How to Organize Your Life With Bullet Journaling

It is not uncommon to lose track of your life’s responsibilities, since things can get so hectic. Whether you are a busy college student focusing on classes and your part-time job, a parent that is struggling to balance home responsibilities and managing your job and household, or someone who spends so much time on your career, you tend to forget everything else, you need bullet journaling. 

This is a unique form of journaling unlike any other type you have probably tried out. It takes a little more time in the beginning, but keeping up with it is quick and easy. You will find that it is perfect for bringing a little more order and organization to your busy and hectic life. Here are some things to know about bullet journaling, including all the many ways it can be beneficial to you.

Intro to Bullet Journaling 

Before getting into details of bullet journals and how to create them, let’s take some time discussing exactly what it is. A bullet journal is a type of journal that includes multiple sections in order to keep track of the multiple facets of your life. Instead of having one journal for your finances and career notes, and another journal for household to-do lists and journal entries, everything is in a single journal. Once that one is filled up, you may then want to switch to a new one.

Another facet of a bullet journal is that you are not typically writing full journal entries when you use it. Instead, you are summarizing your points with short words and phrases, as well as using symbols in various parts of the journal. This makes it to where you understand your intent on the different pages, but you don’t take up a lot of space with the journaling and it also doesn’t take up too much of your time.

The Basics of Bullet Journaling

As already mentioned, you are going to use symbols within your journal as part of explaining things, creating schedules and to-do lists, and for various other sources. These symbols are called signifiers. It is important to know the standard term for them because if you ever want to look up how others create their bullet journals when you are trying to find inspiration, it really comes in handy. 

For example, a signifier might be using a happy smiley face when you have a good day, or putting a symbol of the moon when you are talking about an event taking place in the evening. There is no right way or wrong way to do this; that is the great thing about journaling in general, including with bullet journaling. Everything is up to you!

How it is Different From Other Journals

You might already be able to tell how and why bullet journaling is different than other forms of journaling, but let’s talk about it for a moment. There are quite a few differences, outlined below:

One journal is used for everything – First of all, you don’t have just a gratitude journal or just a diet and fitness journal with bullet journaling. You want to have everything in a single journal. This is why it is good to choose a thicker journal, but one that is easier to write in. The hardbound books are great, but they are hard to deal with. Use a softer journal that is easy to turn pages, fold, and manipulate in order to draw on the pages and use quickly without too much fuss.

You create sections and an index – Another difference with a bullet journal is that it has sections for each form of journaling, and also includes an index. This index is something most traditional journals or diaries don’t tend to have, though of course this is entirely up to you. When you start putting the bullet journal together, you decide on what sections to create, then you make an index. This helps you easily locate the page you want.

Signifiers are used in place of long sentences – Of course the signifiers, or symbols used to represent moods and situations, are another key difference in bullet journaling. You will still do some writing, but these are good for quickly understanding what was going on during an entry or when making marks about how a day went in a month’s calendar view on one of the pages.

It helps to really organize your life – Organizing your life is much easier to do with a bullet journal than others. Of course other journals are good for relieving anxiety, getting out your emotions each day, and helping to find triggers for emotional eating. You should still have these journals if they are issues you are facing. However, with a bullet journal, it is good for organizing all the different areas of your life that you feel need a little more order.

Why You Should Start a Bullet Journal 

Now that you understand the basics of a bullet journal and how it differs from other types of journals, you can get a little more insight into why this is such a good journal to try creating. Here are some of the top benefits of keeping a bullet journal:

You Will Stay Organized

As we are talking about becoming more organized in your life with a bullet journal, this is a good place to start. Bullet journaling is going to help you become more organized in nearly every facet of your life. Perhaps you run a busy household, with each kid participating in a different sport or activity. You need to keep track of soccer practice, football games, and cheerleading camp. You need to know when they have doctor’s and dentist’s appointments, but also have a place in the journal for your own purposes, like diet and fitness, or managing the finances. All of this and more can be done just with the bullet journal.

It Helps Create Achievable Goals

Setting goals is easy, but actually setting achievable goals is a different thing entirely. These are goals that are more realistic and that will help you reach your full potential. Your goal can be anything you want, but it should be something that is easy to achieve. How do you know the difference? Easy. An achievable goal is one where you can list actionable steps that would help you achieve that goal. It is something you can actually see by writing it all out and looking at it step-by-step. The bullet journal can have a section where you talk all about your goals and what is needed to reach them.

