How to Bullet Journal Like a Pro: 5 Steps to Getting Your Life Organized with Bullet Journaling
Welcome back to Glow Up Goals Week on Bri Books! Today we’re doing a deep dive into the world of bullet journaling: What it is, what it solves, and how to get started. I’m teaching you how to write a bullet journal like a boss. My bullet journaling strategy is easily customizable to fit whatever you need to focus on. If you’ve been meaning to start journaling, now’s definitely the time. I’ll be sharing the steps you want to follow in order to turn any notebook into a bullet journal, and how to optimize your life using bullet journal strategies like daily and weekly logs.
What is Bullet Journaling? What’s the Difference Between a Bullet Journal and a Regular Notebook?
A bullet journal, in essence, is a notebook with bulleted on-page dots and an accompanying system of organizing your world. Your bullet journal index, weekly spread, and daily logs are the foundations of a successful bullet journaling strategy.
Your bullet journal weekly spread is where you map out your week ahead, and supplement with categories you want to focus on. Often, when you search bullet journaling on YouTube and Instagram, you’re met with highly-designed, washi-tape wrapped notebooks. What’s important to remember is that you want your bullet journal format to be flexible, fast, and fit to your focus.
How to Start Bullet Journaling
The guiding principle behind bujo is you want the method to work for you. It’s about “tracking the past, organizing the present, and planning for the future.” You don't want to spend so much time focusing on recording of the doing, that the doing doesn't get done.
Create an Index. It’s the Table of Contents of your bullet journal, where you write down page numbers and their corresponding sections. If you want to learn how to bullet journal like a pro, make sure you have your bullet journal index filled out. Your bullet journal index is like the reference desk or table of contents for your notebook. Keeping a running index of the pages of your bullet journal, and the corresponding topic or subject is crucial to the success of your bullet journal. I like to begin my bullet journal with a prayer after the index, and continue on to build calendar pages.
Write a prayer, a grounding thought, a dream that’s on my mind, 3-5 simple joys in life. Write down three peaceful thoughts and joys you find. You can use those as anchors as you move through your bullet journal. John 15:5. I find that it’s helpful to have something grounding and centering at the top of my journal, to put myself into perspective.
Categories: This is where you break down and compartmentalize your priorities for this notebook. Your bullet journal categories will organically start to build up as you journal more regularly. After you have our categories, get into your daily log/ weekly spread. This is where you’ll write down tasks and projects based on categories, and what you’re doing/ where you’re going. Use your categories to keep you honest and mindful of the tasks, projects, and priorities you avoid. It’s never too early or too late to start creating categories. It’s a useful practice to keep different areas of life in check and balances. Categories help me see if things are overloaded or underloaded, I'm able to give myself a gut check.
Logs and Calendar. The bullet journaling style I like to use favors weekly spreads, where you map out your week ahead and supplement it with bullet points from your Categories (life focuses.) The daily log/ weekly spread is where you outline the state of your union: I begin with a breakdown of the categories we mentioned: personal, financial, spiritual, etc. Some of those have daily components in my daily log or weekly spread. On a weekly basis, it’s important that you keep yourself honest and review your logs. Notice what tasks roll from week to week. Notice what categories get neglected and moved back week to week. Once you see that, you’re able to refocus and regroup. There are tons of different types of logs--monthly logs, future logs (two or three months out), and a calendar-style log (current and next month). Logs are helpful for recording regular operations tasks you want to tick off. Gym sessions, grocery store, financial, books to read, movies you wanna read, items to purchase next, phone calls that need to be made.
Create Your Spread. A spread is a few pages devoted to a certain project or time period. For example, each week I create a 2-page spread, and write down what’s on my calendar along with a little checklist built on tasks pulled from the….CATEGORIES LIST! The daily and weekly spread keeps me honest. It's where I break down large projects or tasks into daily chunks. It's where I cordon off parts of my day or week to different things. It's where I experiment and play on the subway. Ifind daily and weekly spreads keep me helpful with everything else I set out with, and be flexible with my time by realizing the space I do have and the types of work I'm able to do throughout the week.
Links to My Favorite Bullet Journaling Resources:
The IGTV about setting up your bujo is live on @bribookspod
BeRooted journal
