We haven’t talked about planners and journals lately, so let’s take a look at both! But did you know that your planner can also be your journal? You don’t need a separate one (unless you like it that way).

Your Planner Can Be a Bullet Journal

Was your resolution to be more mindful and more organized? There’s nothing like old-fashioned pen and paper to help make this happen.

Or maybe you’re a veteran journaler looking to transform your practice. Regardless of your experience journaling, the Bullet Journal can boost your practice.

One of the most basic forms is a bullet journal (hint = a bullet journal is an excellent way your planner can be a journal). Bullet journaling involves a great deal of customization. Have you spent time looking through journal formats and found that there wasn’t one that fit your needs exactly?

Enter the Bullet Journal. The basis of the journal is simplicity in the form of bullet points. The founder says that the more effort is expended to create a list or entry, the less likely we are to continue to do it. Instead of complicated recording methods, the basic structure of this journal is the bullet.

From there, journals can be customized to whatever need you have. If you have a million to-do lists, this is a way to track them all. If you want to set goals and habits and track your progress, this allows you to do that in a way that is intuitive for you. It includes an index that you update as you go, and you can track future tasks or last month’s tasks that didn’t get done.

It makes use of something called “rapid logging” which is just a fancy way of saying jotting down notes. The idea is to get things out of your head quickly so that you can use symbols to organize and track them.

It’s a journal and a to-do list all in one. Once you figure out your system, it makes a lot of sense to keep track of both things to do in the future and the daily events happening now. This method gives you a complete picture of what your life is like so you can reflect, make changes, or simply create gratitude for day to day occurrences and circumstances.

Bullet Journals are easily customizable and are intended to reflect a natural system of organization already in your head. You don’t have to worry about organizing your thoughts as you get them on paper. Instead, you mark them with a logical series of symbols after they are down on paper to track.

Benefits of Bullet Journaling

The first thing to know about bullet journals is that they are extremely beneficial. Here is a list of some of the top benefits of using this type of journal.

They Are Versatile

One of the most significant benefits of switching to this system is that you can use any notebook.

No, really.

Although many of the demos use the simple dot grid to help keep things straight, you can start today with whatever notebook is lying around.

Journals are like purses or closets. They’re never perfect, and there’s always something else you wish you had. Instead of using what someone else thinks are organized, the system follows how you think.

This kind of customization removes the fear around buying the wrong type of journal or finding out later that there’s a better system. As you grow bored of a system, you can switch it up to reveal fresh ideas and see your to-do list in a new way. No boredom means you’re more likely to stick with the system.

They Work with Any Budget

Another benefit is that you don’t need to invest a ton of money. You want something that is rugged enough to go with you everywhere, but there are a lot of cheap notebooks out there that can get the job done. Some planners can run you upwards of $50 or more. This is an expensive experiment to try and then abandon.

It Has Multiple Uses

The Bullet Journal also functions as several different recording notebooks at once. Your planner can be your journal! You don’t need to buy a journal to record day to day activities, a habit tracker for all those New Year’s resolutions, and a planner to keep organized. You can do everything in one space. Simplification means you’re more likely to stick with this system and see real change.

Anything you can do to simplify your process and make it more personalized to your needs keeps you from dropping the system. Though Bullet Journaling can seem overwhelming at first, once you figure out your system, it needs little maintenance to carry you through each day. No more feeling guilty that you couldn’t stay consistent.

What to Write About

And now the real beauty of the Bullet Journal – you can write about anything that you want. Getting started is easy. You need a blank notebook and a pen. That’s it.

Rapid Logging

Most people start with the rapid logging pages. This is your list of to-dos, notes, and observations. Once you jot them down, begin to mark them based on a system of symbols that you’ve created. If you aren’t sure what the symbols should be, you can look at examples of what others are doing and modify accordingly.

It’s important to keep your notes short, but you can always expand on the next page if there’s something you need to write more in-depth. First, quick. Then expand.

Index

The next part is the index. At the beginning of your journal is a running index with page numbers marked and a list of your symbols so you can keep track. This will help guide you as you get deeper into your notebook and need to look back or find other information previously recorded.

