Starting a Bullet Journal

Ready to learn how to start a bullet journal but wondering where to begin? This article shows show you how to create your own bullet journal.

 

What is a bullet journal? 

As I’ve become more engrossed in the crafting community, I keep hearing about bullet journals. I see beautiful layouts and inspiration pages. But what is a bullet journal? Quite simply, it is a fully customization planner to help you stay organized in your day-to-day. A bullet journal consists of an index, future log, weekly, monthly and daily planners and anything else your heart desires! Your bullet journal can be as basic, or creative and out there as you want it to be, its up to you! But what do you need to start a bullet journal?

What You Need to Get Started on your Bullet Journal 

This type of organization is meant to be minimalist – so the supply list is short and basic. The following suggestions are just the products I personally use, but there are lots of other options to choose from.

1. Journal: I like the Leuchtturm Dotted Journal. It is great for beginners as there are instructions at the back of the book, an index page, pre-numerated pages, and a future log already included in the journal. The grid layout is also awesome.
2. Pens: Just your favorite black pen
3. Small Ruler: Like this one.

That’s it! You’re good to go. You can always build on this with highlighters, colored pens, stickers etc. I am really just addressing the basics to get started in this article, but feel free to let your creativity run wild.

Beginning Your Bullet Journal

Bullet Journal Index

If you bought the Leuchtturm Journal, the beginning of the index will already be there. If not, mark pages your first two as your index pages. You will use these pages to keep track of your pages, so you can easily go back and reference specific dates or collections. Mark the future log from pages 1-4 (assuming you are putting 3 mos per page). That’s it for now. You will fill in the rest as you go along.

Bullet Journal Future Log

There are a million different ways to organize your layouts. I’d suggest going to Pinterest or Google for more inspiration. For my first bullet journal, I really wanted to keep things simple, so I did not get overwhelmed, so I followed the instructions from bulletjournal.com pretty closely. I drew two horizontal lines on each page from 1-4, then marked the month at the top (see above). That way I can log things like holidays, events, vacations, goals etc, for the entire year.

Bullet Journal Monthly Log

The Monthly Log, is where you can map out specific events and write down the tasks things you’d like to do over the course of the month. Additionally, the Monthly Log also serves as a way to log memories that happened that month. In this way, you can get a quick, overall view of the month’s happenings. Again, I stuck with the minimalist layout for my monthly log, but check out the traditional calendar view as an option as well.

Bullet Journal Weekly Log

So I must admit, when making my bullet journal I did not think it would be relevant to me to have a Weekly Log. I could not have been more wrong! Almost as soon as I started logging my life I would remember some small task or event for a few days later that I wanted to write down. I don’t love writing too much in my Monthly Log so I needed that weekly section! My advice – make a Weekly Log. I love them.

Bullet Journal Daily Log

People get super creative with their Daily Log layouts. Again, I prefer to keep things relatively simple, as I truly do use my bullet journal to stay on top of my life, and I need it to be functional and not overly time consuming, but I enjoy putting little personal touches on the daily header. Another nice thing about the Daily Log is that you can write as much as you please, as you set up each page the day of.

Bullet Journal Collections – Other

As you can see above – I made a collection page to help me organize my move! Many people also make habit tracker pages, gratitude, prayer, goals pages etc. The sky is the limit. Just go to the next available page and write down whatever it is you please. Write down the page number and add it to your index. Remember to add everything to your index as you write so you can keep track!

That’s it for now! What did I forget? Leave your tips and tricks in the comments section below!