Vriddy

I talked about my Bullet Journalling setup before. I did end up dropping the monthly view since then, like hinted at in that post. I still have monthly tasks, but not a list of upcoming appointments -- really, that is redundant. That goes on my phone with actual reminders. And I hate writing numbers.

I tried and abandoned bullet journalling a number of times in years past. I never really managed to make it work for me for more than 3 months at best... until now! It's going to be nearly 3 years since I started.

It's ironic that I'm finally writing up this post so close to end of year, when one of the tips for me to stop overthinking it was to Just Start (tm) a new one whenever a new notebook is needed, whatever the date. Other brain stuff has been stopping from writing this post before because "what if I forget to mention something?!" which is really silly... Eventually, I wrote down a list in my BuJo a couple of months ago, and now it's time to bring it here ;)

I ended up referring back to my Weekly View quite a bit in this post, so including the image again for easier reference.

1. Do the things that spark joy even if it makes no sense or is hard to explain

For example, apparently writing a lot of numbers stresses me out. That's one of the reasons I dropped the monthly spread (blergh to writing 28-31 numbers in a row), in addition to it not being very useful to me. I also don't number my pages.

How this works with collections and the index is that I keep those at the end of my BuJo, and when I need to refer to something in a daily log I use the date instead. I don't have a lot of collections though, so browsing to find one I know is there is fine. When I had more, I used alphabet letters to "number" them and refer to them in the index, but again I had maybe only a dozen.

I also find drawing boxes apparently very soothing. So I add them in a few places, like in the monthly tasks or in the Weekly View I showed above. That lil' box within the box makes me smile every time, whether or not I actually draw something funny in it ;)

Likewise, the "official" bullet journal book strongly recommends not to use checkboxes (too long to draw!) but dots instead, but for whatever reason I find all those dots stressful on the daily logs. So checkboxes it is for me! I don't mind if they all look a lil' funky. It's okay, I'm also a lil' funky. You can see on my weekly tasks example from 2022 that they're all very individual boxes haha.

Like, none of this makes sense and I can't really justify it. But I've just been paying attention to my feelings and decided to listen even if I'd be embarrassed to try to explain it. The journal is a tool just for me, so it's fine if I'm being weird about what sparks joy.

2. Simple yet pleasant design, fast to do

My design doesn't take a lot of time to do. I have to do a weekly migration but drawing that box doesn't take a lot of time, and if I'm feeling pressure I just draw the box and don't migrate anything. Instead I add a note to the daily log to "do weekly migration" and it might get migrated for a couple of days but eventually I'll get to it.

Likewise, I have 4-5 boxes on my monthly to-dos page, with headers like on the weekly one for various categories (life admin, hobbies, writing, ...)

I'll be honest though, I was never on Instagram so I never osmosed the "Bullet Journals must be pretty" stuff and this isn't a blocker for me. It really confuses me when people say "oh I can't have a BuJo, I'm not an artist."

Format-wise, a reporter notebook with the binding at the top does it for me, because I find it vaguely disturbing to sometimes have the binding under my hand and sometimes not. Consistency!

I don't like blank pages so I use a regular, cheap stationery notebook. And to avoid "oh I should wait for the start of a new week, month, year" I start whenever I'm at (especially important the first time when starting out!). Although I've learned to wait to do the monthly migration on the new notebook even if it's a couple of weeks earlier or later because I'll still need to refer to that. I don't have yearly spreads though, so starting whenever may be easier for me. Also, I do like to start a new week and month on the "right" side of the page so I just do that.

Like recommended in the official method, I have my little symbols. A star for stuff that really should be prioritised. A T in a circle for stuff that can be done Tomorrow but I needed to add to the list while I remember it.

3. What goes in the daily log

What goes in: I also add in the things that matter to me, even if I was gonna do them anyway and have no fear of forgetting (like writing). It feels good to check that box and to see that I spend time on the things that are important to me.

Caveat: I didn't like doing this when it was an evening task that had to stay undone until the end of the day (for example, daily journalling over a period to try to sort out some things). In that case, I added it to my weekly recurring tasks piece in the weekly views. Checking a box there at the end of the day felt way nicer ;)

Sometimes, I write a task for something I already did and tick it directly. It gives me a sense of accomplishment, and I'll feel less bad at the end of the day if I didn't do everything I meant to do. It shows I did do something.

What DOESN'T go in there: the £%&£*%&£ laundry. House chores NEVER go in the daily tasks. For me, there's nothing that's going to be make me feel like more of a garbage human being than migrating "do the laundry" or "hang the clothes" (my nemesis) day after day after day. I don't need the reminder anyway, I can SEE that in my environment already. Rare exceptions: when I need to time the laundry before a trip or something.

4. Stuff I still haven't figured out and ongoing experiments

I still don't have a good system for actually doing my monthly tasks. There's stuff I've been basically migrating for 2 years (decluttering :( and some admin things that will blow up in my face someday if I don't Just Do It at some point). Breaking them down doesn't seem to help either. I comfort myself in that at least, I'm aware of them and keeping track/thinking about them.

I have an on-going experiment with larger goals at the moment. My monthly tasks spread is one page, and then I would start a new Weekly spread so there was that blank page at the back of the month... Grumble, grumble... Since November, I'm using it for "larger goals" stuff. So, say I want to try out a new recipe a month. I have a "New recipe:" line. Say I want to walk 15km a week, or go to the gym 4 times a week (but the actual day doesn't matter). I track that stuff there. There's some weekly and monthly aspirations there, and it's nice to get an overview of how I did on things I want to learn or get better at. I'm also playing with colouring the end result red/orange/green at the end haha. It's interesting to see how something like having too many social events in a week leads to everything else kind of falling apart. Maybe I'll learn how to balance better over time. (Oh, something I've loved learning after bullet journalling for so long is getting a better understanding of my energy levels. If I have to do a thing outside the house, it will leave me with very little energy to do anything else that involves communicating with people, even online. So I might add a little circled T for "Tomorrow" to this kind of tasks, things like that. Or understanding how many phone calls I can handle in a day!).

I'm not sure what to do about old notebooks. I don't re-read them, but I'm reluctant to throw them away. They're starting to build up. Maybe I can remove the pages I care about like book reviews, and some collections, but I'm not sure yet.

And that is what I've been learning and experimenting with for the last couple of years! It's definitely making my life easier and somewhat more peaceful.