Give yourself two pages for the index just to be safe, but you don’t have to record everything. Make judgment calls about what information will need to be retrieved quickly later as you are making your entries.

Future Logs

After the index is your future log. This is the calendar portion of your journal and can help you get a handle on what’s coming up, so your planning today is more efficient. Set up the pages for it first and then add to it as you get into the day to day stuff.

After this, many journalers have a big picture view of each month. As you enter the month, make an entry at the beginning of that section to see a bird’s eye view of what’s coming up and any thoughts or preparations that need to be made.

You can track lists that need to be completed by month’s end, record birthdays and any prep, household tasks, and any other monthly related things.

Big Projects

From here, create pages dedicated to any projects or habits you are making. You can keep track of the books you’ve read, for example. You can also make a log of any improvements in your health, or watch your debt fall as other examples.

These projects get their own dedicated pages and index entries to help you see your progress over time. You can create them wherever you are in your journal and find them quickly through the index. This also gives you an idea of when you started for further tracking.

Tips for Bullet Journaling

This can all seem overwhelming the first time you set it up, but the important thing to remember is that perfection isn’t necessary. The journal evolves as you do. The longer you adopt this system, the more likely your journal is to reflect what you need, but don’t get mired in perfection the first time.

If you don’t know where to start, there are blog posts and YouTube videos dedicated to different types of layouts and ideas for things to track. You can find a few that match what you need and copy those or use them as a starting point to create your own.

Take Your Time Learning

Start slowly in the beginning and begin with the basics: future log, rapid journaling, and index.

Once you get the hang of your own system, you can begin to add layouts to track more complicated things. Also, it’s not essential that you be artistic either. In fact, many Bullet Journalers don’t have any art training and use straightforward layouts.

Make it Look Amazing

That said, if art is your thing, then decorate your layouts. This is the perfect opportunity to decorate what you’re doing in your journal. Many of the more complicated spreads rely on art and can be a great way to get in your creative edge.

Work Out What You Want First

If you still have trouble getting started, take a few sheets of scrap paper and experiment with some layouts before you start recording them in your notebook. This will let you see firsthand what a few things will look like if you still aren’t sure what layouts you want to follow. Transfer the ones you like to your official journal or staple them in.

Prompts to Help Get You Started

The journaling prompts for a bullet journal are a little different than other types of journals. Here are some tips to help get you started: the first six pages of your notebook to leave room for the index and the future log, and make sure your very first rapid log has a page number attached to it.

Now that you have the first rapid log page, go back and make your first index entry. You can title it however you want, but it’s likely that this very first rapid log attempt will be important later.

For the future log, make three spaces on each page to log months. You don’t need a lot of space for each month, just enough to record significant events that will likely affect how you plan during that month and any of the other parts of the year. These can correspond to birthdays, major holidays and vacations, and other necessary parts of the year.

Be sure to record your organizing symbols for rapid logging somewhere in the front as well. This will help you to remember as you get used to your system. Again, if you aren’t sure what you want to do, following the official Bullet Journal format is a good bet for those until you decide if you want to create your own.

It can also help you to identify one or two big goals or projects and make those dedicated pages here as well. If your resolution involves drinking more water or reading more books, now is a good time to write down where you are and track where you’re going. Log this page in your index, of course.

How Journaling Can Change Your Life

Whether you’re dealing with anxiety and depression, or simply going through a rough patch in life, journaling can serve as a free and entirely self-managed form of therapy that’s actually quite effective. In fact, keeping a journal can be beneficial even when you’ve managed to reach and sustain a state of emotional balance and mental peace. Following are several, significant ways in which journaling can change your life.

• Evoke A Sense of Mindfulness — Far too often, people move from day to day without ever stopping to feel and express gratitude for the things that that are happening in their lives. They’re also overlooking a number of tremendous learning opportunities. Writing in a journal forces you to stop and reflect on seemingly minor events that might otherwise go overlooked.

