketchbook, notebook, and diary, but most likely, it will be all of the above. It will teach you to do more with less”

A bullet journal would be extremely useful for people

• Who love stationary
• Who love writing their own pages
• Who love to-do lists
• Who love the satisfaction of crossing out a task they’ve completed
• Who love planners
• Who want to love planners or if you want to be organised

It would literally be useful to anyone.

I started my BulletJournal because I love writing things down and making everything look pretty. I have noticed that you tend to stick more with your planner if you create it all by yourself because once you have set it up, and don’t use it, the time you’ve been spending to set it up would have been a waste. And you don’t want that, right?

Another reason why you should start a BuJo is that everything is totally up to you, you can decide what to put in and what not to put in.

 

This is how I created my BulletJournal:

First of all, I wanted the perfect notebook because obviously I will be using it for a few months so it made absolute sense for me to invest into a good one which will stand up to the strains of everyday life. Finding the perfect size is another important thing, you don’t want it to be too big that you can’t be bothered to carry it and not too small that will limit your creativity. I bought the Leuchturm1917 A5 notebook with dotted paper for £12.99 off amazon, I have linked it at the bottom. So long as you have your notebook and pen, you’re good to go.

Leuchtturm made life a lot easier as its pages are already numbered and you have a laid out Index which you can always use to refer back to.

 

My first page is a Key with all the short-form notations which makes it easy to identify what each symbol means.

 

The next 2 double pages is my space for my Future Log to store items that need to be scheduled months in advance or Events which you want to add later onto the monthly/daily logs.

 

Then I got one page with the daily-month calendar for the whole year followed by a page just with the months. This is my Birthday Log. On the right page I write down the birthdays of my friends for each month in chronological order and I have the calendar on the left page to know what exact day it is on.

 

YEAR IN PIXELS

This is a page with a 12×31 box-grid which has each day of the month init. On the right side I have a little colour-coded key representing a mood. I colour in a box each day accordingly on how my day was. At the end of the year it will be something interesting to look back onto.

 

On this double page I got a wish list in which I write down what I would like to save up on and how much I will have to save up. I also got a makeup section to write down what I need or what exact colours I have so when I lose something, I know which shade it was. The Spending table is how much money I spent each month, so I know at the end of the year how much money I spent.

 

Of course there is not going to be a BulletJournal for me without a blog schedule and statistics to plan my upcoming posts and jotting down my ideas!

 

I left out a page and started a fresh title page for the month of March. I doodled a few flowers because it’s my favourite time of the year: SPRING!!

 

Here I have a monthly spread with everything I have planned for march like scheduled driving lessons, deadlines etc. What I tend to do is looking back to my future log to see if I should copy and paste anything onto this page. I also have space for notes and a monthly growth tracker and also a motivational quote.

 

The march tracker is to track my habits throughout the month, which actually encourages me to do these habits more because I want to fill in the boxes. Monthly spending tracker and Brain dump!This is useful because I will be able to track how much money I spent and for what exactly. Once the month is over I can transfer the total amount onto the yearly tracker.

 

And finally the daily logs.

 

The thing about bullet journaling is that it is not meant to be perfect! Everything is totally up to you, it’s all about experimenting and finding what’s right for YOU! Trying to find a way to organize yourself and keeping track of your life is seriously the best move you could ever make- one step closer to success!

Ps. It’s a good way to plan out your whole revision plan for upcoming exams this summer and it will motivate you to study!

www.bulletjournal.com – Link to the official Bullet journal website

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Notebooks-Writing-Pads-Diaries/LEUCHTTURM1917-342707-Medium-numbered-pages-ruled-royal/B008UUBIOE -Link to the notebook I bought.

Love,

Mariiamazi