Bullet Journal Week One - First impressions

After one week of bullet journaling I have good news and bad news. Good news first: I´m still in love with my bullet journal and I´m definitely going to continue this project. I have always used lists to get things organized, but it was never my routine to start a day taking a planner or a journal in my hand. Now it is. I create the daily task list - or the beginning of the list - right after morning coffee. I´m sure it has helped me to achieve better results already.

This is my first bujo spread. Week one is on the right side and the page I made for January is on the left side. I added a motivational quote on the January page just to cheer me up. "Respect the struggle and grow from it." My life has been a great struggle for the last ten years and it still is. I hope my bullet journal will help me get my life back.

The bad news is that I felt I had failed, if I could not complete all my daily tasks. It made me feel frustrated.

I think it will be easier to set realistic target over time, though. Some of my tasks were too large and contained too many subtasks for one day. I´m going to add tasks in more manageable chunks to my future lists. After all, one of my problems is that many of my goals seem to be so large that I feel overwhelmed, and then I end up doing nothing at all.

One of these hard projects has been studying CSS. I finally got started yesterday - and I thank my bullet journal for it. My goal is to spend one hour each day studying a giant book on CSS. It will be my top priority this week.

I still have empty spreads in my notebook, though I have added them to the Index. For example, there´s nothing in my bucket list or in the running to do list for things that need to be done, but not on any exact date. I have yet to learn to write down things, if something pops up in my mind while I´m doing something else. That is why I created those bujo pages for!

All in all, I´m happy with the first week and I know I´m going to achieve better results as I get used to using my bujo whenever I feel the need to save an idea or a thought. See you soon!

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How To Make A Bullet Journal

I promised on Sunday to give a detailed description of how I made my bullet journal and now its time to do so. As a matter of fact, I had planned to do it yesterday - that is why it was on my Monday bullet list. As it happened, I had overestimated my abilities to get things done in just one day. So today I had to clean up yesterday´s bullets and here we are - finally.

When I started my bullet journal, I did not have to buy anything new because I had everything I needed at home. I chose an old notebook with soft, black cover and decided it would be my bullet journal. Then I printed out two calendars: one large and the other one small. You´ll find the link to my free, printable calendars at the end of this blog post.

I glued the small calendar inside the front cover of my bullet journal with a gluestick. To make it stick better and to make my bullet journal look pretty I framed it with silvery decoration tape.

In my experience, it´s easy to find your last journal entry quickly, if there´s a ribbon to point it out. So I attached a ribbon to the back cover of my bullet journal with pieces of very sticky double sided tape. I was very pleased with the way it turned out. Now my black notebook looks like a real journal!

Next I created the index page. I listed all months and some collections pages that I thought would be useful. I haven´t got any habit trackers yet, but I´m going ro list them on the left side of this spread later. I´m going to add some other pages as well, as I get them started. I used the 2017 banner from the large, printable calendar on top of the page.

Next I jumped to page 5 to create my first month page. As I only list the most important events, plans and goals at monthly basis, I thought one page would be enough. I´ll list my accomplishments on this page at the end of this month. I used my own free printables to make the page look more colourful and nice. In addition, I cut out January from my small printable calendar an attached it on top of the page. I am going to mark important dates there, if something comes up.

I´ts day three of my bullet journaling project today, so that´s about all I was going to say this time. I´m excited to see, if my bullet journal will help me prioritize my life, as I have so much going on right now. I have huge amount of ideas about bullet journaling as well, so I´ll be back soon!

Free printable calendars, month labels and other stuff will be found here:

• GCC: Bullet journal setup and printable freebies >

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