The holy grail of journal and schedule enthusiasts: the bullet journal. For those unfamiliar or learning, the bullet journal is a personalized schedule in which the user creates a layout to outline their day, week, month, and year along with their goals and accomplishments as they go. The bullet journal has gained popularity over the past few years because of its versatility and photogenic nature.

To start a bullet journal you can find a lot of inspiration with a quick search on Google to find blogs, Pinterest for assorted pictures and tutorials, and Instagram for photo inspiration and even videos that might be expanded on YouTube. Many of the things you see may look complicated, and the time spent on the lettering and borders and the straightness of the lines might make you feel to intimidated to try but a bullet journal is something unique to you, and can be as complicated or easy as you wish.

The main elements to the bullet journal are as follow:

The Journal

The Journal can be anything as simple as a composition notebook to a Leuchtturm journal as long as it suits you. Many people like dotted journals, second are grid journals, then lines, lastly blank. The dots and grid allow the user to easily block off the spacing for the journal and assist with straight lines but for the more creative a blank journal might be preferred or the simplistic just lined. In tangent with that, you might just pick up whatever empty journal you have on your desk and start.

The Key

Typically the first page, there are many variations on a key, some include simple boxes, others a 5-marker-color-code-system, others a simple check mark. Or if you don’t think you want or need a key it could be excluded. Also on this page is often a return address or phone number in case the hournal is lost at some point.

The Year at a Glance

The year at a glance is a spot to write out what you have going on in the months ahead so you can quickly look at it for scheduling purposes. My journal has a month written as you’d see on a calendar, but other spreads have just the month and a list of the dates within the month running down the page to be filled as they go. Design it however you like, or skip this page if you feel it unnecessary for how you wish to bullet journal

Monthly/Weekly/Daily Spread

How you wish to further break up your time is up to you. If you have a very busy schedule a daily spread might be best to break down everything you have to do, if your medium busy a weekly might be better suited, and if you don’t have too much going on maybe all you need is a monthly. You can have a combination of layouts–a monthly layout before a weekly layout, a weekly before a daily, etc.–and can play with it as you go and decide whats better suited for you.

You can further personalize these layouts with add-ins like:

>mini trackers–meals, water, sleep, etc to see how your habits are and improve them

>weekly/monthly trackers–tasks you hope to do frequently like exercise or clean so you can monitor how often you’re doing them and notice habits to begin doing them more or less frequently

>running to-do lists

>A notes section

>Or anything else you can think of

Collections

Typically in the back of the journal, but really wherever you choose, collections are pages you can refer to throughout your time using the bullet journal. Collections can be anything from a list of books you’ve read recently, monitoring your Netflix queue, Christmas list ideas, a key of all your passwords that you forget, etc. It’s something to refer to and add to so you can see what you've been up to, hope to accomplish, or need to remember. Again, the user can do as much or little with these as they please

Overall, know that bullet journals vary greatly. Maybe you bullet on a need be basis on days you’re busy, or maybe you bullet every day and have your year ahead planned out. There’s no wrong way to do it, which is why it’s so popular. Don’t be intimidated by the expectations you see online or all the sections, keep it as basic or complex as you need. This is supposed to be a fun tool you make for yourself, not something to stress over.

*Note: all photos come from my summer bullet journal, which is really just an old journal I had lying around. My journal is not need to be new and pristine and I use a paperclip to keep my place. It doesn’t have a fancy color coding system, and my lines aren’t always straight, just how I like it.