BUJO Archives - Pinecone Papers

8 Ways to Simplify Your Bullet Journal Planning

jess — Mon, 06 May 2019 01:40:09 +0000

When I first started planning, I was captivated by the artistic and creative bullet journal spreads you see all over Instagram and Pinterest. Sometimes I still get a little creativity bug and spend hours drawing things out, but today I want to give you some tips on how to keep your planning simple. Do you find yourself shying away from using your planner because it’s taking too much time or effort? Planning should be the right mix of productivity, tracking, journaling and reflection. Each of us has our own formula for the “right mix”, but one things is for sure — you shouldn’t feel like it’s a full time job or exhausting! I use my BUJO each morning and some evenings. For the month of May, I’m trying to keep my layouts as simple as possible because I’m in a lupus flare and I just need something easy to work with. Here are some things I do to keep it simple. 1: Use templates Don’t reinvent the wheel for every tracker or weekly layout. Try using the same style throughout your planner or throughout a single month. This not only makes setup a lot easier, but it helps with understanding patterns and easily referencing past events. You can also download and print calendars, trackers or other layouts and then paste them into your planner or use page-sized sticker paper so you don’t need to draw everything out. Here’s a printable flare symptom tracker I created, if you need a template for tracking self-care and symptoms. 2: Plan your colors and themes to prevent “creator’s block” If you do like to get artistic with your planner, choose a theme before you get started each month. This can help keep your creativity flowing when facing a blank page. My May theme for this year incorporates purple butterflies. May is Lupus Awareness month and purple is the awareness color. The butterfly is often used as a sort of “mascot” for lupus. I’ll pick 2-3 purple colors and one accent color to use throughout the month, along with a couple of simple butterfly doodles I can place on pages as time and energy allows. The key here is to not go overboard with a giant color palette or too many intricate drawings if you’re keeping it simple. 3: Cut your words in half If you’re the only one reading your planner, you can easily cut your words in half, especially in your bulleted task or event lists. Examples: “Go to the pharmacy” becomes “pharm” “Madison has band practice at 2pm” becomes “2pm M Band” “Watch Game of Thrones at 7pm” becomes “7pm GOT” “Get oil changed in the morning” becomes “Oil AM” This is also known as “rapid logging”. I know some planners who also use their own shorthand or codes throughout their planner, which cuts down on space and time! 4: Nail down some simple (and fast) headers you can use everywhere One of the ways to spice up your planner and also keep it simple is to learn one or two fonts that you can easily draw when creating your headers. I like a faux-calligraphy or brush lettering font and a simple upper-case font for my headers. When I stick to just two styles, I can get things down on paper much faster and easier. If you’re looking for inspiration, here’s a fun blog post from bannersnack showing 50 lettering fonts. 5. Use Sticky Notes Sticky notes are great to keep around the house when you aren’t sitting with your planner. I keep some in the kitchen, in my purse and next to my bed so I can jot down any tasks or thoughts that come up. This has helped me “brain dump” and then I can sort the notes and add everything the next time I sit down with my BUJO. They’re also great for helping you layout any pages or spreads and I use them as place-holders when I’m planning out a new month. 6. Audit your layouts and collections every month For a long time, I was just doing the same thing over and over each month, assuming I needed to duplicate everything to be productive. But what I didn’t realize was that some of my pages were actually causing me to dread using my planner. Sometimes we outgrow a specific layout or we have moved into a different season of our lives. Perhaps you don’t want to find more Netflix shows to binge this month, or you have really nailed your 3-month mission to drink more water and now it’s a well-established habit you don’t need to track. Look back over the last month and only set up pages and sections that are truly serving you. 7. Make mistakes and embrace time gaps A sure-fire way to stop using your planner is to never allow yourself to make mistakes or miss filling in your trackers or calendar spreads. You’re human and your planner is not being submitted to the Hall of Perfectionism! Let yourself cross things out, write the wrong date, get confused, say the wrong thing, ramble, use the wrong color, or spill tea on some pages. Most importantly, when you’re really feeling terrible or going through something difficult, give yourself permission to neglect your planner so you can just get through the day! I’ve talked about why it’s perfectly okay to neglect your planner here, and it’s important to cut yourself some slack. 8. Go back to basics I’ve saved this tip for last because it’s often suggested but can also be tough. It’s something people really don’t want to do if they’ve already been planning for some time and enjoy the creative styles they worked hard to learn. BUT, if you’re finding that you’re making excuses to not use your planner like, “it takes too long to draw that out,” or “I’ll need to find some inspiration first”… it might feel great to just get back to basics. If you’re using the Bullet Journal Method, I recommend heading back to Ryder Carroll’s site and reading through how to set up and use a bullet journal. Then, grab a single pen and put everything else away for a while. Use only one pen and just use the method as Ryder teaches it. If you’re using a planner like Happy Planner, the same thing applies — put all of your pens and stickers away for a bit and just use a single pen and maybe one highlighter. Now, you may find (like I did when I tried this) that the creative part of planning is actually a huge motivation for you and stripping that away is difficult. But, you’ll also find that the act of planning is much easier when you go back to basics and this can bring you back to a productive baseline for a little while. Give it a try if you’re feeling overwhelmed and just need to simplify. What has helped you keep things more simple in your planner? Feel free to reach out to me at jess@pineconepapers.com and share your ideas!

