Bullet Journaling – My Failed 2018 Resolution

Sometimes you have to throw in the towel. Or admit defeat. That’s what happened to one of my 2018 resolutions to keep a bullet journal. I realized that there was just not enough time in the day to both do things, and then write about them. Let me explain.

Bullet Journaling, or #BuJo for short, has a cult following, especially in the crafting/online community. Basically, it was invented by a guy, Ryder Carroll, to make up for the things he couldn’t do using an app. It is an analog way to “track the past, organize the present, and plan the future.” He has a handy 4-minute YouTube video about it here. BEWARE of the YouTube black hole, guys. My story began by watching that 4-minute video, and next thing you know it was 5 days later and I was at Michaels purchasing 5 types of felt-tip pens and 8 tubes of washi-tape. But again, I’m getting ahead of myself.

In theory, Bullet Journaling is great. You can use any notebook, although Bullet Journal sells their own, because #capitalism. But the point of a BuJo is that anyone can do it, in any notebook they want. Of course, the internet has favorites (the Leuchtturm, Moleskine etc.), but you can use any book. That’s because you do all of the work yourself! You write it as you go. You do most of the work when you first set it up, at the beginning of the year. If you had never heard of bullet journaling, but all of a sudden, you’ve seen it on your social media, that’s because the first week of the year just finished and people were rushing to set up their new “layouts.” In fact, the YouTube black hole contains HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of bloggers showing their 2019 setups. DON’T CLICK IT. IT’S A TRAP.

Here’s the main gist, and what is included in all bullet journals:

• Index: This is a running list of your pages. Remember that you can do this BuJo thing in any plain notebook. That means you need to write your own page numbers and refer back to this Index as you add pages and update it.
• Future Log: This is usually a quick monthly separation of your year, where you add the events that are coming up in the months ahead. This is necessary because you only write the current week’s tasks. You can control how many pages you use this way, or if you need to add anything.
• Monthly Log: Includes the days of the month, and the letter of the day (M for Monday etc.). This is a “Birds Eye View” of your monthly appointments and tasks.
• Daily Logs (usually done by the week) – Tasks, Events, and Notes for each day, in bullet form, and sometimes starred for importance
• Collections: Lists of tasks or other things all grouped together by topic. This is where the Pinterest/internet community gets carried away, but more on that later.

At the end of each month, you set up the next month by looking at any leftover tasks you didn’t complete. You go to the previous month’s tasks, check off the ones you completed. With the leftover ones, if you don’t want to do it anymore, you cross it out. But if it’s still worth your time, “migrate” it by drawing an arrow, then writing it in the next month’s monthly log. If the task is not due for a few months, then you can instead write it in the future log, for the month when it’s due.

This is all meant to reduce distraction and be more productive, basically a “Konmari method for your thoughts,” according to Vogue. (Marie Kondo is so IN right now.)

Well guys, I was so determined last year. Not only did I set up my Index, Future Log, and Monthly Log, (all of the photos in this blog are REAL excerpts from my bullet journal!), I also did all of the extra things that the crazy people on the internet do. I even wrote a yearly calendar at the beginning where I wrote out the numbers 1-31 for every single month in tiny little invisible squares. (I got the “dotted” notebook, which is loved by all internet BuJo’ers, because you can write straight, but you don’t have those UNSIGHTLY lines. Lines in a notebook? EW!) I tried to learn how to doodle, to make cute borders, I bought pens of different colors and thicknesses, I googled “how to draw a piggy bank” for my savings page, I really was all in.

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The most fun part was the collections, although it also became the most time-consuming part. As I quickly learned from my new internet-blogger peeps, you can make a collection for ANYTHING. The first type of collection is a “habit-tracker,” where you do exactly that. You can track your daily sleep, steps, exercise, food, etc. You can have a graph where you mark every day you successfully make breakfast at home, or go without caffeine, or make it to the gym! I had two habit trackers, for my gym sessions (color-coded by type of workout), and for my moods. The mood one quickly made me realize that I’m happy a large majority of days. Good discovery, I guess, but boring to track after a while. I would sometimes get a week behind on these, which was much easier to remember my gym sessions, but more difficult to try and remember how I was feeling on a particular day. Sometimes I think I faked it.

The other types of collections were more like lists to keep a running tally of things throughout the year. These lists included books I read, stats for my books (gender of author, length, genre), movies I’d seen (there were a lot… this was in the heyday of Moviepass RIP) and also my social media statistics (followers, number of posts etc.). I also wrote about my many many trips and travel stats.

Additionally, I made lists/collections of things to remember for the future: braids I wanted to learn, books I wanted to read, movies I wanted to see, themes I wanted to use for a spin class etc.

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I was doing so well for a few months, especially with the collections. I am a very crafty person, so I was having fun! I used to scrapbook all the time when I lived in Florida, and although I still have most of my scrapbooking stuff, it sits in a box underneath my bed because as all New Yorker’s say, “ain’t nobody got space for that!” Anyway, bullet journaling was a great way to keep crafting, but keep it to one single book with a small(er) amount of supplies.

It was fun… until it wasn’t. It became burdensome. I hit my first hurdle in my very first month with my bullet journal when I went to Seattle and Vancouver. Should I bring my Bullet Journal? How many pens? Is it worth carrying in my backpack? Will I forget it anywhere? When will I have time to write in it if I’m busy hanging with my best friend, hiking and boozing it up? Ultimately, I did bring it with me, but it was difficult to keep up with. I brought it with me on MANY trips, even to Spain! I wrote in it on each train ride between cities to recap what we had done.

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But eventually, it became a hassle. I didn’t feel like recapping my day. I had never been great at keeping a diary and making a note of each time I fought with my bf seemed stupid and useless. Also, did that make me sad? Angry? Tired? Or was I still overall happy for the day? What would I put in my mood habit tracker?

I also started to fall very behind on my collections. Although I thought it was a good idea and I did enjoy crafting, it felt redundant. When I heard of a book I wanted to read, I put it on my Goodreads “want to read” shelf. Why would I also write it in my BuJo? Also, as I progressed with my braiding, I was bookmarking all of the braids I wanted to try within the Instagram app. Why would I also try to describe it in words in my BuJo? Same thing with my travel: I was already writing about it on my blog (sometimes), so why would I also waste my time and write about it by hand? Everything seemed superfluous and time-consuming.

I spent a few weeks scaling back, and only writing the highlights of my weeks, but I realized I wasn’t even using the bullet journal anymore as it is intended, as a planner and organizer, but more as a diary. Again, why would I use it as a planner when I have Google calendar on my phone, in my pocket? There are some things I miss, like tracking my social media stats, but I may just keep a running list of that in the memos in my phone, instead of a full craft-stravaganza.

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I understand that some people enjoy bullet journaling as a creative outlet, but overall, I don’t understand it as a time-saving method. To me, it was a huge time suck. Although it was fun, I would probably never do it again. I did, however, learn how to draw a SICK piggy bank! Have any of you experimented with bullet journaling? What did you think?