A lot of people decide to take up journalling in the New Year. It gives them something to remember the year by and can encourage mindfulness.
But rather than just writing down your thoughts in a notebook, why not try out a new trend called a bullet journal?
What is a bullet journal?
The bullet journal has been around since 2015 on Tumblr and Pintrest. The idea behind it is to write down what has happened in the day in bullet points. You can also note tasks, events, and mark down thoughts you have.
The key advantage to this is that it’s quicker than writing a traditional diary entry, and gets rid of any writers block that comes from not necessarily having anything meaningful to say.
While the website bulletjournal.com sets out a layout for a bullet journal, the idea is that you can make it whatever you want.
Some common elements include:
- An index
- A daily log, marking down the events of the day plus whatever else you’ve decided to track
- A monthly log, a calendar which looks at all of the events and deadlines coming up in the next month
- A future log, a calendar at the beginning of the notebook which notes the big events coming up
Others take ideas from various productivity apps, put them all together, and change them depending on what they need.
How do you put together a bullet journal?
The only physical things you need are a notebook and some pens.
After that, the main thing to decide is what you want to track.
I bullet journalled for a year. Here are some of the things I added in to mine:
- What movies/books I read every day
- How many words I wrote
- How much money was in my account
- Whether I had blogged
- Whether I had tweeted
- Whether I had watched TV before 6pm
- Whether I had exercised
- Whether I had studied
- Whether I had snacked
- One thing I felt thankful for every day
- A running total of how many books I’d read during the year
- How much energy I had
- Recipes as I came across them
- To-do lists
When you decide what you want to use your bullet journal for, figure out your layout and colour scheme.
Tips
I learned a few things from my time bullet journalling. The main lesson was that despite the temptation to fill it with everything you can think of, the more you put in, the more work you will make for yourself. Sometimes I’d go more than a month without filling it in, put off by the fact that it would a lot of time and energy.
The other is to make it look pretty, but not to put too much pressure on yourself to make it perfect. Keeping it neat and using coloured pens will go a long way.
For more ideas about designs and things to add into your bullet journal, check out Tumblr.
READ NEXT: 4 Great Apps To Help You Keep Your New Year’s Resolution
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