My Bujo (Bullet Journal)

I love my Bul­let Jour­nal and I have my friend, Kristie, to blame. (I can actu­al­ly blame her for a few things…). And I can be blamed for get­ting a few of my friends hooked.

But I’ve had a few peo­ple ask me what a bul­let jour­nal is and how some of my lay­outs help me. So I thought I would go through mine.

A bul­let jour­nal is an ana­log sys­tem for a dig­i­tal age. It is essen­tial­ly: a) a jour­nal; b) a task list; c) a place for notes from meet­ings, etc.; d) a place to house some col­lec­tions like Movies to Watch, Bills to Pay, Projects to Knit.

A bul­let jour­nal can be as sim­ple or as com­plex as you want it to be. It is made to work for you! And what’s a bonus is that in the end, you’ll have a jour­nal that shows things you did and maybe even has some mus­ings or life hap­pen­ings sprin­kled in.

You can find more at: http://bulletjournal.com/. And you can always find lay­out ideas on blogs every­where, on Pin­ter­est and even just a google image search.

So, let me show you mine! (Click on any of the images to make them big­ger. I’ve whit­ed out pri­vate information…hopefully)

Leucht­turm 1917. The pen hold­er is a sewing project I found online and is REALLY handy for keep­ing my pens with my book.

Mole­skin is short­er than the Leucht­turm

First, the jour­nal. I was using a Mole­sk­ine, dot grid. But it’s not as wide as I would like. So I switched to a Leucht­turm 1917 dot grid. It’s an A5 width, as you can see below.

The start of a bul­let jour­nal usu­al­ly con­sists of an index to help keep it orga­nized (anoth­er nice fea­ture of the Leucht­turm is that it’s page are num­bered and it has a table of con­tents built in.

My Index

I do my book slight­ly dif­fer­ent­ly, in that I place my col­lec­tions in the back of my book and work back­wards, while my dai­ly jour­nal starts at the front. So split my index accord­ing­ly.

The next two spreads are sim­i­lar. I like to do a Year At a Glance, for an over­all pic­ture, or if I need to quick­ly add some­thing. I have both 2017 and 2018.

Year at a Glance

I then fol­low these with my Months. I start with a “Hel­lo! [Month]” page. This allows me to quick­ly add any impor­tant things I wrote down from my year-at-a-glance OR to add items I need to make sure to add into my week­ly view as I cre­ate them.This also lists the day of the week (M, T, W, etc.) so that as I cre­ate the pages I put them in the right order.

Month Intro Page

I used to have a Month­ly Goals Lay­out fol­low­ing this. But I nev­er real­ly kept track as much as I would have liked, so it looked emp­ty.

Month­ly Goals

Instead, I know fol­low the Month Intro page with a Time Log. (I used to track this above each day, but it was hard­er to see the pat­terns.

With this lay­out, I’ve found it easy to see pat­terns in my activ­i­ties and bet­ter plan. I now real­ized that if I don’t go to sleep right away after work, that I tend to crash around 6/7 or I need a nap (So I should­n’t tell my friends I’ll see them online lat­er to play WoW). I like to knit while watch­ing TV, I don’t do as much design work as I’d like through­out the week (I tend to pro­cras­ti­nate) and I don’t read as much as I would like.

Time Log. Col­ors mean: Lt. Blue = Sleep, Green = Work, yel­low = nap, orange = appoint­ment, pink = knit, pur­ple = TV, red = office work, grey = read, dk. blue = Date Night, Brown = Gam­ing, Fuschia = oth­er hob­bies

I then fol­low this page with my week­ly lay­outs (one week per spread or two pages). So it’s like a “week-at-a-glance”.

This is the main part of my book. Here I not online list events (cir­cles), appoint­ments (tri­an­gles) or to do items (squares), but I list things that hap­pened, how I feel, some­thing that both­ered me, or cool things that I might want to take note (all small dots). The below images show my pro­gres­sion on how the lay­out changed over time.

Orig­i­nal lay­out. Notice the time log across the top, track­ing weight, weath­er, food, water intake and moods.

How my lay­out is now. Sim­pli­fied, less to try and track.

I also add washi tape to coor­di­nate spe­cif­ic things that span mul­ti­ple days. For instance peak at work, when I can­not request time off.

BLack means I can’t request time off at work. Red might mean a Hol­i­day or vaca­tion time. Notice I also track when bills are due.

I’ve also cre­at­ed tab stick­ers to put on my book to eas­i­ly find the months I need. Total­ly option­al.

Now onto col­lec­tion. I don’t keep all col­lec­tions in the same jour­nal. For small­er lists, I keep them in this jour­nal with my oth­er stuff. Or items I know I need more handy. But for larg­er col­lec­tions, I have a sep­a­rate jour­nal for meet­ing notes AND a full-sized jour­nal for larg­er col­lec­tions (like Knit Projects). These are some of the col­lec­tions I have:

Then final­ly, wher­ev­er there is space, I dec­o­rate. Cause…I’m me and things need to be cute and art­sy.

So, that’s my jour­nal so far. It comes with me every­where I go. I even bought a few 31 Gifts Tote bags to keep things togeth­er. The first bag is their Swap-It Pock­et. This lets me hold two small jour­nals, pens, washi tape, mark­ers, and some stick­ers. I can then toss it in my larg­er bag or take it out for my “to go” bag.

The Swap-it Pock­et

I then have their All-In Orga­niz­er. This fits the Swap-It Pock­et per­fect and has room for extra pens/markers, a box of washi-tape, my larg­er jour­nal and some oth­er sup­plies. Plus mesh pock­ets on the sides for head­phones, my phone, keys, etc. I take just this when I just need to work on my jour­nals at the cof­fee shop.

All-In Organzi­er

So, there you have my jour­nal. I hope this helps you decide if YOU want to start a bul­let jour­nal and become a “bujo junkie” like me.

Oh gosh. Pens. I LOVE my Pilot Met­ro­pol­i­tan pens. I have both a Roller­ball and a Foun­tain Pen in Medi­um Point. The foun­tain pen writes SO SMOOTH and I have LOTS of foun­tain pens. I also use the Staedtler triplus fine­lin­ers (they are dry safe).