TIPS FOR STARTING MY BUJO I WISH I KNEW

I will like to start this blog by adding the disclaimer that THERE IS NO WRONG WAY TO BULLET JOURNAL. You can absolutely take my suggestions with a grain of salt. These pages and spreads that I’m going to suggest are just what i’ve found works for me after a year and a half of figuring my own stuff out.

So here goes nothing:

First put some tracker pages that you want to use for the YEAR.

Yes. Year. That is, if you want to track anything for an entire year. I personally have a daily workout planner for the whole year, but you can track WHATEVER it is that you want. It’s just nice to have those pages up towards the front.

If you aren’t starting your bujo in January, NO SWEAT. Make a page of what you want to track for the rest of the year! There’s absolutely no shame in that. So don’t sweat this first suggestion.

Then set up some pages for the month.

Again, this can be whatever you want, but I honestly love having a monthly image (helps me set the theme and colors I want to use for the month) and an important dates page FIRST. I used to make a whole calendar for the beginning of the month, but I didn’t feel like that served me well and it just took forever to make. This list format is way quicker and really is all I need to see what’s important for the month. I always write down birthdays, important deadlines, and social plans here!


After that, I set up my Habit Tracker and Mood Tracker pages in the same spread. This one definitely takes a little time, but so worth it for the info that I get at the end of the month. Did I dance for 5 days this month? WELL now my goal is to make it 10 days next month. It’s so easy to see what you do and don’t make time for.

For example, there was one month that I wanted to try and mediate every day in the morning. Guess what? I didn’t make it past 3 DAYS in that challenge to myself. I decided to not add meditating back in to my daily habits because I didn’t use it, and didn’t want to keep trying. It wasn’t serving me like I thought it was going to. So I changed it next month! Easy right?

After this spread, I love to put a Goals page and a Very Good Things page. I feel like the goals page is pretty self explanatory, but the Very Good Things page is CRUCIAL for me. I’ve dealt with some terrible depression since I was in high school, and one of my favorite coping methods was to make Very Good Things Lists. They simply help to remind me of things that made me happy, no matter how small. Everything from amazing events i’ve gone to, to that one moment I enjoyed having tea while it was raining outside, will go down on that list. I know that we all joke about how each year has been getting more terrible and terrible, but this is a way to remember the good things that did happen. I will NEVER leave this page out of my monthly journals. A fun new years activity is to go through your journal and pick out the BEST thing that happened each month, and write it down in one spot. You’ll suddenly remember how many good things DID happen throughout the year.

Particularly for April this month, since so many things are changing and fluctuating: I added in a LINE A DAY page where you can summarize your day, pick a few choice poetic words to encompass the day, or just simply vent. It’ll be interesting to see what comes out of those lines during our Stay At Home order in California.

Now set up your weekly or daily pages!

If you want to see your week all at once, or you want to take things day by day to plan and make lists / actually journal, that’s totally up to you! I love the weekly spreads so I can spread out my (usually) huge to-do list over the week and make it a little less overwhelming. I tend to have the problem of OVER scheduling myself, so having a week to spread out everything makes me accomplish more without leaving too many to-do’s left over…. which honestly get forgotten about if they are three pages back. Catch my drift?

Honestly that’s it! You can change and move things around how ever you want. One of the people who inspired me THE MOST for bullet journalling is the amazing Jenny Journals.

I instantly fell in love with her collage like style, using her pens and brushes, stickers, scrap paper, washi tape (omg my new favorite thing now) and other fun materials to work with. What I also loved about her style was how concise she was with her pages!

Before I found my journal flow, I felt like I was wasting so many pages that I didn’t really use or bother to fill out, which made me use and entire journal up from end of December to October.

Since my current journal started in October of 2019, I don’t think there’s any way I can make it hold out until 2021 unless I keep adding pages in or simply buy an even bigger journal for next time.

BUT THAT’S THE BEAUTY OF IT. Do what you want. Make it fun and organized for yourself.

And gosh dang it show me what beauty to make out of it!