My First Bullet Journal
When I was younger, I always wanted to keep a diary. I would write for a few weeks at a time about my daily life and feelings and then eventually drop it once it became too tedious. I also loved to keep an agenda, but after starting college, I decided to keep track of my to-do's and appointments in my iPhone. With no place to write things down anymore I was really starting to miss keeping track of life in a creative way that was useful and serves as a keepsake. On Pinterest I started noticing this new trend called Bullet Journaling that was totally customizable! A combo of art journaling, diary keeping, and to-do lists seemed perfect, so at the beginning of Summer 2016 I took a hardcover ruled notebook and started! Since then, I've tried various different layouts, trackers, fonts and markers, but this post is going to breakdown the simple way that I started out bullet journaling in a "how to" format for beginners!
1. Pick A Writing Style or Font
To ensure that my journal stayed cohesive throughout the many changes I was apt to make, I chose one style of writing that would be part of all my titles and entries. I made a ton of changes to how I laid out things throughout the few months this journal lasted, but keeping with the same font really ties the whole thing together and make it cute and organized! I found Shorelines Script online and modelled my own little version of it in the journal.
2. Pick A Layout
Next I chose how I wanted to layout my days each week and decided how much space I was going to leave for each day's writing. Even though this journal was fairly small, I broke each page down into two days. I would include the day of the month at the top left hand corner of each day and underneath, a little icon that described the weather and temperature for that day.
3. Choose Your Categories
There are a plethora of ideas on Pinterest for this. You can track absolutely anything in your Bullet Journal from what you eat each day to your self care and your categories can change from month to month. Personally, I created a few distinct categories at the beginning of my journal before any of my months of things that I knew I wanted to keep track of over the course of the journal. This included my Work Hours, Quotes, Inspiration, Medication, Things to Buy, TV Shows, Books and Grades.
4. Set Up Your Month
At the start of each month I would do a cute little illustration with the name of the month incorporated. Next, I would add my monthly tracking categories. These always changed, but usually included things like Expenses, Daily Gratitude, Habit Tracker, Yoga Tracker, and a general To-Do list for the month.
4. MAKE IT YOUR OWN!
It's great to use Pinterest for inspiration, but honestly, I really don't adhere to the standard Bullet Journal format. I use it like a diary, writing down all the things I do each day, I use it as a tracker to better myself, I use it as a place for big lists that I'll be using for a long period of time, and I use it as a way to be creative. It's great to make it structured like BulletJournal.com says, but at the end of the day its blank paper, the rest is up to you!
