Self Care in 2024: Start a Bullet Journal (video)
Here are five organizational and five mental health benefits to journaling.
When the world seems to be flying apart around you — thanks to perpetual war, human suffering, widespread misinformation and fake outrage — what should you do?
Before you reach for a bottle, a joint, a pill or social media, may I suggest journaling as an analog self-care alternative to our high tech, high stress world?
Bullet journaling has given me a system to not only organize my calendar and tasks but also to focus my life, make informed, intentional decisions and document my thoughts and experiences
My bullet journal is a day planner, a diary, a scrapbook, an adult coloring book and a centering mindful practice ... all in one.
What is a ‘Bullet’ Journal?
Just a few months before the pandemic, I stumbled upon bullet journaling when I was shopping at Michaels1 for a new lined journal for the coming legislative session. It was common to see bound journals with lines, blank pages or drafting grids, but journals with dotted grid pages were new to me.
Investigating the dotted journals on YouTube, I learned about the “bullet journal” system. A bullet journal is more than a calendar, a diary, a day planner or a collection of to-do lists. It is also a creative way to reduce stress and focus your life.
I discovered YouTube videos by bullet journal creator Ryder Carroll and dozens of influencers, like Masha Plans, who have expanded on bullet journal basics and dressed up them with color and design elements.
Carroll, who has ADHD, says in one of his original videos that he struggled with tasks, obligations and deadlines in school and at work. His computer screen was covered with sticky note reminders, but he was still disorganized and still missed deadlines.
To organize his own life, Carroll developed the straightforward, no frills bullet journal system of calendar grids, icons (for tasks, events, notes, etc.) and a prioritization strategy to organize tasks, events, deadlines, intentions and life goals. (See his videos at the end of this article.)
Bullet journaling is done in bound journals. The dotted pages facilitate drawing grids, calendars, lists and timelines to customize the journal. There aren’t any wasted blank calendar pages or grids that don’t quite fit your information. You create your own calendars, icons and habit trackers, and you can change the design at any time. If your negative self-talk is telling you that you’re not creative enough or don’t have the time to do this, there are tons of influencers with ideas, advice and templates to help you get started. (For more how-to basics, check out the Carroll videos below and my video above.)
The bullet journal is similar to the old paper-based day planners in that bullet journals have year-at-a-glace, month-at-a-glance, week-at-a-glance, and daily spreads to track tasks and calendar items. Both systems also have methods for tracking personal goals and progress.
The main problems with the three-ring-binder day planner system are: 1) finding pre-printed pages that fit your needs, lifestyle and existing day planner binder and 2) the dilemma of having a large stack of loose pages at the end of the year. What do you do with all of those pages — especially for the weeks or months you may have lapsed in your journaling? Life gets in the way of our best intentions, sometimes. With a day planner, you’re left with lots of empty preprinted pages to remind you of the relapse. If you lapse at bullet journaling, just start again. I write a little recap about what transpired during the lapse and move on. Nobody is grading you. You don’t have to turn in your journal at the end of the week for the teacher to judge it.
Top 10 Reasons to Start a Bullet Journal
Here are five organizational benefits and five mental health benefits to starting a bullet journal.
Organizational Benefits … a Bullet Journal Can Help You:
1 Organize Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly Tasks, Events and Goals. Creating your own calendars sounds like a high bar, but Carroll’s original grids and icons are clean, classic and minimalist. No graphic design skills are required. In additional to his calendaring system, Carroll also has a basic habit tracker log that you can add to the monthly calendar format to track exercise, nutrition, sleep or other personal goals.
On my weekly spread (below), I have the calendar across the top of the two-page spread and lifestyle focus areas across the bottom. Each focus area has an icon and a color: health (orange and green carrot), people/relationships (red heart), work (teal envelope), house (blue house), music (black note) and writing (purple book). I use the colors and the icons throughout the calendars, lists and diary entries to easily find information. When you look at a calendar and see all of the colors, that was a balanced week.
2 Organize and Plan Events. Big parties and other events have a lot of moving parts. Having been in public relations and politics, I have been involved in my share of event planning. I’ve used everything from File Maker Pro (back in the dark ages) to EventBrite, Mail Chimp and Facebook to organize and publicize events. These computer applications all do parts of the process but don’t talk to each other and don’t offer a repository for information and details involved in planning.
A bullet journal gives you one place to collect all of the event information that may be scattered across multiple platforms, email, text and paper. I used my bullet journal to organize my 70th birthday party in July 2021. I kept a timeline of the event tasks, the guest list (with notes how I invited them and if they RSVP’d), a list of necessary food and party items, catering menus, notes about catering costs, and miscellaneous tasks and people to do them. More than 70 people RSVP’d, and despite torrential rain 30 minutes before start time of the outdoor party, most people still came. It was a great outdoor party in a tiny sliver of time in between COVID classic and the coming variants.
3 Make Major Life Decisions. Bullet journals are excellent organizational tools for making major life decisions — like looking for an apartment, house, car or sorting out life or relationship issues. The journal gives you as many pages as you want to sort things out by writing them down.
