How to start a bullet journal 

It’s not easy to find the perfect diary. Some diaries have too little space under each day for writing your to-do lists. Whilst others do not provide enough room for writing notes or the layout is impractical. People who like to be individual and want to write their own to-do lists and appointments are sure to enjoy keeping a bullet journal. Never fear! You don't need any artistic flair. With a bullet journal, anything goes. From a simple calendar overview to intricate little works of art. You might find many of your office tools helpful. You could even use hole punches and staplers from Novus Dahle to help you design your own journal. You can design each page as you wish and create your very own personal organisation tool in notebook form. We will explain to you what a bullet journal is and how you can get started! 

What is a bullet journal?

A bullet journal is an organisation systemin the form of a notebook you write yourself, which you can adapt to suit your work and your everyday needs. The system has been developed and optimised over the years by Ryder Carroll, a Product Designer from New York. What makes a bullet journal particularly practical is that it can be a calendar, task list, sketch book, notebook and journalall in one. It’s not about doing it right or making it look good, it’s about using the developed system to organise your day productively.

What you need for the bullet journal:

1. An empty notebook of your choice with good quality paper so that the ink doesn't show through
2. Pen
3. Ruler

You can choose whatever size of notebook you want to use. As well as squared and lined planners, dotted notebookscan also be used for bullet journals. The tiny dots are discreet but can be very useful for designing your journal using a ruler and pen. Page numbers are also important in the book you are using for your bullet journal. You can either write these in yourself or buy a notebook with page numbers in it already. 

The top 5 pages you should include in your bullet journal

1. Key 

Your key page is the first page in your bullet journal. This is where you note the symbols you use and their meaning. For example, a point stands for an item on your to-do list and a crossed-through point stands for a completed task. You could also define different colours here. Blue could be used for work tasks and green for jobs to do at home. Here too, you can design your key page according to your own requirements and use symbols that make sense to you.  

Examples of symbols to use

• Filled in circle • = Task
• Empty circle ○ = Appointment
• Dash – = Note
• Exclamation mark! = Important note or appointment

2. Index

The Indexcomes at the start of your journal. It helps you to find your notes, diary pages and other pages you use more easily. Add the Index page after your key page. To start with, just leave it empty and complete it later on when you add new pages to your journal. 

3. The Future Log 

The Future Log helps you to keep track of important dates throughout the year. This could be birthdays, for example, or important trade fairs or regular telephone calls with clients, for which the dates are already set. You could use the pages following your Index for your Future Log. Before drawing up your Future Log, you should work out how much space you will need for it. This will help you to design the pages as you require. For example, one month per page or three months on one page. This will depend on how many and which dates you want to enter.

4. The Monthly Log

After the Future Log, you will have an overview of the individual months. Write down the dates and days of the relevant month on the left-hand side of the double page. The opposite page is for your notes, where you can enter your important tasks and notes for the month.

5. The Daily Log

The Daily Log is inspired by pocket diaries. Here too, you can adapt the overview to suit you best. If you know that you always have a lot of tasks in your day, you should leave more space for the individual days in your weekly overview so that there's enough room for your appointments and tasks. If you only use your bullet journal for work, you can simply leave out Saturdays and Sundays. A combination of work and everyday life planning is also possible of course. For example, you could start by planning your working week and then use the following pages for planning your everyday tasks.