Category: Bullet Journal

New Year for a New You – Days 5 & 6

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DAY 5

1. What are your main priorities in life (i.e., family, profession, marriage, personal wellbeing, etc.)? List them in order of importance.

  • God
  • Family, cats, & friends
  • Writing
  • Redhead Paper
  • Day jobs
  • Fitness

2. Use the graph to chart how you invest your time during a typical 24-hour period.

3. Does your time chart (where you’re spending your hours) reflect the priorities you listed in question 1, and in the correct order?

No. For one thing, I’m spending so much time at my day job I don’t have time to focus on my writing and Redhead Paper. I do pretty well at spending time with family, though I have a couple of friendships I really want to revive this year.

4. How might you rearrange your schedule for better results?

Make myself go to bed earlier so I can get up an hour earlier to work out. I know I feel better when I’m working out regularly. Working out in the morning isn’t my favorite thing (I hate mornings in general) but I know it would help me feel more energetic throughout the day and help me stay more focused and productive.

I would also like to eventually transition out of needing two day jobs so I can focus more on my writing and Redhead Paper.

DAY 6

1. Create a specific goal for each of the five pillars of life:

These goals are tied back directly to my objectives for the year, which I posted in Day 3. So I worked from those objectives and listed action steps I could take to achieve them.

FInancial: Create a debt snowball plan and stick to it. Eat out no more than twice a month. Post daily on Instagram to increase Redhead Paper’s visibility. Set up preorders for my book releases two months in advance.

Spiritual: Set aside time every evening to read one chapter of the New Testament a day.

Mental: Read one novel a week from the list of Books to Read in my Bullet Journal. Create a plan for the non-fiction books, including the number of pages I need to read every day when I’m working on them.

Physical: Hike once a week. Do a 30-day beginner yoga challenge in January/February. Have Shakeology for breakfast.

Relational: I want to spend more time encouraging my dad. I want to help my mom declutter her house, which I know is driving her crazy. And I would like to spend more face-time with my best friend, as well as deepening another friendship.

So this is how I want my 2018 to go. What about you? Are you working on goals for the new year? What are they?

My Word for 2018–Ignite!

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My mom recently asked me to design her a sticker using her word for 2018, and that got me thinking about what my word for 2018 should be. I haven’t actually done a word for the year before, though I know other people have found it to be a great method of focusing on what was important.

So I went to One Word 365, a website where you can get inspiration for words, connect with other people who have that word, and more. It generated a list of words for me, and the moment I saw ignite I knew it was my word!

Merriam-Webster defines ignite like this:

transitive verb: to subject to fire or intense heat; especially : to render luminous by heat; a : to set afire; also kindle; b : to cause (a fuel) to burn; a : to heat up : excite; b : to set in motion : spark

intransitive verb: to catch fire; to begin to glow

I love the “to render luminous by heat” — isn’t that a great image? When we’re feeling the heat, we’re under pressure, right? We’re stressed. Wouldn’t it be great to be the kind of person who is rendered luminous when under stress?

And “to set in motion”? I have so many things I’d like to set in motion in 2018. I want to start blogging here regularly in 2018. I want to spend more time being intentional about my business. I want to set in motion a plan to pay off my credit cards and start saving for the life I really want.

What about setting things afire? Not literally, of course. But I’d love to set my imagination afire. Set my creativity afire in my Etsy shop and my novels. Set other people’s productivity afire with the stickers I make and the blogs I post. Set people’s hopes afire that they can have the organized life they’ve always wanted.

So this year, I’m going to IGNITE.

Do you have a word for 2018? What is it?

A set of acrylic drawers with Tombow Dual Brush Pens and Papermate Flair Bullet Journal supplies

My Favorite Bullet Journal Resources

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One of my favorite things about the Bullet Journal system is how adaptable it is. You don’t really need any special equipment–any notebook and pen will do. I belong to a few BuJo communities on Facebook, and it’s surprising how often people ask, “Can I–?” on those groups. Yes, you can! You can do anything you want with your Bullet Journal!

That said, I do have some things I love using for my Bullet Journal. In this post, I’m going to share some of my favorite BuJo supplies and resources.

Disclaimer: Some of these links are affiliate links. In plain language, that means I get a tiny amount of money from those items any time you buy–at no extra cost to you.

Notebooks

My favorite notebooks to use for Bullet Journaling are Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks. They have fountain-pen-friendly paper, the pages are pre-numbered, and there’s an index in the front. Leuchtturm 1917 is the notebook BuJo-creator Ryder Carroll chose to make the official Bullet Journal notebooks. At first available only in black, the official notebooks are now available in emerald green.

If you can’t afford a Leuchtturm 1917, though, there are plenty of other good options. I’ve used Moleskine Volants, Moleskine Cahiers, Picadilly notebooks, and even a cute spiral-bound notebook.

Bottom line, if you have a favorite notebook, use that for your Bullet Journal, because Bullet Journal is all about what works for you.

