Bullet Journalling in 2018

With the festive atmosphere still lingering in the air (and CNY coming up soon), we can’t help but feel grateful for everything that has happened in 2017 and for all of you who have been on this journey with us! Isn’t it crazy to realise that another year has passed?

Throughout the joyous festive month of December, we have been bombarded with Christmas songs, carols and season greetings. Yet now, the reality of a full year looms ahead, which begs the question – how many of our 2017 resolutions have actually been fulfilled? The most common New Year resolutions around the world repeat themselves year after year, such as ‘leading a healthier lifestyle’, ‘better time management’, ‘spending more time with family and friends’, ‘travelling more’ and ‘learning something new’. Will this finally be the year that you achieve that one big thing from your resolution list?

In this post, we hope to show you a simple, fuss-free method to keep track of your New Year resolutions, cultivate new habits and keep track of your never-ending to-do list!

INTRODUCING THE BULLET JOURNAL

The bullet journal is a customised journal or note-taking method that is built to meet the specific needs of an individual, i.e. you! It can be used to track personal habits such as the number of workouts per week, amount of water drank per day and the number of books read per year… And every other thing imaginable. Just like other notebooks and yearly diaries, the bullet journal also serves as a weekly to-do list. The use of a bullet journal is limitless! Let’s get started.  

Step 1: Choose a notebook 

There are no restrictions or requirements for this, you can choose any notebooks you like! If you are someone who is very neat and requires for everything to be very organised, pick a notebook with dots. The dotted notebook will help you to ensure that the items are aligned.

Step 2: Index Page 

This page is aimed at giving you an overview of your entire journal. Some people like to have this page to help them find specific pages, but this is completely optional! If you were to use an index page, do note that a journal with page numbers would help. 

Step 3: 2018 Calendar 

Only the first six months of the year was included in this calendar to keep this journal as flexible as possible. In this way, a new spread can be designed and created for the latter half of the year. The public holidays are circled in blue. Feel free to also include other important dates such as birthday, gatherings and anniversaries. These can be done in different colours to differentiate them.  

Step 4: 2018 Goals 

Write a short list of your personal goals in the front few pages of your 2018 journal. These will motivate you throughout the year! During the most trying periods of your year, these goals will also help keep your eye on the prize, and not get caught up in the petty, transient stuff.

Step 5: Tracking habits  

With the arrival of a New Year, many of us are desiring to eat healthier, to exercise more, to travel more or read more… These pages will help you to keep a record of the frequency of your work-outs, the number of places you’ve been and the number of books read. You can create a graph (y-axis: dates of the month, x-axis: months of the year) and note the trend of your habits! You can also create a rating system to note down how much you have enjoyed a particular book or destination. 🙂

Step 6: University Module Information 

This must be one of the most important pages for students. We often look up the IVLE portal to check information on module assessment, weightage of assessment and assessment deadlines. It is common to see students printing out a full A4 page filled with this information or writing it down on post-its. With this page, you can fully incorporate all the information needed for the semester in your journal! It may feel painful when you start jotting it down, but the time you’re going to save later on searching for the information beats the little time you spend now. Take it from us!

Step 7: Cover page 

The monthly cover page helps to section the journal and also helps you to find your stuff easily! You can even add a little tab at the corner to make it easier to find! Maximise your creativity on this page and decorate it as you wish – make it exciting to start every month in 2018.

Step 8: Weekly to-do list  

These are the pages where you jot down in detail the tasks that you have to complete by the week. Common elements on these pages include: Days of the week, dates and legends. There are several ways to section your task, you can categorise them by using different colours or legends. In the sample, we used the same legend throughout but chose to categorise the task by underlining it with different colours. The red colour could signify an academic related task, the blue for social meetings and the green for errands. Once the task is completed, simply strike through it.  

We have chosen to use the same legend, i.e. a simple dot, as the dot can be over-written easily.  

 Of course, you can create any form of icons or legend which suits you.  

Tip of the day: Use stamps, photos and stickers to help decorate your page. Don’t be afraid to be creative! 🙂  

The last burning question that some of you may have is: why on earth would I spend so much effort to create a bullet journal when I could just buy one off the shelf? Our answer is that there’s just nothing like a personal, handmade journal… And after all that effort you put into customizing your journal, you’re more likely to use it, than to just chuck it aside (ahem, like those journals from yesteryears). 

This is the end of our introduction to bullet journaling, we hope that this will help you lead a more fulfilling life in 2018! Cheers to new beginnings! 🙂