How to start a bullet journal
If you’ve looked on social media or Google and found anything about journaling, you’ve likely come across some people keeping a bullet journal. You might have seen these beautiful artistic spreads showing beautiful drawings, writing, and perfectly organised sections. While these are amazing to look at, you don’t have to be nearly as creative as that to start a bullet journal for the first time. You might just be someone who enjoys planning, crafting or writing, and wants to try something new. Your bullet journal is your own, so you can add whatever you would like to it and organise it in your own unique and creative way.
What is a bullet journal used for?
A bullet journal is a method of planning used to organise your whole life and keep yourself accountable to everything. You can also use your bullet journal to keep memories, track your goals, and as a creative and artistic outlet. The idea behind a bullet journal is that you keep all your lists, goals, thoughts, and life admin in the one place to keep yourself organised and on track. A bullet journal is like a planner, journal and sketch book all in one. As it is individual, you can include whatever you like in your bullet journal and make it just as unique as you are.
What you need to start bullet journaling:
The most important thing you need to start with is a journal. You can check out our bullet journals here, or any plain notebook or journal will work well. You will also need some pens, markers and/or pencils. I recommend having a few different colours so you can colour-code and create different designs for your pages. You will also need a ruler, and you may like some extra items such as stickers, washi tape, and any embellishments you like.
How to get started:
Title page:
To begin with, you might like to create a title page for your bullet journal. This is optional, but it is something that I love to do with each new journal. I love to put a new title, draw some creative pictures or patterns, and use different colours to make my title page look enticing. I love this as a form of creative expression. I’m not particularly creative, but if you look online, you will find some amazing title pages of bullet journals that people are willing to share. Here are a few of my favourites that I have found online:
Goals page:
Next, I recommend keeping a double page for writing down your goals and future plans. These can be big-picture goals or just little things that you want to focus on for the next few months. Some examples of this include fitness goals, journaling goals, books you want to read, family focuses, career goals, or anything else you want to achieve. Keeping these at the front of your journal is a great way to stay focused, and you can come back and check these off as you achieve them.
Monthly spread:
The next part of your bullet journal is your monthly spread. Open up a double page near the beginning of your journal (not the very first two pages as you might like to keep these to use as an index and to add to your future plans and goals). Rule your page so it is set out like a calendar. Within the calendar, you can write in all your important dates, birthdays, and appointments. If you are creative, you may like to decorate this, colour code it, or otherwise make it your own. If you prefer, you can keep it minimalist, with just the information in it. I prefer to keep mine minimalist, as otherwise I find I get too caught up in the drawing and artistic work and not enough into the actual planning!
Daily or weekly spread
After your monthly spread, open your journal to a double page and create yourself a weekly or daily spread. I like to keep one single page per day, but you could keep a weekly spread or use a full double spread per day or anything in between. Your daily or weekly spread is where you will write all the important things you need to know, remember, and focus on, as well as your habits and lists.
Firstly, I like to add my important events in each day. Any appointments, activities, events, birthdays, etc. I always add in my daily spread. Next, you can write in anything else that is important for you for the day. This could be anything such as habit tracking, meals you will cook, books you are reading, exercise you want to complete, or work tasks you want to complete. I also often love to write down things I am grateful for. This is a great way to improve your mood in the long term. Here, you can really write whatever is important to you. Remember, your journal is your own, so write the things that matter to you. There are lists all over the internet with ideas on what to put in your daily spread.
Habit Tracking:
After you’ve left enough pages to do your full month of bullet journaling, you might also like to keep some pages for other tasks. A common one many people love to use is habit tracking. If you have a goal that you would like to keep track of in the long term, a habit tracking page is a great way to do this. Habits could include things like eating healthy, exercising, drinking water, reducing social media usage, working on a book, a career-related goal, or anything else that is important to you. If you made a New Year's resolution, you can keep a habit tracking page for this to keep yourself accountable.
Lists:
This is one of my favourite parts of bullet journaling. You can keep a page for each of the different lists you need. You could keep one page aside for each week for things like your shopping list, meal plan, or weekly goals, and you can also keep some pages for longer-term goals and lists. Some of my favourite things to track on list pages include books I want to read, TV shows/movies I want to watch, and places I want to travel. You can keep as many of these pages aside as you like, and when it's time to start a new journal, you can copy these lists straight into your new journal. You may also like to cross off each of the items when you do them.
Daily log and journal:
If you love writing a daily journal or log, you can also keep pages aside for this. You can write down all your daily thoughts, memories, and anything that comes to your mind when you are writing. This is a great way to improve your mood and mental health in the long term, and I really love keeping a daily journal. If you prefer, you could also keep a separate lined journal for your daily thoughts and daily journaling. My favourite is the Hazelnut writing journal in our Writing Journals collection available here, but any journal or notebook will work perfectly well.
Art, craft, and creativity:
I’m more of a minimalist journaler, but a quick search for bullet journaling on social media or on Google will show you some of the amazing things that people create in their journals. If you love art and craft, you can really get creative and spend lots of time doing beautiful designs in your bullet journal. I have seen some creative people that do a new sketch or drawing each month, and some who include drawing and art in their daily spread each day. However, if you aren’t artistic, or if you just prefer something minimalist, that is totally fine as well. Bullet journaling is about what you as an individual want to create, so make your journal for yourself and what you need.
My tips for beginners:
1) Don’t try to do it all in one day. If you’re setting up a bullet journal for the first time, it’s easy to look online and find many, many different ideas on what to put in your journal. You can’t do it all at once, so just choose a few things that are important to you and add the rest later. There is no rush to add everything at once, and adding too many habits or trying to write too much per day may mean that you can’t actually keep up with it each day
2) Don’t worry if yours isn’t as artistic or creative as other people's. When you see the people with beautiful artistic spreads online, it’s easy to feel disheartened and like your journal is not as good as theirs. Just remember that these people have likely been journaling for years and have had years to perfect their ideas. Your journal will not look like this to begin with, and that’s ok. You have plenty of time to perfect your ideas and develop your creativity
3) Seek inspiration online: There are lots of journaling blogs and social media accounts out there. Go through and have a look for ideas and find some that inspire you.
4) Be consistent: Part of bullet journaling means you need to continue to keep your journal every day or week for the long term. Set aside a little bit of time each day to do your journaling. It doesn’t have to be long, but a few minutes each day will help keep you going for a long time.
Search through Instagram, Google, Tiktok or Pinterest to find inspiration! And I’d love to hear from you! If you have an amazing journal spread you’d love to share, tag us on social media @writeandcraft or use the hashtag #writeandcraft
This is a brand new business, and I am loving blog writing. It is something I have done for years in previous jobs. So make sure you check back in next week when I have a new blog post. Next time, I will be writing a blog with 50 ideas on what to write in your journal.
Happy journaling!
Rachel xxx