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Why Sometimes it’s Perfectly Okay to Neglect Your Bullet Journal

jess — Sat, 17 Jun 2017 20:35:50 +0000

When I first started bullet journaling, I was so excited and full of ideas that I could have spent an entire week writing, listing, lettering and drawing. Like many new passions, I dove in head first and couldn’t imagine missing a single day. But is that realistic? A few months in, I had a lupus flare up and I went into “survival mode” which meant I was lucky if I could cook dinner for my family, let alone plan for the next day. Once I adjusted to the flare, I felt bad that I had missed an entire week in my BUJO. Guilt is a powerful feeling. It can be a great motivator to help us make positive changes in our lives. But, for many of us, it can also be a giant weight around our necks that keeps us from rising up and moving forward. I began to ask myself, “If the BUJO is supposed to be a simple tool to help me, why do I feel guilty for neglecting it?” The answer is actually pretty simple. I felt I wasn’t being productive – and that was just unacceptable! The house could be on fire, the flood is raging down the street, the sky is falling — but I must get the task list checked off! It scared me to think that I lost a week — but that’s because while bullet journaling is the best way I’ve found to keep me on task, seeing blank spreads and white pages is pretty “in your face” about what you didn’t get done. I needed to overcome those feelings, so I opened up that box of guilt and mindfully explored how to get back on track while acknowledging that it will happen again. I’d love to share my thoughts on this in hopes that it will help you feel okay with neglecting your own BUJO sometimes! I think it’s really important to think through reasons you may drop journaling so that you can pick it back up again and let it continue to be a positive force in your life. When Life gets Crazy – Give Yourself some Grace There will always be times where you need time to rest, recover, or take a break from daily routines. Sometimes, life throws some pretty big curveballs. Remember how I mentioned “survival mode” before? We’ve all been there. You’ve lost your job. You just got some scary news about your health. You’ve just lost a loved one. In those times of crises, you may actually find a sense of distraction and normalcy by writing in your bullet journal and keeping to a schedule. Or, you may find it incredibly overwhelming while you’re navigating a “new normal”. In times like these, it’s critical to ask yourself: “Is my bullet journal helping me feel better right now, or is it causing more stress?” If it’s making you feel overwhelmed to keep up with your daily spreads, then give yourself some grace and take a little break. Life is also going to throw some magical times at you! Your sister is in town for the long weekend. You’re hosting a huge birthday party for your son. You’re on a vacation with your friends and happily dropping into bed each night, exhausted from the day’s activities. When you’re too busy with a big life event or you only have a few precious days to spend with family or friends, your bullet journal can wait until life is back to normal. Explore WHY you like using a bullet journal When I got back into my journal, I needed to truly understand why I do it and why I love it so much. Once I purposefully wrote down my reasons, it became clear that it’s SO much more than a task-management system and collection organizer. Journaling helps me be mindful and focus on improving myself. Rather than being reactionary and trying to cope with things as they happen to me, my journal helps me create a space where I can: Purposefully plan ahead for greater things Recognize and document what I am grateful for Find patterns in my health, behaviors and habits that I can improve Organize my thoughts and feelings Engage my mind in a new way (handwriting and drawing) Express myself creatively Once I realized all of the ways my bullet journal helps me, it actually helped release a lot of my guilt over neglecting it here and there. Why? Because it’s actually a lot of work to feel and do all of those things in that list! While they are all very important to my well-being, make no mistake — it’s also work. Writing down all the ways your bullet journal helps you can quickly show how much hard work you put into your journaling — and into yourself! (Hey, you’re awesome!) This activity is a really great way to also identify sections you could completely neglect while keeping to bare-bones essentials. Maybe you just came down with the flu. Would it be okay to only write out tomorrow’s task list and leave out your ‘grateful for’s’, health tracking and daily summary? Of course! The main take-away here is that sometimes you just need to let yourself BE. You don’t always have to take advantage of all the wonderful ways your BUJO helps you. Maybe it feels like too much work sometimes, or maybe you just don’t need to get into all that every day! Be flexible and give yourself some grace. For me, living with a chronic illness and having a big family means there are plenty of days when life is throwing some heavy stuff my way (good and bad). Sometimes I need to take a break. Other days, life is feeling very peaceful and slow. I’ll be sitting outside watching the birds in my garden and journaling doesn’t even come to mind. And that’s perfectly okay. I hope some of this has resonated with you! I’d love to hear your own thoughts on neglecting your BUJO. Feel free to leave a comment below or you can email me at jess@pineconepapers.com!

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