Yes, pretty late to the game but I have now hopped on board the bullet journal train. Actually I started watching BuJo videos for entertainment a few months ago because I really enjoyed seeing the creativity of YouTubers but also love seeing how people organise their lives.
But what I really found could have been helpful for me was the habit trackers and mood trackers spread. I really liked the idea of tracking my habits (and also having on paper the dates I watered my plants rather than arbitrarily remembering, “Oh, I think I watered it a couple of weeks ago.”)
I started trialling just the habit and mood trackers in mid-April on a very basic spread, and again in May… and June… before, finally, I purchased my own journal.
(I also prepped a July habit / mood tracker while I was prepping my June one, but obviously now no longer need it.)
I have separate notebooks for my devotionals/misc/blog/YouTube stuff, which I’m keeping separate because I want all of my related materials to be in one place. However, I also have a random monthly to-do list that didn’t fit in with the other notebooks as well as a period tracker which I had been tracking in yet another notebook for 7 years now, so I decided to buy a bullet journal to keep all my misc monthly stuff in one place.
What I discovered the few months I tried it:
- I really did not need the mood tracker – my mood is typically very stable except the day or two leading up to my period where I’d get a bit more emotional.
- I did not find it helpful to track watering my plants because I have so many at this point and they’re all on different watering schedules.
- Using so many different colours, whilst looking pretty, is a bit of a pain in the rear to fill in everything.
- I stuck the tracker paper my wall or on my desk so it was even more of a hassle to fill in at the end of the day because I’d have to be in the study colouring with 5 different highlighters.
Once I committed to buying a journal, I did a bit more research and realised that I could just make my habit tracker even more basic hahaha. So just one or two colours was more than enough, and I can just stick my colours of the month in the pen loop and take the journal with me to fill in before bed. I also really liked a few general tracking spreads that were inspired by other YouTubers so I incorporated some of those too.
With all that in mind, my bullet journal has been split into 2 sections: the overall trackers, and the monthly spreads. The notebook I purchased is this one from Amazon (only $9.54!) which, given the simplicity of my needs, I felt would have been perfect.
I’ll do another post to review the notebook itself, but I do find the paper a bit thin now that I pulled out some coloured pens that I forgot I had. If I only used my highlighters and a biro like I originally planned, it would have been totally fine.
Without further ado, here’s my setup:
above: It comes with a Key page, which I don’t actually love. I kinda wish I ignored it and just wrote my own but whatever, it’s still fit for purpose. The colour code is just for me to know which colours I’ll be using together when making my monthly spreads. It also comes with a few index pages, which I’ve decided to ignore for now.
below: The pages themselves are numbered on the bottom, which is great… but now I also kinda wish the dots just went all the way down so I had more space. The right side page is supposed to be my grid spacing cheat sheet, but I haven’t decided how to do the grid spacing thing yet.
above & below: I was inspired by this video by Plant Based Bride for these spreads (the period tracker is reminiscent of the one I’ve had for 7yrs but I got inspired to also track some additional symptoms with the space I have here.)
above & below: These pages were inspired by amandarachlee but I’m an idiot. I don’t know why I decided to split the two “Things to Check Out” on two different sides and leave blank space next to the second page, when I could have just extended the “places I visited” spread and put the “Things to Check Out” on the 2-page spread after. I can’t be bothered to change it now. You live and you learn.
Edit: You know what… Immediately after I posted this I was putting away my trial monthly trackers and realised I still had some blank dotted pages left over. So…
I did it. The page colour difference is very obvious but the other option was to cut out pages from the back, which I wasn’t prepared to do. Ta-da! I like this updated version a lot more.
All of the above are supposed to last me the duration of however long this journal lasts me… so… 7yrs, maybe? Lol. There are 183 pages. We’ll see how it goes, if I fill all these up sooner I will make new spreads when the time comes.
And 2020 begins! I’ve included one of my favourite verses from my favourite book of the Bible. Originally I was thinking of a full 2-page spread for the “2020” page but, honestly, too much effort required.
This is pretty much how all of my monthly spreads are going to look, I think. I just need my habit tracker, my to-do list, brain dump and I quite like the idea of having a reading and date night tracker (staying in and watching a movie counts!) to help motivate me to read more and maybe plan a few more date nights with Jacky.
I’ve done a half-month for June because, well, I just got the notebook yesterday. You can see quite a bit of ghosting but whatever, I’ll live.
I think it’s pretty! This is as pretty as I can be bothered to make it. My habits will be filled in with blue dots for this month and all my further writing will be done in black biro.
The set up took me a good few hours because I was not used to the dots and spacing and actually using more than just two colours and blah blah blah but I really like it how turned out! It’s “basic” but it’s perfectly suited for what I want for it right now, and that’s plenty good enough for me.
Muchos love,