BuJo
13:43
With September right around the corner, for me that means going back to work. I also study in the evenings which right now I am on holiday and will also be going back in September. And now I have this blog, which means, I'll have a pile of work to do and chances are I'll probably forget to do something important. I can hear someone out there say to me, "Why not just get a planner/diary?" For me, these diaries/planners just don't sit well with me. I've tried using one. I'll use it for a week, maybe two and then I'll even forget that the planner exists. I also find it very limited with what exactly you can write in the planner and I also find them boring.
I was browsing Pinterest the other day, (I've literally become addicted to that thing) and came across The Bullet Journal. I'd heard of this before as one of the bloggers that I follow on Snapchat had started one, but I thought it was just something work related. So I Googled The Bullet Journal, and came across the official Bullet Journal website.
The founder of the Bullet Journal Ryder Carroll says:
"The Bullet Journal is a customizable and forgiving organization system. It can be your to-do list, sketchbook, notebook, and diary, but most likely, it will be all of the above. It will teach you to do more with less."
And I watched his video too, which can be found here and another Video which explains what exactly is in a Bullet Journal. The Video can be found here
I read the Setup of the Bullet Journal and was mind boggled because it seemed confusing. So that's where Pinterest came in and can I just say I was amazed at all the different pins that came up, so I created a Pin Board with Bullet Journal Ideas, and the whole system is amazing!
It's a system that helps you and allows you to just write down your thoughts, create to-do lists, doodles (if you like to doodle) schedules, meal plans and loads more. It's basically anything you want it to be. So I've decided to trial it and see how well I fare with this Bullet Journal. The thing about Bullet Journals, you can be as creative as you want, or as minimal. As I've been lead to believe there are no right and wrong ways to Bullet Journal. The Bullet Journals I've seen on Pinterest are insaaaane. The layouts, the colours, the designs, are absolutely amazing. I'll leave my Pinterest Board link here and you can check it out. The more I look at these ideas, the more I feel inspired to create my own.
I spent an entire morning deciding what exactly I wanted in my Bullet Journal to start off with, and decided I would start to use it in September when life really kicks in. Bearing in mind that this is a trial run, my Bullet Journal is quite messy and not so fancy. I used a normal notebook for this, whilst other Bullet Journalists out there have the notebook specific for Bullet Journal, which I've ordered by the way, in case I decide to start one in 2017.
So let me take you through my Bullet Journal so far:
To start off, I created a key which allows me to stay organised throughout my Journal. It's pretty basic. Many Bullet Journalists have their key as their second page after their fancy front cover but I have mine as a tiny flap, which you'll see below:
I've done it this way so when I open to my Weekly Log, I can have easy access to my Key, to see what I need to use and where. The keys are straight forward, a simple dot for the task, if the task is completed then an X goes through it, if I didn't do it and moved it over to another day then I use the "migrate" key. If the task is irrelevant then a simple line goes through the dot as you would do on any piece of work that is wrong or irrelevant. The circle is for an event which could be meetings or appointments, which I seem to have a lot of. If a task is really important and needs to get done, I put an exclamation mark next to it or if research is needed for the task then a question mark. Simple right?
Maybe not yet. Many people have it color co ordinated to home, school, work, business etc. But I will see how this works and if things need changing I can change them around next month. And that's the beauty of the Bullet Journal, if things don't fare well in the first week or month, you can always change them around until it suits you. You literally can do what you want, how you want.
Next I have my Index, which is pretty straight forward. Just how you would use an Index in your text books, you have an index of your own. So as you fill in your Journal, any important pages you wish to list, will be written in your Index, like so:
(Ignore the weird border around the word Index)
Next I have my Year At A Glance page, which consists of the remaining months September to December. This is just so I can literally see the entire year. I like this because I really hate the calendar on iPhone, it's like when you click a date the entire months events appear. I'm sure they fixed this once, but they need to fix it again, because I hate it!
On here, I would just highlight birthdays and any other important dates.
