Forever inspired by those around me, I was introduced to the bullet journal by my sister who had come across it as she was looking to buy her next planner. The idea is that it gives you the ability to create a planner/journal/notebook/list holder/budget tracker extraordinaire. No two journals look the same because it is tailored to meet the needs of your specific lifestyle.
In the week that I did research on the journal I became more and more enthralled about how different bloggers and business people bragged about how much it had increased their efficiency and decreased procrastination. Each day they were setting themselves up to be accountable for tasks that need to get done in their personal and professional lives. Also, for those as competitive and OCD as myself, it created a “competition” to complete good habits such as drinking more water, spending less money, actually eating 3 square meals or WHATEVER it was that they found to be important. After I was fully convinced that the bullet method was the one that I needed, my sister and I purchased our first bullet journals.
We were both completely ready to setup our new life line until we opened the packaging of our 240-page whatever we wanted journal.Determined to not give up we began watching videos of how people had setup and evolved their bullet journals from novices to semi-experts. This is how we got to the temporary nirvana that we have created in our journals.
- Developed an outline of things we wanted to see in our journals under the overall breakdown of yearly, monthly, weekly, daily, habits, and MUST HAVE collections.
- Watched YouTube videos from the original bullet planner creator (Ryder Carroll) and other bloggers whose spreads we enjoyed.
- Took a deep breath, while sharpening (yes sharpening!) pencils
- Started the setup of a “basic” journal outline ensuring we hit all the points of our outline
Then the most important step:
- We made a promise to not beat ourselves up for lack of creativity and to let the system work for us. Then making a plan of how to incorporate the journal into our daily lives.
I am only about two days into the using the journal daily and I am starting off with good strides. If you choose to start your own bullet journal good luck and feel free to reach out to me with questions or comments, I am no expert but I will gladly help to the best of my abilities. I am not yet at a point where I feel that I can share with you all my spreads, but when I get a better handle on it I will upload them to this page. Do you have any tips to share on how to create a bullet journal, or elements of your planner that you LOVE and think I should incorporate?
Arielle Dixon 