My Bullet Journal Setup

I’ve seen a lot of people talking about Bullet Journals, but it wasn’t until mid May that I looked into what they are. I’d been experiencing a dip in my mood & was struggling to find motivation to do things. Well, to do anything really. A lot of this is down to the dysphagia problems I’ve been having & the struggle I’m going through with my PIP application. I’ll be writing more about this once the tribunal is over, but the short version is that the person who assessed me has lied on her assessment & the DWP have made their decision about my entitlement based solely on her lies. It’s very stressful & I now have to attend a tribunal. Anyway, as soon as I did some research into bullet journalling I was excited by the concept & thought that it could be just the thing to help me with my low mood & lack of motivation. As there are so many different ways of laying a bullet journal out, I wanted to share with you my bullet journal setup. I’ll be updating you with how I’m getting on with using it, probably at the end of every month.

I forced myself to plan out how I wanted to set out my bullet journal, using post it notes. That way I could really think about how much space I would need for each thing I wanted to include. I’m a bit funny about having things that are disjointed &, although I know that there is always going to be an element of that in bullet journalling, I didn’t want to start of higgledy piggledy!

I decided to start my bullet journal at the beginning of June, to give myself 2 weeks or so to plan out my bullet journal setup. This also made spacing things out in my bullet journal easier.

As it didn’t require a double page spread, I decided to put my key at the very beginning of my bullet journal, even before the index. For the index, I decided to use black pen to note down that pages for my daily life & I chose blue for anything blogging related. These are the two main things that are going to make up my bullet journal.

It made sense to me to start my bullet journal setup with a yearly calendar. I chose to add in a 2017 box for future planning. I always find that once I reach August, I have at least one hospital appointment for 2017 & if I don’t have somewhere to note it down I’m guaranteed to forget it!

Next I have my month to view. I decided to include a to-do list for the month so that I can see the bigger things I want to achieve & break them down into manageable chunks in the daily section so that by the end of the month I’ve completed them all (or at least most of them!). I wanted to include a social media tracker for the month in my bullet journal setup too, so I can see whether I’m on track to achieve my monthly &, as a result, yearly goals.

Next in my bullet journal setup I have my weekly/daily planning. I’ve set this out similarly to a week to view diary, as I find these the easiest form to work with. I used to have a day-per-page diary when I was at uni, as it gave me more space to write things down, but my dyslexia tutor told me that most people with dyslexia find planning time easier when they can see the whole week. I have to say, that it work for me, though I did then have more problems physically reading what was in my diary as I had to write much smaller. In my daily/weekly planner, I’ve included a section for #FFs so that when someone is particularly nice to me during the week I just write their Twitter handle into that section & can come back to it on Friday to give them a special mention. My memory is so bad that by Friday I’ve often forgotten someone who’s been nice to me the previous Saturday, so this will really help me.

I’ve also included a sort of mini to-do list of the things that I need or want to do every day, such as my physio & yoga. This way, I have a reminder to do the things & can colour in the respective box, without having to write them into each of the days individually. I’ve included a glass with 4 markings so I can track my water consumption, as I’m concerned that with the dysphagia issues I’m not drinking enough, particularly as to keep my PoTS more controlled I need to be drinking 2-3 litres of water a day! Each of the marks is 75ml, which is the size of my beaker.

One of the thing that I was taught to do to help with my PTSD was to write down 3 positive things from my day before going to bed. As my mood has been low, I’ll be starting this up again in this section of my bullet journal. I’ve also decided to note down the weather forecast the day before, as I’ve never been very good at choosing appropriate clothes, so helpful this will help! I’m going to use this section of my bullet journal to keep a track of blog posts, both those that are written & scheduled & those that I’m planning on posting. This will give me a good idea of what to put where so that I don’t end up with two beauty posts one after another. So this is going to be a very busy section of my bullet journal.

Following on from my daily/weekly section is going to be a ‘Memories’ page for each month. A bit like my three positives from each day, this will be a nice way to round off the month & go into July in a more positive frame of mind. As I need to start July with a double page for my monthly spread, I decided to have a title page for July. In the future I may scrap this & make my memories page a double one. Then I’ll repeat these sections for July!

As I didn’t want things to be too disjointed, I decided to leave a space for the rest of 2016. I thought the best way to do this, would be to start the other sections of my bullet journal from the back, so that eventually, the diary part & the collections will meet in the middle & this bullet journal will be complete. As most of the other things I wanted to put in my bullet journal were blog related, I decided to put my Books To Read page at the very back. This worked well, as I probably only need a single page anyway. Here I’ll write in the title of the books I want to read & will colour them in once I’ve finished them.

I wanted to include a list of the Twitter chats & when they take place, so that I can pick which ones I want to take part in & put them into my weekly/daily section. Following these, I decided to include a page listing all the retweet accounts for when I schedule blog post Tweets. Once I have some disposable income, I want to start advertising my blog with other bloggers. As I don’t really know who offers advertising packages, I though I would create a page where I could list people as I stumble across them posting about their advertising on Twitter, if I see them promoting their ‘Advertisers’ blog posts or if I happen to notice when I visit their blog that it’s a service they offer.

With my bullet journal setup, I wanted it to be an all-in-one, everything kind of book, The next two pages are for tracking my blog stats & social media following. I’ve then got a double page spread for my blogging goals for my 3rd year of blogging (my next post will be a 2nd Blogiversary post, where I’ll be sharing my goals for my next year of blogging with you).

I wanted to have a place in my bullet journal set up to make notes of blog post ideas. A while ago, I created lists of different types of posts I could do for each category. For example, for beauty I put reviews & favourites as two possible topics. I found this really helpful when I was trying to come up with post ideas, so added these into my bullet journal setup. After these, I created a pages for each of my categories, where I can note down specific blog post titles.

I was going to leave my bullet journal setup like this & see how I got on for the first month, when I realised it would be the ideal tool to plan for doctors appointments. For example, if I go to see my GP about something, she may ask me questions I hadn’t thought relevant. If I’ve prepared something about this for one of my specialists, I’ll be able to refer to that section of my bullet journal & answer her with more information than my brain would otherwise be able to remember. As I have three main appointments, I decided to give each of these a page in my bullet journal. I’ve got a PoTS appointment in September, but don’t really have any questions or worrying symptoms, so I’m leaving this out for now & will decide closer to the time if it’s worth creating a page for that too. To co-ordinate this section of my bullet journal, I’m going to put the page number of the relevant information next to the appointment in my weekly/daily planner.

So that is my initial bullet journal setup! Have I forgotten anything? Would you have set it out differently if it were your bullet journal? All tips greatly appreciated!

Find me on:

Bloglovin’ | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest | Snapchat | Google+

You can also sign up for my newsletter!