For the longest time the only things I used for planning were: a letter or legal sized notepad, a monthly pocket calendar (the one you pick up from Dollar Tree or your local drug store for about $1, though I do remember the kids from the elementary school selling some every year), and a monthly wall calendar. That’s it. I kept up with my To Do’s on the pad of paper–I would date it at the top and then list my to-do’s, starting with the biggest priority things. I would put a check mark by it when I started it and then make the check mark and X when I was finished with it. I wrote all my bills, appointments, events, birthday’s, etc on both calendars. The wall calendar was so that I didn’t have to go digging through my purse to find my pocket calendar to know when certain bills were due, or when I needed to send out a birthday card, etc. This was before cell phones, Facebook, and app’s like Google Calendar. My system worked for decades.

Then when I was in my mid to late twenties (so 1990’s) I saw a coworker using this leather binder that she said was called a Franklin Covey. She said I could get something similar at Office Depot or Staples if I wanted to try it. So I did, but the rings… I am not, and never have been, fond of ring bound, spiral bound… but I tried it. After about a month I went back to my legal pad and pocket calendar. I’d kept the wall calendar because each month I got to laugh at a new Garfield or Snoopy or Ziggy cartoon, and all my children’t school stuff like holidays and teacher workdays, along with Doctor appointments, and our household bills were listed on that calendar–it was how I kept up with everything, and the to-do list was how I managed to remember what I’d done and completed versus what I’d started but hadn’t finished…

Fast forward a couple of decades and once again I was tempted by a ring bound planner, only this one was called a Filofax. Somewhere on my Youtube Channel there is a video about that Filofax… Needless to say, I still was not a fan of rings or spiral bound, but I did give it a good try. I also tried the Fauxbonichi, then the Hobonichi, the Bullet Journal, the Omni Journal, as well as a few other things like the Master Planner, Wordsmith Planner, the 90x Goal Planner, and the Creative Minds Journal…just to name a few. Recently, I’ve been using the Creative Minds Journal as a sidekick to my Bullet Journal, and the Hobonichi as my Personal Planner. I think I might have found my grove.

I just sent out my Newsletter for April, and I have to say that what I’ve recently been doing is really working well for me. The Bullet Journal is and isn’t a planner. It’s technically a Journal in which you can do all kinds of things in, from planning to sketching to journaling to taking notes, etc. After reading Ryder Carroll’s book about the Bullet Journal, I realized that I was focusing too much on things other people were doing in their bullet journals instead of what I really needed in mine. And that’s the great thing about the Bullet Journal System–you can make it your own. I did a blog post about the system here.

**Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission,which helps me purchase items to review, at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.**

I’ve realized learned a great deal since that blog post:

1. I don’t have to have a habit tracker unless I actually need one. There are other ways to track habits. Some habits do not need to be tracked. If a habit tracker works for you, great. But if it doesn’t, then it is okay not to include a habit tracker.
2. I love art and adding touches of art to the pages of my bullet journal brings me joy. Some days though, I just don’t have the time and I need more function, less pretty, and that’s okay. And some days the function is really messy… and that’s okay too!
3. I mess up and have to fix mistakes. Correction tape, white Posca Markers, and white Signo Uni-ball pens are my best friends.
4. I do NOT like cream paper. I prefer white paper, and so far for journals that don’t have Tomoe River paper my preference is the Archer & Olive notebooks, or the Scribbles that Matter notebooks. But my next Bullet Journal will be either a Taroko Design Breeze or a half year Stalogy notebook. I love those notebooks–not only is the paper white or nearly white, but it holds up to almost everything you put on the pages–from watercolor to fountain pens. Yes, you do have to let the ink dry, and yes the watercolor does wrinkle the paper slightly, but I like the crinkle the paper makes… it’s a lovely sound when you’re turning the pages.
5. Though I have seen many people using their Hobonichi’s to Bullet Journal, no matter how hard I’ve tried it just doesn’t really work for me. The Hobonichi is set up perfectly as a planner, plus there is more than adequate room on the daily pages to do a bit of planning and a bit of journaling, though if your handwriting is larger like mine, the grid is a bit small. And if you write a lot like I do, then that one page per day might not be enough for your journaling, documenting your day, art, etc. This is where the Bullet Journal comes in, at least for me, which is why I use them in conjunction with each other. That might be too much for some, not enough for others, but it works well for me. (And using the Creative Minds Journal, even though the pages are cream, for my “content creation plannng/projects” is working well enough, but I don’t think I’ll buy another of the journals… I’ll just use my bullet journal once I’ve either grown tired of the cream paper or fill the journal. And I’ll have an extra watercolor palette for my grandson Viktor to use.)

Figuring out what works and what doesn’t work isn’t always easy, but some of the best advice I’ve heard in regard to planning is this: if your system works then it doesn’t matter what planner you use. I’ve been honing my system. In a way, I’m now using a much fancier version of the system I used many, many moons ago when I was writing my to-do’s down on a pad of paper, and using a pocket calendar as my “everyday carry,” and my wall calendar in my kitchen as my planning hub. As we close up April over this next week, I’ve already found a weekly layout for my Bullet Journal, thanks to Eclectic Scribbles, and I’ve finally found my way through using my Hobonichi and my Bullet Journal system together, which I talked about in one of my videos in the Newsletter I just sent out.

On a side note, when I first started figuring out what I was going to do for May, I asked my Patrons what theme they’d like to see… I offered a few suggestions, most of which I’d already done before, but I wanted something different. And one of them said I could do a Garden theme… and the more I thought about it the more I realized that would be perfect. Do my own thing with the Garden theme, of course, but I could have fun with it. I love drawing and watercoloring so the idea of drawing garden tools, veggies, herbs, fruit… a garden gnome or three… definitely appealed to me. Thus, May’s spread in both my Bullet Journal and Hobonichi have a garden theme. If you’d like to see May’s spread now sign up for my Patreon page. Or you can wait for Friday when I’ll have the shorter, more time-lapsed version up on my Youtube Channel.

Hope you have a great week!

Thanks,

Burgess