Hi, Glitzies!
At the early part of this year, I started bullet journaling. It was a genius way of customising your own method of journaling and the man behind this bullet journaling system is Ryder Carroll, a digital product designer living in Brooklyn, New York. You can definitely read more about the original bullet journaling system from him and how he actually started on his website. But what’s more inspiring for me is witnessing how bullet journaling has created this close-knit community of journaling fans, designers, scrapbook artists, designers, bloggers and even YouTubers who took Bullet Journaling to a whole new level as they shared about how they customise their own bullet journals. Their postings and sharings have also inspired me to start one on my own and I just wanted to share with you guys how bullet journaling has given me a new lease of life.
Contrary to the vast examples of bullet journals you see online right now, the system was actually very simplistic, to begin with. All you will need is a pen and a book with empty pages. But we girls love to beautify things and went on to include modern calligraphy writings, inspirational quotes, stickers and drawing into our journal just to make it look more appealing to the eye. To the layman, it seems rather time-consuming to start an empty journal when they could use their Google calendar or online planner to plan their day-to-day activities. As a matter-of-fact, bullet journaling is really simple. For a start, you could watch my YouTube video right here as I share about how I would organise the pages in my journal. I kept my journaling tools simple – some pens, ruler, glue and colour pencils.
At first, it might take you quite some time to start your journal and writing all the layouts. You may even have the fear that you would make mistakes which would mar the whole page. The journal sort of teaches you to be bold, creative and experimental as you are filling blank pages with your life stories. Once I’ve started to do up all the layouts, it didn’t take me long to update the journal. I spent about 5 minutes each day – either before bed or early in the morning – to fill up the journal. Writing my thoughts, ideas and plans in my journal has made me more reflective of myself. It was definitely more than just a journal to remind you of your daily tasks. My thoughts were made more visible and it pushes me to set goals and to achieve them.
My journaling design and style was largely inspired by YouTuber AmandaRachLee who created the simplest and easiest youtube videos on bullet journal to follow through. It was minimalistic and easy to follow. You should definitely check out her videos if you want to learn more as well.
Check out my video tutorial below!
To put it simply, here’s what you’ll need to start your own bullet journal and the various sections you should have in the journal.
Things you’ll need:
- Black pen
- Colour markers/ colour pencils
- Pencils
- Ruler
- A journal with blank pages
You should a journal which is preferably A5 in size or half the size of an A4-sized paper so that you will have sufficient space to write. Most bullet journalists use journals with pages that have dotted grid patterns. With the dotted grid patterns, you don’t have to use a ruler to draw straight lines as the dots are there to guide you to write or draw linearly. But such journals aren’t necessary. For me, I used a blank journal with empty pages. You could also get affordable notebooks from Daiso or Miniso for a couple of dollars.
Sections in the Bullet Journal:
- Key
- Index Page
- Yearly Log
- Monthly Log
- Weekly Log
- Daily Log
- Miscellaneous pages: New Year Resolutions, Watch and Read lists, Brain Dump, Gratitude, Habit and Mood Tracker, Expense Tracker etc.
For me, I skipped the daily log as there’s sufficient space on the weekly log page for me to write out my daily activities. Thus, it is really up to you to see how you would like to adopt this form of bullet journaling system. There isn’t a fixed way of doing things and I love the flexibility of this journaling system.
All geared up to start your own bullet journal?
I’ve also created a bullet journal video for the month of May so do check out my YouTube channel once it is out!
