Often times people ask me how I keep everything in life organized and there are multiple systems that I use. In the next few weeks I’ll be setting up a Bullet Journal which is my preferred way to track personal goals and projects and I thought I’d bring you along as I create a whole year plan out of a $13 journal.

In fact, if you’d like to try out this method of organization, this is the journal I buy from Amazon and I’ll share in this post some of the other tools I use and why.

Before I dive into pictures and new posts about how my journal is set up, I want to share some of the why.

First, I totally embrace the digital revolution and use my computer like an extension of my brain. But there’s something charming about writing things down, physically, in pen or pencil. It’s the same reason that I journal in a physical journal every day: writing connects your thoughts to reality in a different way than simply typing. And it’s fun.

Now some common questions:

Is your bullet journal your agenda/calendar?

Not really. While there is a section for a weekly plan, I don’t use my journal to track what I need to do at what time each day. Instead I use Google Calendar which syncs my computers to my phone and has a handy little notification option so when I’m inevitably distracted I don’t miss a meeting. Plus, my calendar changes way too often to write it down in a notebook – plus have you ever tried putting a zoom link on paper? No thanks.

Do I need to be an artist?

Nope! There are some beautiful bullet journal spreads out there (spreads = 1 or 2 pages) and some have great sketches, perfect handwriting, stickers, tape, perfectly drawn circles… and then there’s the rest of us. For what it’s worth, I like making my journal look nice because I know I’ll use it more if it’s pretty. But I cannot draw and the majority of my pages use a ruler and pen.

Is it expensive?

It doesn’t have to be. The very basics, to me, are a journal, a pen, and a ruler. Of course you can add stickers, washi tape and use all manner of pens, highlighters and colored pencils. But it’s not necessary. I’ll share here some of the items that I’ve purchased over the last 4-5 years and how I use them but I want to insist that you do not need to go out and spend a lot of money to try this out.

I’ve already shared my journal, which is a dot matrix page, not lined or graph pages. To me it’s important to get a good journal otherwise you’ll be fighting the whole time. Imagine trying to cut out a large sign using dull scissors – it would be maddening, right? Same thought here. Get a nice, new journal made for bullet journaling and you’ll be happier.

Plus, they come in all manor of colors, I just prefer black but you could do yellow, aqua, purple, any color you want!

For writing in the journal I like consistency and this set of 10 black pens is very handy. I use the smaller nibs to make lines and grids in my journal and the middle ones to write. According to Amazon I’ve now purchased this set 6 times because I love them so much.

I also bought this set of 80 colored pens which I use for filling in daily grids. When I bought them I took 31 colors out and labeled them so I know what color to use for the 5th of the month and the 10th. To label I used a silver sharpie to write on the bottom of the pen’s shaft.

I don’t have a link for the ruler that I use because it came in a lot of sewing supplies, but if you’re shopping for one I would recommend at least 9″ so it fits all the way down a page, and clear if you can so you can see the dots to line up your grid.

Now, washi tape is fun. It’s a thin paper tape which is easy to lay down and remove from paper and comes in thousands of different designs. If you’re just starting, look for a set that you like because I have found that trying to buy them one at a time is more expensive and hard to make cohesive. Here’s a set of galaxy tape I love, and here are some Van Gogh tapes I’m drooling over and am trying to convince myself I don’t need. Too late, I bought them.

Trust me, you can very easily go down a rabbit hole of buying things you may never use instead of actually setting up your journal. Resist. If you find that you like the bullet journal process, I promise you can buy things along the way or for the next journal as needed.

In my next journal post I’ll share how I plan out my pages before even unwrapping my journal but first, some homework if you’re thinking of setting up a bullet journal yourself. Ask yourself these questions and, if you’re ambitious, take some notes in a Google doc or journal as you do:

• What personal challenges would I like to track?
• Are there any habits I want to build?
• What house projects need to be done?
• Are there any financial goals I want to track?
• What’s most important to me in my life right now?
• Are there any details which I need at hand regularly or in case of emergency?

We’ll talk about the types of pages you can try and how I decide what goes into my new journal which should be arriving in the mail… tomorrow!