Back in March, I began a bullet journal for 2017 with the hope that it would help me become more organized and less disorganized. If you don’t know what a bullet journal is, check out Ryder Carrol’s system at bulletjournal.com. Electronic calendars and phone reminders were not working for me and the pretty pre-printed calendars at Target were cute for only a little while. I was looking for something more customizable. The concept as described in his video was what motivated me to start. It was super simple and to the point kind of planning.

Then, Pinterest and Instagram opened up a whole new world of bullet journaling I never even knew. From beautifully drawings to monthly and weekly pages, I was inspired by so many possibilities on how to beautify my journal through planning. Three months later, my bullet journal has become more of a notebook rather than a planner largely because I found myself jotting down the week’s highlights AFTER instead of before. Also, it didn’t help that I didn’t follow through on my pre-planned daily task list. Of course this left me failing to plan to begin with and thus continued the downward cycle to planning failure. Over time, it was set aside and only looked at later in the week.  As I experimented with a variety of weekly spreads, ink colors, and handwriting, I have yet to find the best monthly and weekly layout for me.

Still, I’m committing to bullet journaling for the rest of the year. I realized it’s a lot of work to make this system work for me in the way I wanted it to look (which was artistic, pretty and inspirational). In Ryder’s system, I love how easy it is to quickly plan tasks and events in his basic calendar layouts, so I plan on sticking to the simplicity while adding color. As I find my groove, I’ll post more on my bullet journal journey. Wish me luck!

Do you bullet journal? Comment below.

What’s your process in making it work for you?