I don’t know why this phrase keeps going through my mind. Maybe I just need to watch Toy Story! But seriously, there are staples one needs in life that are just absolutely necessary, like coffee and girl’s nights out! And one of the can’t miss items that are very slowly catching on is bullet journals or “Bujos”.
Now, I know what your thinking as you roll your eyes. Another planner to make you feel like a loser. Another book for you to carry around and not use, and then when you need it, it is at home collecting dust, but I promise this is like every journal/planner you have ever kept, and unlike any journal/planner you have ever kept.
So lets talk about why journals and planners and diaries don’t work, because that is exactly why you need this. Some days are just full of stuff. You basically need to plan out your day in 15 min. increments because between 2:30 and 3:30 you are going to be at about 1000 places. And so you rush off to the store to buy one of those planners with the hourly day planning pages. And for a week you are right there on top of it. But then it settles down or you get the hang of it and it doesn’t seem so overwhelming and your day planner sits. One day you pick it up, cuz life is crazy again and you really need to write that stuff down. and you flip half way through an empty planner to the current calendar. “You are a loser!” your empty calendar screams at you. “No wonder you’re unorganized!” You write down one or two engagements in your neglected planner and carry it around half heartedly. And it really is a bother because its kind of bulky and makes your purse heavy. So after some time of not using it you leave it at home and enjoy the lightness of your purse. And of course the very same day someone schedules something with you and you don’t have it, so you put the info in your phone or on your hand and develop a new system of remembering things. And the phone is great, till one day you drop it and it breaks beyond repair and you have lost anything not on a cloud. So half your life is gone.
Then you have those short lists. The groceries, the supplies, the measurements of your windows for curtains. The ones you shove in your purse, or make and leave on the kitchen counter and then get to the store hoping you can remember what was on them.
And you have those notes you took in church or at a business meeting that float around or get shoved in a desk which you don’t need until after you have lost them or thrown them away.
And finally the diaries (we are grown up now, so they are journals) which we go through spurts of writing fits and then not.
So how can one (to borrow from Blue’s Clues) handy dandy notebook solve ALL those problems?
Well, I am so glad you kept reading, because it is the best. thing. ever.
So a bullet journal starts off as a blank notebook. And you will put anything and everything in it, page by page. So lets back up. That day, that horrible busy day that made you get the planner in the first place, that day, you wrote out a little schedule for yourself to help you keep up. Now thanks to Pinterest, we can see what that page might have looked like:
The next page is a grocery list, which is great because you had your planner with you anyways. The next page you wrote a list of your son’s lawns that he mowed, and the next page was a to do list for the day. A monthly calendar would come in handy, so you draw up one of those. You get the idea. You use this book for EVERYTHING.
But how do you find what your looking for when you have pages and pages of stuff? I’m glad you asked. This book starts with an index. Every page gets numbered and the contents are listed on the index page. Frequently viewed pages are marked with a tab or a book mark. I have a book mark for this day, this week and this month.
Your table of contents or index might look like this:
Or if you like your index a little more organized you can list your pages out by type like this:
You just add the pages to the index as you go. Journal entries, sermon notes, meeting notes, meaningful inspirational quotes, everything goes in here. But the biggest benefit is your daily log. This is basically your to do list but you also include thoughts and notes.
There is a very simple system to keep all this information neatly organized in your journal, maybe a little too much reading for this article, but we will go over all the basics in the fall into order free event.
I started out with a notebook I had laying around the house since I didn’t know if I was really going to like it. So Just grab any ol’ spiral or composition notebook in a size you won’t mind carrying around. I will show you how the system works, how to get nice pages made quickly, and fun ways you can decorate and play with your notebook when you have time. You can’t but not love it because you make it just the way you need it to be!
So this coming Friday morning from 10 to 1, bring a notebook and some fun pens (They have these awesome erasable pens called FriXon in ALL different colors that are a.maz.ing. just sayin!) And bring a finger food and well have a working lunch where we will think about some goals, talk about fun ways to organize and make a vision board to keep us inspired!
Here is a link to the event on Google calendar that you can add you your calendar!
Hope to see you there!