In my video, I talk about using the bullet journal to document my apartment hunting quest in Phoenix when I was serving in the Legislature. I started with a bulleted list of apartment criteria — “must have” features like a six-month lease and “nice-to-have” features like a patio. In the journal, I wrote down phone numbers, email addresses, street address and notes from every apartment complex website I visited and rated the amenities with a +/- system. I drove by and visited the ones with the most +’s. This documentation was super handy because I often did the apartment hunting over weeks. Good notes in the journal helped me pick up the apartment hunting task where I left off. Having contact names, numbers and last contact notes about different complexes in the journal was golden. After a while, tiny apartments and leasing offices all look the same. The apartment hunting notes were a handy reference in the future also.
An important part of making major life decisions — like renting an apartment or buying a house — is documenting key dates, decisions, finances, paperwork and actions over time during the process. With major life events, it is often crucial to document exact dates certain actions took place, particularly if money is changing hands or there is a legal action. With stick-on tabs, you can create an entire journal section to track one topic or dedicate a entire notebook to collecting and storing dates, contacts, information and even receipts on one topic.
4 Plan and Execute Complex Projects. By now, you’re likely getting the theme here. Bullet journals are good for planning, tracking, documenting and executing complex multi-part tasks, decisions and projects, particularly those that roll out over time. Sometimes I use my journal to dream big. Ever since my last session in the Legislature, I’ve been thinking about traveling during my retirement. In addition to watching bullet journal and accordion videos during the pandemic, I began watching van life videos. It was fascinating. I began to make travel lists and notes about in my bullet journal. What would I need to travel and sleep in a van? Could I use my current vehicle or should I replace it? What camping equipment do I have and what do I need? For months, I was planning my camper van, sketching in the journal, making to-do lists and documenting my progress. Again, it was highly valuable to have everything in one place.
5 Create Mega To-Do Lists. When there’s a lot to do around my house, instead of having chores swirl around in my head, I create a to-do list spread of indoor and outdoor tasks in my journal. An all-inclusive list is handy because if you have time to kill, you can go to the mega to-do list and pick a couple of chores that can be accomplished in the time you have. There are times when I’ll schedule a chore day or afternoon with myself and make a concerted effort to clear the list or tackle big items. It feels good to fill in the grid boxes and check off items that are done. It makes the rest of the mega to-do list seem more doable when progress is visible.
Mental Health Benefits … a Bullet Journal Can Help You:
6 Focus on Your Life. Bullet journaling is a “be here now” exercise in mindfulness. Many friends look at my hand drawn-calendars, icons, grids and notes … and balk at the time involved. I contend that this is time well spent.
When I am journaling, I am focusing on my life, my thoughts, my experiences, my priorities, my goals, my relationships, my health, my writing, my music and the days ahead. This helps me make informed, intentional decisions and reduces stress and anxiety.
Slowing down to draw a calendar and think about your life is a centering, meditative practice. Hand-lettering an entire year in ink without messing up the numbering takes Zen-like concentration.
It’s OK to slow down and contemplate life.
7 Add Creativity, Color and Fun to Your Life. I thoroughly enjoy the creative side of journaling. The icons, the colored pens, the stickers and the decorative tape are relaxing to play with, but they are also useful design elements. You can follow a topic through a journal and across several journals by looking for colors and icons. The old school graphic design knife, pen and tape action — and a little decoupage sometimes — are fun reminder of my early graphic design days. Give yourself some time to play and make your journal more readable and interesting at the same time. Play and creativity are relaxing and could improve life balance. (If you’re already doing scrapbooking, adult coloring or paper-based design, you could take those creative activities a step further with bullet journaling.)
8 Document Your Life and Memories. Journal entries document our lives, our hopes, our dreams, our experiences, and our relationships … and cement our memories in time and space. Bullet journaling takes time, but in my opinion, focusing on your life is time well spent. Look at all of the documentation discussed in the organizational benefits above. Those mundane to monumental journal entries are all parts of our lives. It is better and safer to have all of these “personal data points” in a paper journal than on a corporate social media site or an app. What happens to your life stories when those corporations go out of business, stop offering certain features, are no longer compatible with your technology or are bought up by competitors and shut down?
9 Build Self Esteem. As mentioned above in the “Mega To-Do List” section, we can sometimes get overwhelmed with tasks, obligations, events, and chores swirling around in our brains. They can clutter our thinking and our homes — like Carroll’s computer screen at work. Naming the your challenges and tasks in journal lists and knocking them off the lists one by one builds self esteem and gives us a sense of accomplishment. Seeing things get done — however slowing — reduces off some of the stress.
10 Reduce Screen Time and Social Media Use. For those of you who brush aside the analog nature of journaling and prefer to use your smart phone and an app, don’t do it. Your deepest thoughts and feelings are safer in a paper journal than on social media or corporate app. When you use an app, you give away a lot of personal data and information that shouldn’t be floating around the Internet, and you give permission to the corporations to collect your data, use it and sell it.
Reducing screen time and exposure to hate speech and misinformation on social media is a worthwhile goal for 2024. Bullet journaling can help you do that and help you keep track of your other New Year’s resolutions.
Try it. Happy New Year! Stay safe and be well.
Original Bullet Journal System by Ryder Carroll
