BuJo – an update

Roughly two years ago I wrote about my journey with the Bullet Journal. It has continued to make my life more manageable even as I continue to tweak my process and what and how I record things. At this point, I’m going through roughly a journal per quarter and that suits me well. I’ve moved from Leuchtturm notebooks to using Scribbles that Matter notebooks, mostly because the paper doesn’t bleed as badly when working with fountain pens.

Over the last two years, I’ve learned a lot about what works for me and what doesn’t. I’ve simplified some things and complicated others.

Take my yearly spreads, or future log:

One of the things I gave up fairly early on once I actually started using the BuJo on a daily basis was the elaborate fonts I was using to decorate my journal. They were fun, but they also took a lot of time and ain’t nobody got time for that.

On the other hand, my weekly spread has gotten more involved, in some interesting ways:

I saw this spread on Twitter, tried it and so far, after four weeks, I’m loving it. It’s a little bit involved to make it, so I’m not sure at this point if it’s going to stay, but for now I like it.

My dailies, on the other hand, have gotten a boost from Jessica Abel’s Creative Focus workshop:

I’m still tracking my sleep, my words and my exercise. This year I’m also tracking the daily temperature because I’m making my sister a temperature tracking blanket and this way I don’t need to knit on it every day. The big part that came from Jessica Abel is sitting right beneath those trackers; color coded hourly schedule. I’m working hard on only adding stuff to my daily todo that I can actually finish, and that schedule works for me to make it slightly more likely.

What’s changing?

I think for the next quarter, my collections are going to have to go down in number, anyway. I mean, it’s getting ridiculous:

I’ll need to think harder about what to keep. I will probably cut out the trackers. I like the idea of them and I like being able to see my year at a glance for example, but it’s cumbersome to keep up and update, not to mention to transfer from journal to journal. Another option is to just keep one journal with the yearly stuff and only transfer the stuff that needs updating frequently, so as to allow for more space for notes on other stuff, like plot, and such.

On the other hand, last night I participated in Fran Wilde’s class, Journaling for Creativity, in which Fran talked a lot about the way she keeps her plot journal and I gotta say, I’m pretty excited about it.

I gotta be honest; so far I haven’t found a set up that works for my creative projects in the BuJo world so Fran’s setup, somewhat modified, might actually really work for me. Regardless, I am really looking forward to finding that out. And if it does, it might let me take some more collections out of the daily BuJo.

Listen, whatever you may think based on the fact that I’m starting to talk about carrying around multiple journals, I do not have a problem. I can stop any time I want. Really. I am not at all already itching to buy more journals. Not me.

Do you keep journals? If you do, what have you found that works for you?