I was REALLY into bullet journaling in 8th grade and 9th grade. I was super on top of keeping track of my assignments and tracking my habits, sleep, and anything else I could throw in there. My monthly spreads were chock-full of random but uplifting quotes, cute doodles, and gorgeous headers. I loved it. However, I fell out of the habit and never got back into it. Now, 45 days into quarantine, I decided there’s no better time than now to pick it back up again!
I want to start out by explaining why I bullet journal. Personally, I do it to maximize my productivity and keep all my to do lists in one place. But I also bullet journal because I love it as a form of artistic and creative expression. I like to make it look tidy, and I love spending time making every page look like my idea of perfect. My bullet journal doesn’t look like the ones on Pinterest, and it probably isn’t the most productive one that ever existed, but I love it. That’s all that matters, I do bullet journaling for myself.
How to Start –
I started by making a pinterest board of things I wanted to include. Here are some of the images I found that I wanted to work off of:
So, here’s a “flip through” of my not-yet-filled-in bullet journal for May 2020!
The first page is the title page. I chose a huge bold font because I thought the word “May” should stand out. It is, after all, the title of the entire month’s bullet journaling. Under the title, I have the month calendar for reference, and every color flower from this month’s color palette. I use mildliners, and I got all 25 before this year for school. They REALLY come in handy for bullet journaling, note taking, and just doodling in general. I highly recommend! They also make 10 of the colors in brush tip, so all of the brush-letterers can use them for that. My color palette for this month was a pastel rainbow kind of vibe. I used the bright pink, light pink, pale teal, bright yellow, lime green, and gold.
Calendars –
The next page I have is just a larger monthly calendar that I’m going to use to write in appointments and online classes. I don’t want to put them in my general daily to do list.
Habit Trackers –
I knew right off the bat that I needed a habit tracker. There was one in my old bullet journals, and I always find that they are so satisfying to look at. And they’re extremely useful when it comes to actually learning more about myself. For me, a habit tracker shouldn’t have things I want to do every day on them. It’s not for tracking goals. I wanted my habit tracker to do what it says: track what days I do certain things on. Obviously, not every dot is going to be colored for every day, and that’s completely okay!
Here’s my habit tracker for the month of May:
As you can see, I ‘m tracking 7 habits. However, while most of them are not goals, I do have a few goals on there! I’m aiming for my skincare box and vitamin box to be filled in for every day of every month. The other 5 boxes, as I explained earlier, are just things I want to track that right now. I’m thinking I do those nearly every day.
Water Tracker –
The next page of my bullet journal is definitely more of a goal page than a tracker page. While it is called a water tracker, I’m aiming to get at least 3 cups in every day. Above that, I am interested to see what days I drink more water on. Maybe the days I do a more intense workout? Or the weekends because I feel like I have more time to refill my mason jar? We’ll see!
I’m planning on filling this one out like a bar graph. I’m just going to draw a line to the number of cups I drink per day.
Sleep Tracker –
The next page is my sleep tracker. This is also just a “tracker” type deal, not really a goal. Although ideally I would be asleep constantly between the hours of 11 PM and 7 AM, that can’t happen every day! Some days, I go to bed later, and sometimes, I wake up earlier. I just think it will be interesting to see how my sleep pattern really works, track if I get up in the middle of the night, etc.
Now this page took the longest for me to write out because it has SO many numbers on it! Once I decided on the layout, I wrote out, in a vertical line, the days of the month, and then horizontally, 15 hours worth of numbers per day.
Mood Tracker –
The next page is my mood tracker, and I am SO excited to have this in my bullet journal. I’ve set it up like a line graph, with the days of the month on the x axis, and ratings of how my mood was on the Y axis.
In my old bullet journal, I used some sort of coloring for a mood tracker. For example, one month I remember using a mandala layout and I had around 6 colors for 6 different feelings and would add an element to the mandala depending on my mood that day, but for this one I’m not choosing one mood, per say, I’m choosing the general “happiness rating” of my day as a whole.
The reason why I did this is because I think it is way easier to let most of my day be unaffected by negative emotions by rating my mood on a scale versus labeling it with one specific feeling. For example, if I felt angry for less than an hour on any given day, the general mood of my day could still be high, and I could still graph it on my line graph tracker as relatively high up, however, on a mandala, I would personally feel tempted to track my day as “angry” even though I probably felt happy too!
Including a “Reference Page” –
Then, I have what I like to call a type of “reference page.” Once I draw this page in the bullet journal, nothing will need to be added to it again! This page is something I can reference (hence the name) when I have 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, or 60 minutes to spare to make sure I’m maximizing my daily productivity. 10 minutes that could have been wasted scrolling through Tik Tok can be spent taking a shower or putting away clean laundry, and it’s important that I know that so I can minimize screen time, AND get stuff done!
And here we can see a concrete example of why I adore bullet journaling: the flower doodles. I love to make my bullet journal pages look pretty, because if I like how it looks, I know I’m more likely to look at it often. And they were super fun and relaxing to do.
Using a Bullet Journal to Track Workouts –
Recently, especially because of quarantine, I have been working out all the time! Which is awesome, but sometimes it feels so random. When I used to go to the gym every day, I would do cardio and then weight training. Because of my completely awful seasonal allergies, I can’t really run outside, and also, I hate running. I used to run on the elliptical at the gym, or ride the stationary bike, but now my workout routine has been turned upside down. Because of that, I’ve decided I would like to have a workout tracker in my bullet journal. Here’s what it looks like:
Because of how I’ve set it up, one box is 5 minutes of exercise, so if I do 30 minutes of general hiit, I’ll fill in 6 boxes yellow. If I do 10 minutes cardio, 10 minutes stretching, and 10 minutes abs, I’ll fill in 2 boxes dark pink, 2 boxes green, and 2 boxes light pink, etc.
I’m really excited about my workout log page, because I have literally never tracked my workouts. I worked out a lot, even before quarantine, and I think it’ll be interesting to now finally have a way to visualize my routine.
How I organize my To – Do lists –
Next, we have my 4 pages of weekly to do lists. I left these boxes blank, obviously, because I’ll fill them in every day with my school work, college work, and other stuff I have to do.
My second to last page is another reference page of simple cleaning tasks I want to do either daily or weekly, and self care ideas!
I read somewhere online that there are 6 types of self care: sensory, emotional/mental, social, intellectual, environmental, and physical. Because of this newfound time I have in quarantine, I thought it would be nice to spend some more time on myself. I spent some time making a list of a few things I could do to take care of myself in these aspects, and they’re all things I’m excited to do when I have some time to spare.
Using a Bullet Journal for Mental Health
And finally, the last page in my bullet journal is a positivity list. I love making lists of things. Anything and everything. I actually have a really vivid memory of making a list of 100 foods that start with the letter “C” one year at sleepaway camp. So I thought it would be nice to make a list over the course of the month, of things I’m grateful for at the end of the day. I’ve divided each day into three sections: something random from that day that I’m thankful for, something I ate or a food I’m thankful for, and an activity I’m thankful for. I’m sure there will be some repeats, but I’m excited to look back on this page in a little while and remember my favorite things I was eating and doing during this strange time.
Overall, I’m SO excited for May to come in a few days so I can start using it. More updates will come soon!!
Happy cooking, writing, or whatever you’re doing!