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I have now been using my bullet journal every single day for over 6 months, and I am loving it more and more everyday. It may be sad, but it would genuinely be one of the few things that I would save in a fire! Since my last bullet journal blog post I have began to define my style in my BUJO and have been testing out various different designs and experimenting with the use of my spreads. This post is a general update of what I have been loving and what didn’t work so well for me.

Monthly Title Page

My favourite thing to do in my BUJO is start a new month, this is mainly because this is the page that I become most creative. I tend to mix up my style slightly each month, occasionally sticking to a specific colour scheme, but this gives me a clear start to a fresh month. Each month I start with a single page dedicated to the title page, this makes it easy to spot the start of a month when flicking through, as well as making it look pretty.

Monthly Tracker

Over the past 6 months, I have been tweaking my monthly tracker so that it works for me and is actually relevant and useful to my life. This mainly involved mixing up things that I was tracking and cutting down on tracking pointless things, mostly that never actually got done. Due to the tracker becoming a slight waste of time, I stopped keeping up to date with it, until in February I decided to cut the amount of things to track in half and add a sleep tracker graph onto the same page. This meant that it was way less time consuming to keep on top of the tracker and I was only tracking a small handful of useful things. It also gave me an opportunity to track the amount of sleep I have been getting which can be interesting to see, and link to mood and productivity etc. I have kept this style for the past two months and loved it, so my April tracker is already set up in the exact same style.

Month Overview

At the beginning of each month I like to create a calendar style spread, where I can fill in any important events, deadlines and birthdays throughout the month. This makes my life so much easier when it comes to making my daily to do lists as I can quickly look back to see what I have planned. I also have a section for monthly tasks, which I tend to neglect to be honest, but I am going to keep it and attempt to use it more for anything that I need to do but don’t have a specific date for (also if I got rid of it then my grid measurements would be all wrong!!). Each month I create the exact same grid, with space for 6 weeks worth of days, just in case the month is spread over 6 weeks, however most months will only span over 5, which leaves me an extra row to fill. Here’s where my washi tape collection comes in handy, making the spread way more exciting and colourful, normally tying into the month’s colour scheme.

Mood Mandala

I was inspired by something I saw in a BohoBerry youtube video, and thought I would try it out for myself. This way of documenting your mood every day for a month is a stunning way to go about it. By drawing circles inside each other from a central point, and creating as many rings as there are days in the month all you need to do is create a key using multiple colours and then everyday, decide what mood is most relevant and fill in the corresponding ring. As you progress through the month, you can create a mandala design of your choice overlaying the coloured rings to create a beautiful spread. I enjoyed the process of this but I found that I was not keeping on top of it and as I am not the best mandala artist, I wasn’t overly happy with the designs I was coming up with. The spread itself was a lot of effort to draw the circles and fill them in everyday, as they get bigger through the month it becomes even more time consuming. I am personally not overly bothered about tracking my mood, so for now I have not continued this spread for later months, however I may end up finding another way to complete it.

Other Spreads

Unlike many bullet journalists, at the beginning of the new year I did not start a brand new journal, having only started in September I had filled less than 70 pages so it would have been an enormous waste. Instead I began in January like any other month, inputting a few general year pages to refer back to throughout the next few months. These spreads include a 2017 log, which actually only ended up to be a place to plan events between January and June, but I am planning on creating another one for the remainder of the year later on. I also made a page dedicated to my 2017 goals/new years resolutions, so that I can come back to this at the end of the year and assess the progress that I’ve made. I also created a 2017 savings tracker, as each year I a penny everyday, so the tracker groups it into weekly payments which makes it easier for me to remember. Similarly at the beginning of lent I decided that I wanted to better myself, by giving up chocolate and naps as well as taking up running. I set up a lent log to track my progress (the running is not going great so far) but I love the spread!

For the first few months of my BUJO I dedicated a page each month to keep memories made in that month, at the time I never really filled them in, so I stopped creating them. However, I recently went back and filled them in and they actually turned out to be some of my favourite pages. I’m now thinking of bringing it back into my every month spreads, especially as it is getting towards the summer months, as I might actually start to have a life outside Uni again! These will also definitely be the pages I will want to look back on in the future.

What I want to add

I have in some ways found what works for me in my bullet journal, however I am inclined to try to mix it up a bit and experiment in the next few months. I am currently only using daily to do lists but I may give a weekly spread a go. I also want to incorporate more of my University tasks into my bullet journal, potentially dedicating a full spread to each assignment task, as I am always way more motivated if I have a pretty checklist to look at! Keep an eye out for more updates to my bullet journal on my blog and pinterest pages, where you can also find my original post for more inspiration and a bit more information on how I started my bullet journal. If you’ve not already, start bullet journalling today!!!