Pens

My favorite every-day-carry pen is a Pilot Hi Tec C Coleto Lumio Multipen. I use .5 refills in orange, turquoise, brown, and apple green because I color-code my tasks and events for context. Orange is one job, turquoise is another job, brown is writing, and apple green is home & personal.

A set of acrylic drawers with Tombow Dual Brush Pens and Papermate Flair Bullet Journal suppliesI also have a Pentel EnerGel black ink pen that I carry every day. The multi-pen and the black ink pen are the basic essentials of my daily Bullet Journal use. I also have a 10-color set of Staedtler Triplus Fineliners I use daily. They live on my desk, in a new five-drawer acrylic set I just got at the Container Store. I like seeing all the colorful pens!

I’ve recently branched out a little more. I bought a set of Papermate Flairs, because so many people seem to love them for Bullet Journaling. I’ve been using them a little, but I can’t pretend they’re my favorites. Still, they’re a good alternative.

My recent treat to myself (thank you, tax refund time) is a couple of sets of Tombow Dual Brush Pens. I got the Secondary set and the Landscape” set, because I decided my Staedtler and Flair sets already had the primary colors covered.

Now I just need to learn how to do brush lettering! I’ve been watching videos on YouTube. Does anyone have a favorite tutorial?

Stickers & Washi Tape

Here’s a caveat: I make stickers and sell them at my Redhead Paper Etsy shop, so of course I love my own stickers!

But there are plenty of other sticker-makers out there I love, including Boho Berry Paperie and Mila Printshop. I also love finding stickers at Michael’s.

I love washi tape, but lately I haven’t been using it as often in my layouts. I couldn’t resist the roll I found at Michael’s on Monday, though: it has sayings on it like, “Dream,” “The time is now,” and “This is your life–seize it and make it amazing.”

 

So those are my favorites. What are yours?

 

Photo of my stack of Bullet Journal notebooks

Why Bullet Journal?

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Sometimes when I’m in a meeting, people look at my bullet journal and ask why that system is better than others. So today I wanted to talk about my BuJo Journey.

I’ve loved organization since I read Julie Morganstern’s book Organizing from the Inside Out about 15 years ago. First I started organizing all the stuff I had, and then I started realizing I had too much. And then Julie Morganstern wrote Time Management from the Inside Out, and I realized I had even more organizing to do. I struggled for years to figure out how to balance everything I like doing–hiking, reading, writing, scrapbooking, online gaming…

I tried everything. Paper planners. Online calendars. Scheduling and task management apps like Trello. Nothing really worked for me until 2010, when I tried David Allen’s Getting Things Done system. That made sense to me, having project lists and next action lists and context lists. But after a year or two and a job change, I realized the GTD system wasn’t really working for me anymore.

Photo of my tickler fileI kept my tickler file, which both Julie Morganstern and David Allen recommend, and I rely on it. I love it when someone can say, “Hey, do you have that file I gave you two months ago?” And I can say, “Yep, I filed it for this week when we were going to need it again.”

So the tickler file was working, but my planning system wasn’t.

Fast-forward to March 2014, when I discovered Ryder Carroll’s Bullet Journal system.

I honestly didn’t expect it to take, but I thought, “Hey, I’ve seen this mentioned several times lately, so why not try it?” (I think Lifehacker was the first place I saw it, but I’m not sure.) So I set up a spiral-bound notebook I already had. I’d only used it for about two weeks before I realized that hey, this system really clicks with me!

I started out buying Moleskine Cahier notebooks. I could fit about two months in each notebook, and pretty soon my boss started saying, “Hey, did you write down in your little book when we…?” It felt awesome to be able to say yes every time.

Photo of my stack of Bullet Journal notebooksI experimented with notebooks for a while–Moleskine Cahiers, then a Picadilly (which sadly fell apart and had to be repaired), more Moleskines, and then the BulletJournal Kickstarter happened! I was a backer, and I’ve been in love with the Leuchtterm 1917 BulletJournal notebooks since then. I did use a lined Leuchtterm 1917 for part of 2016, but for Christmas my family got me two of the new Emerald Official BuJo notebooks, so I should be set for 2017!

Now I’m branching out into different pens. I color-code my tasks, because I have two part-time jobs and I also write fiction, so I use color to track the context of my tasks and projects (still implementing some of the GTD methods I loved). I use a Coleto Hi-Tec-C multipen to write down tasks, but for things like habit trackers and coloring pages, I’ve been using Tombow Dual Brush Pens for a few weeks now.

So that’s my Bullet Journal journey.

I love so much about Bullet Journal, but the main thing I love about this system is its flexibility. Some of my spreads are super-decorated and pretty and fun, and some of them are simple lists. Sometimes I doodle in my spread, and sometimes I don’t take the time to do a spread for the week. I can experiment with different signifiers to see what clicks. I can see how long it’s been since I did a financial review because of my habit trackers. I can make this planner what I need it to be.

I think that’s why it’s stuck so long–Bullet Journal is a system that adapts to my needs.