You Get Help With Stress and Anxiety

Mental health is something you should never minimize or push aside. Even though things like stress and anxiety are a normal part of life and something many people deal with, you definitely don’t want to ignore them and just deal. A bullet journal is actually very helpful in managing your mental health. Even when the bullet journal is used to organize your life better, this in turn starts to reduce your stress because you are far less worried about forgetting something. You also don’t have as much anxiety brought on by the stress of all the chaos of your everyday life. You can see how much it helps in this respect.

It Becomes a Planner

Do you like to use a planner? If so, use a bullet journal instead! It provides all of the perks of using a planner, but then it also doubles as a journal. You can keep track of even more, have pages for weekly and monthly calendars, and put just about anything inside that you would put in a planner. You can even use all those fun stickers and labels right onto the pages of your bullet journal for better organization.

5 Steps to Starting a Bullet Journal 

A common question asked is how to start a bullet journal. It is easy to know mostly what to include and how ti works, but it can also be a little intimidating. The thing to remember is that there is no right or wrong way to do it. You can get inspiration by taking a peek at pages of other people’s journals, but you definitely don’t have to do it just like that. And you don’t need to keep it perfect by any means. You can start simple, then as you start getting more ideas, switch it up and work on your pages a little more. It is definitely a learning experience. Once you start working in your journal a little more, you will suddenly discover more ways to improve upon it.

The following five steps just provide a basic outline of what you need to do to get started, but of course you might want to add some additional steps when you begin thinking more about your journal.

Step 1: Buy Your Journal and Pens

An obvious place to start with bullet journaling is of course to choose your journal and writing utensils. The journal can be anything you want to use, but preferably one that is a big larger and thicker. Tiny journals are great for keeping in a small handbag as a daily diary, but they aren’t the best for bullet journals. Some people love using hardcover journals, but keep in mind you are using it often and being able to open the cover and really make use of the entire page is recommended. In this case, a spiral or soft notebook might be better.

For your writing utensils, you can use anything you want! Get a good collection of pencils, pens, markers, colored pencils, and anything else you like to write with. You can also upgrade your writing utensils later on. This is also a good idea to get other supplies like sticky notes, labels, and stickers for the different pages.

Step 2: Choose the Sections to Include

Before you actually put your journal together, you need to begin organizing it. A bullet journal is not like a traditional journal where you just start writing on page 1 and just write in it regularly. It is very organized with multiple sections. Grab a piece of paper and note down all the sections you want to include. Don’t worry about sections in other people’s journals; just focus on what is most important to you. 

If you are using it to organize your life, this might include to-do lists, appointments, calendar pages for weekly and monthly calendars, goals and actionable steps to achieve them, savings, finances, career or school info, household info, diet and fitness, and even a section for managing your stress or anxiety. Make this all your own, but be clear about what sections you have.

Step 3: Create an Index

Now that you know what sections you want to include, you should put them in order of how you want them in the bullet journal, then create an index. The index is going to take up the first page or two in your bullet journal so that you can easily check it for the section you want and note what page it starts on. When putting the journal together, space out the sections so that you have a good number of pages for each. Then choose where they will be located and write down the page number. Once all of this is done, you can then use the information to create your index. This is another thing you can keep working on and perfecting as you start getting more involved in bullet journaling.

Step 4: Decide on Your Signifiers

We have talked about signifiers, which are symbols to be used throughout your bullet journal. Since you are trying to keep the ‘entries’ brief, the signifiers really help a lot. You should take some time deciding which ones to choose, though you can also add lots more when you actually start using the journal. Here are just a few that give you examples of how to use them:

Smilies – Use happy, sad, and other smiley faces to represent your mood of the day.

Moon or Sun – When writing in journal entries or discussing events, you can use a moon or sun to represent the day or nighttime.

Check Mark – Use a checkmark whenever you are marking something off your list. It is better than crossing off the entire sentence.

Star – A star can be used when talking about something of importance.

Be creative when coming up with your signifiers and remember they don’t have to make sense to anyone else but you.

Step 5: Start Using the Journal Regularly

Finally, you are ready to start using your bullet journal! This is the fun part. Putting the journal together does take some time, but if you are patient with the process, then by step 5, you are more than ready to get started. Start slow instead of feeling pressured to fill out every single page right away. Think about your schedules, calendars, and planners and the types of things you typically need to keep track of. Remember to write everything down in your bullet journal as things come up, and it will work very well for you.

