How Will I Plan for 2020? Try BOJO! (Bullet Journal)
I just looked up from my to-do list to realize it’s 2020, already racing toward the end of January! I’m finally getting in the groove with a new planner and jumping into my planning for the year. A little late, but hey, it’s December somewhere, right?
Um, right, maybe not, but every year, usually in January or February, I find myself rethinking my entire planning system. More times than I’d like to admit, I’ve changed it up, made a mess of things, and gone back to the familiar. One method I keep dreaming about is BOJO—that’s Bullet Journal, for the uninitiated. I look through IG feeds with longing, envy. It’s so personal, so flexible, so beautiful. Unless your handwriting is like mine. Then it’s so artifact of madness. Anyway, not long ago a fellow planning aficionado shared this article at Quill.com where I found the most incredible infographics about bullet journaling. I mean, these make it seem so simple and really truly make me want to pick up my pen(s) again!
I was given permission to share the infographics with you, and I hope you will share them far and wide. Let’s start a BOJO revolution!
How to Rock Your Bullet Journal
Really, these are more than infographics. They’re a full how-to-bojo-guide in visual form. Amazing!
Is BOJO in your future?
It may be in mine—someday, when I’m running a little less crazed from one obligation to the next. I love the forever-ness of it, except in my experience it was a forever of weeks of neglect, scribbled notes, inability to draw a straight line…. Right now I need a tool that does the customizing for me. But my heart still belongs to BOJO. So what else have I tried and what am I using now? This history of my life in planners would look something like …
Multiple years with eXcompta/Quo Vadis’s Visual before switching to Space 21 when I decided I wanted paper thick enough to write in gasp PEN!
A year or so of floundering with various office-box-store type planners that largely went unused.
An enthusiastic attempt at BOJO (Bullet Journaling) that quickly became a thorough mess. You mean I have to add page numbers MYSELF?!? Create an index? I had a newborn at the time. I didn’t have time to shower let alone create an awesome calendar/spread each month.
Which led to at least a year (or more? I don’t recall) not planning at all—Have phone, Will take notes and use calendar app. This actually worked pretty well for me until I needed to get serious about getting life done.
Discovery of the Happy Planner. First I tried the Mini. Nope nope nope. So I got the regular size and used the smaller discs from the Mini (because I sort of hate the disks).
Switched for about 4 months to the Passion Planner (because discs, I just really dislike them). I liked it. Until my cover started to disintegrate and I missed my custom planning pages and I didn’t have enough space to write things and … I switched back to the Happy Planner. Happily enough, until this year when I sought again to find the perfect planner.
Late December, despite having a new Happy Planner (bought on sale with a coupon!) I ordered Clever Fox Undated and realized I am just NOT going to write in dates—which was what kept me from Bullet Journaling in the first place—ah, how quickly I forget! Am now I’m two weeks into using a new, pretty sweet planner, Un|bound. So far so good. More on that later!
Links to Some of my Fave Planners and Supplies
(affiliate because it’s easy and I’m lazy ;-) )