Bullet Journal: One Month On

My Bullet Journal and I have been together for just over a month now, so it seems like a good time to do a little review of how we're getting on together.

In a word: Fantastically!

I wish I'd discovered this years ago. I keep on getting ideas for things that would have been fantastic to add to my BuJo if I was still at Uni or doing Open University. I feel so much more organised than I have been before. It seems like just writing down what needs to be done focuses my attention and prompts me to do it. And colouring in those little boxes really motivates me.

I've developed a routine so that my day begins and ends with my Bullet Journal.

Each morning, once I'm up and dressed, I open it up and check if there's anything that needs to be done before I leave for work. I'll check it throughout the day as well, this is mainly because I have my fluid intake tracker which I like to keep up to date so I'm constantly reminded of the things I need to do after work.

Then at bed time, I'll sit for roughly half an hour. I start at the beginning and work my way through; checking if there's any dates in the calendar I need to be aware of, filling in my tracker and countdown to Wales, checking my fluid intake tracker is up to date, checking off all the things I did during the day and moving any of the things I've not done to the following day, and finally doing a little review of the day and laying out the tasks for the next day. It sounds like a lot but it's mostly just colouring in boxes. I probably spend more time drawing fancy headers.

This month I'm pretty much repeating my layouts for January. I'll probably adapt it slightly when I get on to the graph paper section of my notebook but while I'm using the lines, the list format is working well for me. So I've stuck with the list format for the month.

I also loved my habit tracker, it's amazing how having a visual representation of my achievements (or lack thereof) keeps me going. In January I managed a walk every day and I'm so pleased to have a full column of green blocks. That's definitely staying again this month.

I'm also trialling a food log, because one of my targets last month was to eat less chocolate, which I didn't do so well on. I thought that keeping a food log might help me see where I'm going wrong and help me to reduce my snacking. It seems like I'm eating well enough on my breakfast, lunch and dinner, but already I can see that snacking at work is letting me down. Hopefully I'll be able to find healthier alternatives to switch to.

One thing that I did try at the end of January was to do a review of the month. Just as I do a review at the end of the day, this gave me a chance to focus on the good things in the month. I also picked up on some not so good stuff, but I tried to write it with a positive slant, or a note of what I need to do to make it better in the next month (or months). I'm going to do this again at the end of February, but I might try doing it in a slightly different format.

Are you Bullet Journalling or using a planner? Why not share some of your pages and link to them in the comments.