What Is A Bullet Journal? How Can It Help Us?

If you use instagram, you must have heard of BuJo (Bullet Journal) a million times now. Bullet journal gained a lot of publicity recently and how! Bullet journal has been tagged on more than a million posts already! Now can you get an idea of how popular it is?

Now, publicity doesn’t necessarily indicate efficiency.  Everything that shines isn’t gold, it’s best for you to test it out for yourself. Some people are head over heels in love with bullet journalling and some just found it to be very confusing.

Bullet journal method includes a lot of things. You can write about your thoughts and feelings as well as make a To-Do-List. It’s like an all in one journal and I think it uses the note making technique. Let’s not assume anything yet, shall we dig deeper into what’s the point of a bullet journal?

What Is A Bullet Journal?

A bullet journal is an all-in-one journal which has sections to log all your needs. It is a chaos free method to coordinate and achieve all your personal as well as professional goals. It has a place for everything that you’d like to journal, just like:

• To-Do-List
• Written meditation
• Day planner
• Basic thoughts tracking
• Personal diary
• Monthly calendar
• Long term and short term goals
• Progress tracker, etc

You can store information, needs, affirmations, feelings, etc in a bullet form, basically how you attempt note making. Everythings is precise and crisp and easily identifiable because you are supposed to use different bullet keys for different logs that you choose to enter.

Also Read: 20 Journaling Prompts For Self-Love & Self-Confidence

What Is Bullet Journaling Method?

Bullet journaling is not as difficult but it’s also not very easy. Once you get the hang of it then it definitely is going to be easy for you. If bullet journalling seems overwhelming, you can start small, begin with dailly logging or emotions tracking.

Before you begin, find out why you want to use a bullet journal. What’s your motive? What you want the journal to do for you. Once that is sorted, you can begin with the process. You can begin journaling in the form of bullets and each bullet journal follows a certain format:

1. Index: Just like most books, an index in a bullet journal consists of a table of content, page number and different symbols  of the keys you will be using. It is usually in the beginning of the journal, first or second page.

2. Future log: It is a 4-5 pages long calendar type of a spread where you are supposed to jot down your future goal, events, birthdays, etc. basically you have to note down everything you plan to do in the recent future. It’s like a blueprint for your future plans.

3. Monthly log: it is similar to the future log, the only difference is that it is only for a month (30-31 days). You need to write all that you have planned for a month.

4. Daily log: and this one, again, similar to future and monthly log, requires you to jot down your plan for the day.

Does this description of the journal give you a bit of an idea for what has to be done?

Now that you got a gist of what a bullet journal looks like and how you are supposed to fill it, it’s time to learn how to assign the keys.

Also Read: Journaling For Mental Health – An Outlet For Feelings

What Are Bullet Journaling Keys?

Each of the information you plan to add in the journal has to be assigned a symbol. Those symbols are known as keys for bullet journaling. These keys can be any symbol that you want to assign to your entries.

Here is an example of how you can assign keys:

• A bullet () for tasks
• Underscore (_) for Events
• Astric (*) for priorities
• Dash (-) for events and calendar notes
• The exclamation mark (!) for inspiration, affirmations, etc
• Arrow for thoughts and feeling

Now once you have assigned specific symbols to all your entries, make sure you use these keys before you write anything so that when you are looking at the journal you can quickly identify which one is which.

The method makes bullet journalling free of chaos and becomes well coordinated.

Also Read: 50+ Daily Gratitude Journal Prompts That Will Change Your Life Forever

How To Start Writing A Bullet Journal?

Bullet journal does require a tad bit of homework that you have to do before beginning the process. For example, getting the keys ready and deciding what to want from journaling. Once that is sorted you can begin with filling out the daily log for starters.

Once you get used to that, try filling the future and monthly logs too within the first week of journaling so that you can set your priorities and your goals. After that’s done you can journal normally, daily logging and analyzing your progress at the end of every month and year likewise.

Endnote

Bullet journaling can sort your life so well. I mean, you can have everything in that one tiny book of yours. All your tasks, goals, affirmations,thoughts, emotions, etc can be journaled all together. You can customize your bullet journal however you like.

I hope you enjoyed reading this blog and are motivated to get yourself a bullet journal and start using it to make your lives simpler and hustle free. I hope bullet journal makes your life free of physical and mental chaos just like it did for many others.

Thanks for reading.

Take care and stay safe.