Hi, this is a continuation of my bullet journaling journey from November 2017!! If you haven’t read that one, go read it here
So December 2017 was my second month of doing bullet journaling. If were being really honest, it was kind of a bust for me. During this month, I went through my first college finals season. I knew it was going to be hard just from all the tweets I’ve seen, but oh my gosh. It did not prepare me in the slightest as to what occurred. It seemed like everyday i had a huge list of stuff to do that almost never was finished in entirety, I had zero motivation and ran on coffee and one meal most days. I don’t think I handled it as well as I could have which is why it was so tough for me,but there were some things I did learn.
Its ok to have random pages of notes/schedules in between your weekly spreads
I would be in class when my professor was going over our schedule for the rest of the semester, or my sorority would be going over important dates, and I would be confused as to where to write all of these things down because I didn’t want to mess up the order of my weekly spreads. After throwing it out the window one day because I absolutely HAD to write down what my professor was saying, I realized that it didn’t matter if there was a break between weeks because I didn’t look back at past weeks unless I was trying to find my monthly spread. After that, I felt like I was getting more out of my bullet journal because I wasn’t restraining it to only a calendar but also an organization of my notes.
For me, I need a daily sticky note section for all the little tasks I do and leave the day section for meetings and such
Every day I like to remind myself to drink water, and I had 17 credits worth of classes. This required me to do several little tasks every single day. The amount of room I had in my bullet journal was just not enough for everything I wanted to write down to the point where I couldn’t read what I had written because it was so small. Instead, I started boxing off an area to put a sticky note every day. I really liked this because it kept my other days looking clear for meetings and such, and then at the end of the day (or lets be real, the next morning) it was SO satisfying to rip off the sticky note, crumple it up, and throw it away!!
It’s ok to not make it pretty
The very last week of finals, I was pretty defeated. The only energy I had was to write exactly what I needed and nothing else. At first I felt bad about it because it looked so plain and sad. However, I had plenty of room to keep writing things and I didn’t get distracted by the quotes or colors on my page, my eye went straight to the information I needed. So, just keep in mind that if you have a crazy busy week or just don’t end up having the motivation to make your spread “pretty”, that is 100% ok.
Filling in a tiny little box is not really that satisfactory
My habit tracker? Got about halfway through before I just gave up. Filling in that tiny little box just did not satisfy me enough to actually do the activity. I think for January I will make trackers that take up a whole page so I will feel more compelled to accomplish the things I want to accomplish.
Overall, this month was quite the learning experience but it’s making me even more excited for January’s’ spreads!!!