I have been using a bullet journal for a couple of months now, so I thought I would update you on how I am using it, and what I have changed. First of all, I added a second bullet journal to use as a blog planner, and decided to use my Erin Condren horizontal for my salon business. That may seem like a lot, but it has worked really well for me to compartmentalize those areas of my life.
I will start with my personal bullet journal. I have eliminated a lot of the to-do lists and habit tracking I was doing, because I discovered that there are a lot of things I will remember to do whether they are written down or not, and having to log them was counter-productive to me. I did include a habit tracker for February, but I have not been using it. If I don’t become more faithful in using it, I may skip this next month. I have a plain Leuchtturm1917, so I washi taped the grid piece of paper that comes with it to the back of this page to uniformly add my dots. My daily entries are fairly short and sweet. I like to write down 3-4 things that I would like to get accomplished that day, just to give my day some general direction.
For a while I had gotten away from pulling out my colored pencils and pens, and was opting for minimal layouts in black and white. I was only using my Faber Castell artists pen with an S tip, which is hands down my favorite pen, but I decided that decorating my journal a bit brings joy to me, and is a good quiet time/stress reliever, so I added a little more color this month.
I am experimenting with doing more future tracking in my bullet journal, so hopefully I can phase out future planning in my Erin Condren planner for my personal life, and use it solely for my salon appointments. I added a future tracker, and obviously haven’t utilized it much, but I have been struggling with some health issues this month, and have pretty much been homebound. I will try it again in March before I discard it.
I added a full-month calendar, and I really like this page to track pay days, when bills are due, and things like date night. I am predominantly using my Staetdler Fineliner pens in pink and blue in honor of Valentine’s Day.
One page that I am really excited to develop a little further is a page for our budget. My husband and I had a coming-to-Jesus meeting about our budget situation recently, and we are really motivated to get our debt paid off and start saving to buy a house. I haven’t really perfected how to incorporate this into my journal, but so far I have written down the fixed bills, then beside them I am tracking what we are spending on other categories.
I am using a second Bullet Journal for a blog planner, and I am absolutely loving this style of organization. For February I did a full calendar, which I use as an editorial calendar. If I have sponsored posts due, I write them on the correct day, or I also jot down post ideas to give myself some structure and direction.
My daily layouts have stayed pretty consistent, and are similar to the ones I use in my personal Bullet Journal. I use this as a to-do list, and try to limit it to 2-4 items so it stays very “do-able” and doesn’t get overwhelming. For me, that is the key to sticking with this system.
I continued my Expenses and Income page into February, and will probably be able to do March on the same page. I should be able to get a full year into one notebook for my blog planner.
I LOVE the flexibility of being able to keep my notes for posts in the same notebook as everything else. This has helped immensely with my organization, as well as my follow-through on continuing to use this system.
Most of my other layouts still have plenty of room to be added to, so all-in-all, I have only used about 15 pages in my notebook so far.
If you would like to read a little more about my personal bullet journal, check out this post, and if you would like to see how I initially set up my blog planner bullet journal, read this. I have included links to some of the things I use in my bullet journals below.
Do you currently bullet journal? Or do you think this is a system that could work for you?
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