• Establish a Positive Mindset — You have the power to fill it with anything you want. Spending time to reflect on the small blessings in life, however, can automatically move you from a negative and self-defeating mindset into a more positive and proactive one. You have another day to affect change in your life, strong mental abilities, the power of self-forgiveness, and more.

• Start Forming New Goals — Journals are also great tools for overall life planning. If you’ve ever wondered how some people seem to have their whole lives figured out, you should consider the fact that these individuals may be keeping journals (or their planner can be their journal). The best part about using a journal to establish and pursue life goals is the fact that this process can be an entirely informal one. This is merely a platform for bouncing ideas around and helping them take shape. So sometimes your planner can be a journal but in reverse!

• Enhance Your Creative Potential — The act of journaling can be an incredibly creative process as well. After all, you’re not just writing about the things that have happened or are happening in your life; you’re also writing about the way in which you want things to be. This flexes your imagination, enhances your creative skills, and promotes new and far more interesting ways of thinking.

• Build Better Communication Skills — In the very long list of benefits that regular journaling can provide, better communication is hardly the least. The practice of writing about your thoughts and feelings will make you more adept in issuing thoughtful responses. It will also improve your emotional intelligence, thereby making you better able to respond to the wants and needs of others in an empathetic way.

Plan your work for today and every day, and work that plan. ~~ Margaret Thatcher

7 To-Do List Strategies to Employ to Turn Your Planner into a Journal

Most of us know what a ‘to do list’ is and yet, the majority of people don’t use one and prefer to work from memory. They have a jumbled list of tasks in their mind and get these done in a haphazard and almost always, inefficient manner.

1. Have a to-do list — The best way to go about creating one will be to do a brain dump on paper of ALL the tasks and commitments you need to get done. This is an almost cathartic process that will bring you relief while it frees up mental energy.
2. Prioritize — The next step will be to use the Eisenhower Matrix to prioritize your tasks. You can easily learn this technique by Googling it or looking on YouTube for tutorials on ‘using the Eisenhower Matrix’.
3. Focus — Once you have your to-do list prioritized, the next step will be to focus on ONE task at a time. Avoid multitasking at all cost. It ruins one’s ability to concentrate and also leads to shoddy work. Take each task to completion before moving on to the next.
4. Limit your to-do list — Ideally, you shouldn’t have more than 7 items. Break the list up into 2 parts. At the top, have all the most important tasks which will yield the highest rate of return in your life. At the bottom will usually be the mundane, routine chores that need to get done just to keep life normal… but don’t really yield much reward. If you complete all the tasks for that day fast, you can add a few more from your ‘brain dump’ list and work on them.
5. Plan the night before — Create your to-do list the night before. This will ensure that you hit the ground running the next day instead of spending your most alert hours in the morning planning what to do.
6. Break down bigger tasks — Some tasks are too big to complete in one day. So, while they may be on your to-do list, you’re not going to be able to finish it all on that day. In instances like these, it’s best to write down that task on a separate sheet of paper and break it down into smaller tasks and create a checklist for the work process. Each day, you’ll work on one or a few steps in that checklist. These are the steps that will go on your to-do list daily… and NOT the huge, monumental task. Always remember to break it down into bite-sized pieces.
7. Carry over tasks — Sometimes, despite your best efforts, there will be some tasks that you just can’t complete in time. No worries. This happens. Just move them to the next day… BUT do NOT add them on to a list that’s already full. Instead, make them part of the list of 7 or so tasks that you need to complete. In this way, you’ll not have a growing list of things that need to get done that keeps getting longer by the day. Always aim to have only 3-7 items on your to -do list.

Last but not least, to-do lists aside, always remember to delegate and automate where you can. The hard truth is that you’ll NEVER have time to do it all. Tasks and commitments will keep popping up daily. The best way to maintain control of things will be to delegate or outsource the less important tasks to others.

So let’s bring it all together – how can my planner be a journal? In basic terms your planner is where you track your tasks and plans, and your journal is where you track your thoughts and feelings. If this all sounds new, start with a basic bullet journal or notebook. Not only can you create your calendars and your to-do lists, but with other tools like mood trackers you can also start developing your sense of journaling inside your planner.