Bullet journal planning, 2024 edition. I’ve decided that its time to start. To tell the truth, my bullet journal (or bujo, as they’re affectionately known) is pretty simple and a little bit hetrodox. I think of the way I do bujo as “bujo for sensible person who’s not incredibly self obsessed and controlling.”
Because if you know much about this topic, and in particular, if you’ve watched some of the how to bujo videos, you may have come away with the conclusion “I can never be this person who must, must sit down with their bujo every night and keep track, who can keep all the different symbols on the key straight, who sets goals for everything, who practically has to check of a box if they go to the bathroom.
But let’s take a step back.
What Are Bullet Journals Anyway?
Bullet journal refers to a type of self created notation for personal record keeping. Consider this overview from VeryWell Mind. Created in 2013 by Ryder Carrol, this record keeping system is documented extensively at www.bulletjournal.com and other websites, and these grid dot journals have a language all their own. Correspondingly, there is a standard format for the notebook, a certain “bullet journal” type of notebook that is often itself referred to as a bullet journal. Containing perhaps 250 pages, usually acid free paper, the bullet journal might be thought of as a highly sophisticated habit tracker, recording system, and datebook. My intention with my new bujo is to make a high quality day book for the new year.
The bullet journal, then, is an organizer, a reflection place, a tracker for all the habits that you want to develop, keep, or intensify. You put your goals in there. You keep data in there, for example, as a teacher, I small group attendance in my work bullet journal *and* I write down the routines and exercises the students are doing.
Bullet Journal for Beginners
When my friends at work see my teacher bullet journal they often express surprise. The phenomenon of a self-created teacher plan book customized your own needs is unique and sophisticated. It’s safe to say you cannot just sit down and write yours out. You need to think through your system, make a plan.
I know this because I tried to just start writing my first bullet journal back in 2019, and it was a disaster.
You need to decide what you want to put in your journal and lay it out. You do not need to put in as much work as a book publisher would, but you cannot just write a couple of notes.
Bullet Journal for Women
Bullet journaling is pretty much a unisex phenom, with both men and women indulging in the practice, although to my mind the men tend to be more record-oriented and productivity management focused, and the women who bujo seem to me to be more interested in beauty of pages, feeling calm and centered, and having something that’s uniquely theirs. Bustle.com created the following list of available bullet journals for their (mostly female) readers. Notice the prevalence of pink covers.
To show how bullet journals can be adapted to women’s tasks, this article in Good Housekeeping gives a number of page types with feminine design or themes.
The Parts of my Simple Bullet Journal
For the canonical version of how to create a bullet journal, see the free introduction at the www.bulletjournal.com website, or you can take the bullet journal course for $249. But I cannot tell a lie, I took the introduction and I was like, “Whoa. This is going to be hopeless for me, I cannot do all these small steps.” I tried to create habit trackers like they say to, and I finally gave up.
So I am writing here about simply the way I do it and my personal bullet journal is quite simple. I have discovered through my research that my methods are a little heterodox. For example, I don’t do a true “habit tracker” where you might write down in your bujo how often you go to the gym or how many glasses of water you drink in a day. The florid and showy bullet journals on bulletjournal.com seem to me like they would be too much for a lot of people, me included, but I believe an average person could do a bullet journal the way I’ve done mine for 4 years.
First of All, This Bullet Journal Has Three Basic Parts.
The three parts of the my bullet journal are the
- overview section
- datebook pages
- and the notes, graphs, charts, data and reflection at the end notes.
Overview Section
In my bujo, the overview has a title page, a quote of the year, and then certain information which is pertinent for the entire year. These sections are important, you should really think about them! These would be things such as:
- Annual calendar on a two page spread, like the one on the back of an old-fashioned checkbook
- Index, what is effectively a Table of Contents
- Phone numbers you are likely to need. You collect these as they come up.
- Passwords (I belong to a lot of websites which have no hacking value and I write the passwords to those in here. Financial websites, no, of course not.)
- Annual goals that you will be working on.
- A lettering guide to show you how you will write your headings
- Codes for bujo notes, also known at the key. This could be or include the famous bujo list notations. See image below.
The Datebook Section
There’s a reason why they sell millions and millions of conventional annual datebooks with a two-page spread for each week. Many people find this way of looking at time — one week — very productive. There is also significant utility in the use of the one calendar month. I use both in my bujo datebook section.
The nature of the bujo method means you will be laying out your own datebook as you like it. I use two different one-week views, the seven day week for my personal bujo and the five day week in my work bujo.
My personal bujo has 12 months and each month has four overview pages. The month overview pages contain goals, ideas, a month calendar, and a habit tracker page. My school bujo has 37 weeks. That’s how many are in the school year. If it’s not a school week, there’s no datebook page. It’s for work.
