Bullet journaling
As I get older, planning my everyday life and gathering my thoughts is a routine that I treasure in itself. I enjoy organizing my days so that I don't have to think too much about the daily tasks but focus on what I do, the people I meet, and where I want to go during my days.
When life is difficult or stressful, taking care of myself, and sticking to my routines are important. Two years ago I was in a life situation where I did not know how things would end or what my life was gonna look like. Big changes were happening in many areas of my life at the same time. To feel some kind of freedom in creating a life that I am safe in, enjoy, and can grow in, within the given boundaries that I have was more important than ever.
This is where I started to explore Bullet Journaling. I wanted to be able to plan for the future and at the same time have control over what I needed to achieve on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis without having to think about it too much. Also, I wanted to be able to see when I had reached a goal or made some kind of breakthrough or progress in an intuitive way.
What is Bullet Journaling?
It is like a next-level calendar. Everyone can set up her own kind and I've made it super simple. Mine contains:
INDEX: my Nuuna bullet journal has numbered pages and the index tells what and where I'll find all the different things in my journal.
GOALS: what do I want to achieve and do for the upcoming 6 months, 12 months? For me, it's been about what I want to focus on within Bukvy, things I want to do, places I want to go to with my family, conversations with friends, and routines I want to try out or create in my everyday life.
FUTURE LOG: a double page with an overview of the year.
MONTHLY LOG: a double page with an overview of the month. I keep it to 3 months at a time.
WEEKLY LOG: a double-page divided into parts: Monday-Sunday. I keep it to 8 weeks at the time
DAILY LOG: a one-page overview of the day put in short bulleted sentences. Every bullet has its own symbol:
- The kid's after-school activities
- Newsletter planning
- Girls' trip planning
- Private meetings, my thoughts, questions, and conclusions
Here's a Pinterest board with more ideas for Bullet Journaling.
... and a Youtube tutorial on how to start!
I combine work and my private life since Bullet Journaling for me is about my lifestyle as a whole and I like to keep it as simple as possible. Otherwise, I will fall out of the good routine sooner than later. Sometimes I do fall out but I always come back and when I do it's so easy to get back on track. It's even so that when I have fallen out and I go through the Future log, many things have already happened. They seem to stick in my subconscious and I work for them without keeping track which is a beautiful process.
Organizing my daily life like this makes my mind free. I find that Bullet Journaling is a bit like my silent assistant, it keeps my day on track without me having to think about it. I can "close the day" knowing that I haven't missed anything which keeps my thoughts quiet.
OH! And here's my favourite Weekly Planner :)
