Its almost the New Year and like many I imagine, I want to make my next year successful! When I first came across the idea of a bullet journal, the idea of it confused me a lot but I also really wanted to give it a go. After a lot of research and videos and lots and lots of failed attempts, I think I’ve finally figured out for myself the best way to present my Bullet Journal and use it to boost my productivity and motivation!

A lot of the videos I watched made a Bullet Journal look really complex, which is exactly why I decided to share the process of setting mine up and then my progress through the year. My goal here is to give some insight into not only how to set it up, but to also show you why and how it can be helpful and what all the effort put into it can really accomplish.

So to start off, I’m going to talk about what exactly a Bullet Journal is. ^^

What is a Bullet Journal?

So a Bullet Journal is kind of similar to the Diary’s everyone buys for the new year or for a students academic year. They help you keep track of things like, appointments, when an assignment might be due or even just a reminder to go food shopping on a specific day. The big difference to a Bullet Journal and the usual ones you can buy is that a Bullet Journal is also somewhat like a DIY project and 100% customisable! The Journals that are typically used for Bullet Journals are dotted ones, they make it easier to draw out your layouts and design your spreads!^^

To add a little bit more detail to what you can do with a Bullet journal I’ll be sharing my layouts and plans! I’ll also be creating a board on Pinterest so I can post all the layouts ^^

When you start a Bullet Journal, you’ll normally find things like an introductory to the year, a calendar and several goals or trackers.

Yearly Spread Ideas

– Year Page (2020)

– Key page

– Calendar

– Pixel Year / Mood tracker

– Goals or ambitions for the year

– Savings tracker

– Exercise or weight loss tracker

– Tv shows or movies to watch

– Books you plan to read

Monthly Spread Ideas

-Month Page

– Habit tracker

– Monthly tasks

– Reminders

– Challenge trackers (eg 30 day exercise challenges)

– Schedules

– Logs (eg Sleep log)

– Monthly Goals

Weekly Spread Ideas

– Week pages

– Days

– Daily tasks log

– To do lists

– Shopping list

– Habit Tracker

– Meal planning

– Notes

– Daily gratitude

I’ll be sharing photos and explanations of my layouts in future blog posts! ^^

Why use a Bullet Journal?

I think I covered most of the basics of what a Bullet Journal is, so now I’d like to go into why I think it’s a good idea to create and use one and what the benefits and outcomes can be if you stick to it!

What I think the most important thing about a Bullet Journal is, is that it really can help you keep track of all your work and progress as you grow as a person. You can use a Bullet Journal to help yourself become the person you want, to be someone you’re happy with! (Loving yourself is important!) You can use the Journal to track habits and daily tasks. Personally, I find someone satisfying about colouring in a little box to show that I’ve done my 10k steps for the day! using this idea of a tracker can really help you remember things and make better habits. For example, I forget to take my tablets most days (which can be really bad) so now, once I’ve taken my tablet then I can colour in the little box. If i cant remember wether I took the tablets or not later in the day, then I can check to see if I filled in the box! I find it very helpful ^^

My next favourite thing about a Bullet journal is that I can look back over the work I’ve done. With the sort of work I do, every job I take has different deadlines and take a different amount of time to complete. With this, it also becomes difficult to keep track of what I earn. With a Bullet journal I can design out a page for each month that tailors exactly to my needs. It will make it easier to keep track of what jobs are due what day, what day I need to make sure my next blog posts or a video needs to be made and edited and really manage to keep on top of everything I’m doing. (hopefully it’ll help me keep up to date with my posts! ^^

I feel like another good aspect is that you can really learn how to divide your time more efficiently. Once I’ve planned out all the time I need for work or exercise and everything else I plan to be consistent on in the new year, I can then also see what time I have free. Or from a different perspective, I can plan when I do my work and when I do exercise or check my blog etc in order to make sure I have time for leisure and to relax!

The last thing I’ll mention here since I feel like I may be going on too much for some to want to read – The end of the year. At the end of each month or year, you can look back at your progress and see what you’ve accomplished through the year. If you have a log of what movies you wanted to watch or books you wanted to read, you can go back and have those reminders there. If you have an exercise log or weight loss log, you can look back and see your progress and see how far you got! Honestly, the idea of being able to keep track of things and see the progress on paper is very motivating for me^^

Oh and with a Bullet Journal you have everything you need in one book!

So Bullet Journals aren’t for everyone, but for those who are interested and inspired – A Bullet Journal could become something life changing (it definitely is for me!)

I’ll soon be writing about my yearly and monthly spread to share with you all, so be sure to look out for that next week!

I encourage as many people as possible to join me with this for the New Year, so if anyone has any questions or needs any advice on it then feel free to leave a comment! ^^

Thanks for stopping by everyone!^^