I find it helpful to begin creating the datebook by writing the designated page description — perhaps just a week start date — on the top corner of the page in light pencil. Then if you change your design before you’ve inked it in, you can change the dates by erasing.
In my personal bujo I use a seven day week, 2 page spread for every one of the 52 weeks of the year. The month overview pages go immediately following the week in which the first of the month occurs.
Third Section: Notes
During the year you will inevitably come up with some areas you need to study, graph out, or take notes on. Perhaps you want to write a plan for your garden. Perhaps you want to write a list of gifts for Christmas, a list of tasks for an important family event, or some other special item that you need space for. This can go in the back of the book in the Notes section. I’ve been known to write meeting notes in there when I forgot the notebook from work. I write article outlines, proposals, even a set of family rules. Basically it’s where the stuff that comes up spontaneously goes in. When you’re done, put the page number for each informational schematic in the index in the front.
Bullet Journal To Do List
There are many ways of doing this and there is in fact there is a special set of bujo codes for making to-do lists in bullet journals. Most basically each to do item has a DOT and when you start, you make half an X on the dot, when it is finished you make the other half of the X over the dot. There is a special page type for collecting lists of things to do.
I have to admit that I stopped doing this and simply write lists of things to do on the days in the date book pages. I put a line through them if they are done, and I put a circle around them if I started to do them but something went wrong and I need to follow up. T
Bullet journal.com suggests that you select three items for you to do the list called The Hit List. These are high impact tasks. This seems like a good idea to me. Although I already told you that many of the items done under what I would term canonical bullet journalling seem too controlled and structured to me and at times I wonder could it take more trouble than it is saving?
One article I read stated that the author had an entire bullet journal evening routine which to my mind would have taken at least half an hour every night. I can’t even begin to do something like that.
Another view: Claudia Spaurel on “everything you need to know on how to set up a bullet journal.” in just 10 minutes, 28 seconds.
Bullet Journal to Buy
There are many types of notebooks you could use for bullet journalling. At the Barnes and Noble, where I bought my new orange bujo for 2024 last night, there was a whole rack devoted to personal journals, including ones with covers by French impressionists, covers of moons, hearts, etc. etc. You can use any of those, of course, But in my thinking there are basically two bullet journal types. There is a Moleskine Notebook and then there is a Leuchterm 1917. I am partial to the latter. But both of them are good, have acid free dot grid paper, feature various color covers, and handy pockets in the back, not to mention an elastic strap to hold the bullet journal shut.
In truth the elastic strap is someone of a nuisance to me but not so much so that I don’t use the journals.
Pens for Bullet Journals
In my experience there are four types of pens, or writing implements, as I should say, you can use.
Fountain pen. The queen of writing implements. It has a beautiful line and can be expressive to the hand. Fountain pens write with less pressure than any other type of writing implement and come with an almost limitless choice of ink colors and nib sizes. They do have a tendency to leak so have a napkin with you. There are many, many varieties but my personal fave is a Shaeffer Agio.
Erasable Frixion ball point pens by Pilot. These are wonderful pens for bullet journals. They come in all colors and they can be erased. The ballpoint line is not as fine and easy to make as with the fountain pen, but did I mention it can be erased? The main drawback with these pens is that if you don’t click them back in when you’re done, the pen is a goner. They dry out very easily. And if you leave them out people will take them. They’re a high theft item. At least in a school. Go figure.
Papermate Flair or felt tip markers: these markers have been around since I was a kid and were always the teacher’s favorite for grading papers. They come in every color imaginable in sets of up to 50. The line is soft and comfortable, particularly good for lettering, perhaps a little wide for grid lines at times. The best thing about this type of pen is the brightness of the colors. The drawbacks are few but I will say that if you leave the tops off it’s over. And sometimes dogs chew them up.
There’s Always an Outlier
The fourth type of writing implement is not a pen but a pencil. If like me you have a bullet journal in which you need to make changes often and you wander all over the school such that you cannot carry Frixion erasable markers, especially since they are a theft risk, a sharpened pencil or set of sharpened pencils can be very serviceable. The downside with pencils is that that they are not very easy to read. They are too light; they smear. The upside is of course you can erase them, they are cheap, and no one will steal them.
So there you have it, I have laid out my methods for 2024 bullet journaling. I suppose it’s worth noting that while writing down this description I made not one whit of progress on my actual bujo, but if you, the reader, have enjoyed reading this half as much as I enjoyed writing it, all is well. Perhaps you will decide to try to create your own bullet-journal-derived planner or daybook. I have found it tremendously rewarding, and each new bujo seems to get a little better. Happy writing.
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