After this people usually have a Future Log, which I've scrapped because I don't see a point in it. Before moving onto my Monthly Overview I decided I wanted to do a 17 before 2017 goals page, where I think about 17 different things I want achieve before the end of the year.
Then my Monthly Overview of September Spread looks like this, nothing fancy of course:
On my Monthly Spread I will fill in Appointments, Events, Birthdays, etc. On the side I also want to list the goals I want to achieve by the end of the month, which I would review at the end of the month. And yeh, I would also like to start adding in positive affirmations/quotes on pages too, to keep me motivated and inspired. I think it helped looking at other Journals.
Next I have something called a Habit Tracker. Can you take a guess as to what this could be? It's basically a chart that helps you to track daily habits, for example, on my tracker, I have: no junk, and 1 fruit, 2 liters of water, so everyday if I did these things I would colour in the boxes.
Also on my habit tracker I have some daily things that as a Muslim I should be doing, and naturally, we humans are forgetful nation, and something our teacher used to say to us, is that "Reminders are beneficial to the believers." This statement is not only addressed to those who believe but for everyone and I firmly believe that. So having this habit tracker, will hopefully be a good way to remind me to do my prayers etc.
Another thing our teachers always tell us, that whatever you learn in lesson, always always go over it the same day, as it is still fresh in your head, and to also go over it just before lesson on the next day. We also get told to look over the next days work, either read just read through it, and if you have plenty more time on your hands then to research a little into it, to make the lesson that slightly bit easier. So on my habit tracker, I have added the books that I am studying and a tracker for me to log down whether or not I did the two things.
Okay so for the next part, I have my Weekly/Dailies. Some people like to have all their weeks written whilst some like to do one week, fill that in then at the end of the week draw up their weekly spread for the next week. I've decided to go with the first, and if that doesn't work well then I will change things around in the next month. So here is my Weekly/Daily spread:
And if you're one of those type of people that have mountain pile of work to do and one small box for tasks isn't enough, then you have the choice of dedicating a page to a day. And I think that is why some people like to do one week at a time. On my Weekly Page, I have also added a Sunnah of the Week, we used to do this back in boarding school, and we used to have a chart which we would fill in, I think I'm going to start that again on here because not only do I want this Journal to be a planner I want to do it so that it also encourages me to do good things and become a better person and reminders like this are beneficial.
And lastly, the last few pages that I have are: Money Tracker, Need/Want and Books To Read. I have an account on Goodreads and my books To Be Read list, is completely crazy and to be quite honest, looking at it now, I feel like it's a bit unrealistic. So I decided in my Bullet Journal I will have a page dedicated to the books I know for sure I will read, whether they are re-reads, or part of a series, or something completely new. For now, I've added the series that I have started but never got around to reading the sequels, and hopefully this list will give me an idea what I can read next.
The Money Tracker is quite simple, it is just to track when my money comes in, how much I spend, and how much I have left. I felt that the Need/Want page fell nicely with the money tracker, as it would help me decide whether the item/product I want to buy is a need or want. Do I need the item/product, or do I just simply want it? My money tracker will help me decide that too, depending on how much money I have, because I'm a very bad spender.
That is all I have so far in my Bullet Journal, and like I said, this is only a trial run, I will probably add more pages, more lists etc, but for now this is all. I've decided that at the end on September I will review how I think things went, and whether or not I should carry on. even though the Journal right now is quite messy, I have actually enjoyed it. Maybe because I was bored and had time on my hands.
BohoBerry has been an absolute inspiration to this Bullet Journal of mine, there are so many things that I want to add/will add, like her I am grateful for circle, which I think would help me towards my Friday posts.
So far, even though I've not really started using it, I can say I'm loving this system. It's so flexible and you can add whatever you want. If this works out well, then I'm hoping to add in Monthly Memories, meal logs etc. and basically make this Journal, my Diary, my Scrapbook, my everything really.
I hope this post has given you a detailed insight into the world of Bullet Journals. I've probably obviously not mentioned everything, but I've written about what I know.
Would you give Bullet Journal a try? Would you like to see a review after a months time? Let me know.
xoxo Amirah
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