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Happy National Stationery Week! Didn’t know that was a thing? No, neither did we. But we’ll welcome any excuse to buy a new notebook! To celebrate all things stationery, we’ve put together a guide to getting started with bullet journaling – it’s much more than just scribbling your shopping list on an old envelope, and can help organise your life and your mind. Let’s get started…
The first thing to understand about bullet journaling is you can start at any time during the year – it doesn’t have to be a New Year’s Resolution thing. And the second thing is that it doesn’t have to be perfect right from the outset – your bullet journal will develop and grow with you, which is what makes it such a wonderful thing. Ok, on with the tips!
1. Buy the equipment
The best bit of starting something new is shopping! And when better to stock up on your new notebook, some pens, a ruler and maybe a few stickers, than National Stationery Week? You don’t need loads of fancy stuff to start bullet journaling – a blank journal (lined or unlined), some coloured gel pens and a ruler to help you section things off are all you really need.
2. Set up your index page
The index page is the backbone of your bullet journal and will help you find each section easily. Take a look online to see how others have created their index pages – you need to think about what your bullet journal will include and how you’ll organise each part. Don’t worry, though – you can chop and change your index as you go along and learn what works best for you.
3. Start your logs
Logs are the main focus of most bullet journals – they’re spaces for you to offload your goals and aims, to keep track of your to-do lists and make note of meetings and reminders. Logs are usually split into three:
- Future logs are for things that aren’t on your immediate radar, but that you’d like to achieve somewhere down the line
- Monthly logs work like a calendar, helping you keep track of things you have coming up over the next month
- Daily logs are usually made up of to-do lists, meetings, appointments and reminders for each day.
4. Pick your signifiers
Another key part of bullet journaling is the system of symbols you use to signify different topics, lists and sections of your journal. Bullet points are common for tasks, circles for events and dashes for notes, while lots of people use stars for high-priority entries. You can customise this any way you like, of course… just remember to keep track of them on a reference page.
5. Start your collections
Collections are less about organisation and more about things you want to remember – books you’d like to read, movies on your must-watch list, blog topics, even things your grateful for. You can jot these down more freely in the back of your journal.
6. Make time for journaling
Once you’ve got your bullet journal up and running, it helps to make time to update it every day. Give yourself 10 minutes during your lunchbreak or half an hour before you go to bed to add your entry and you’ll soon get into the swing of daily updates.
