Heads up! There is a new trend going around. For all of my organization/planner junkies, the bullet journal is truly a must. If you type into the search-bar on Google “bullet journal”, the result is a long list of sites all describing it as the “analog system of the digital age”. I was not sold on the idea right away. To me, this system appeared to be just someone creating their own planner in a notebook, which seemed fine, but I was still confused about why there seemed to be these intensely passionate bullet journalists. The more I read up on the system the more it made sense. The purpose of a bullet journal is to have an organized system for planning your day as well as space to jot down notes/ideas you might get throughout the day. It is this heaven where goals, ideas, and days are all logged and organized for later reference. When creating a bullet journal everyone has different methods based on their specific life-style. For example, a student’s set-up will be much different from someone who is working full-time. Here are the 5 things that every bullet journal user must have:

1. The Index page

The very first page of any bullet journal is the index where you would keep track of what you had in your journal and where it occurred.

2. The Key

Ever find that you are in the middle of taking notes and have no idea what your random symbols mean? The key page is created to avoid getting confused trying to look back at your previous notes. You can dress it up and add colors if you like, but personally I enjoy the simplicity of just having different shapes and symbols for everything.

3. The Lists/Focus page

Have anything that you need to get done on a regular basis? This page is convenient for the user because you no longer have to write the same to do list every time. It is also nice for those of us who from time to time forget about the small things that need to get done. Am I the only one who has gone multiple months without vacuuming by mistake?

4. Daily pages

The daily pages can be small or multiple pages long. These are your classical agenda type pages, but with a twist. Many people enjoy writing down notes to themselves about ideas or things that they need to remember when they get home. People also sometimes use these pages to document their days in the sense that they will have journal entries to go along with each individual day.

5. Miscellaneous/ Goal pages

These are my absolute favorite pages of all. A place where you can be creative and track your goals and priorities. Many people use graphics such as the pie-charts in this example where they can color in portions as they progress through the steps of completing each goal. The hardest part of reaching any goal is when I am in the middle of working towards something, and I get this feeling of 'I have done SO MUCH WORK, but I also do not think I will ever finish this thing!", using the visuals to track my progress really helps because then I can actually see how far I have come and how far I have left. I have also seen people use these pages to track books that they want to read or list out workout routines. The only limit for these pages is the users imagination.

I am absolutely ecstatic about testing out my first bullet journal. I already ordered a cute notebook on Amazon and am awaiting its arrival so that I can begin. Who is ready to test this out with me?