Friday Favorites: Bullet Journaling
someone really needs to tell me to stop buying planners
I love notebooks, pens, and planners. Every year I carefully choose my paper planner book for the year, and by fall at the latest, I abandon it for a simple Bullet Journal in a notebook.
There are a million places to read about Bullet Journaling on the internet, but this one by Kendra Adachi is my favorite. It is a self-created “planner” (and I say that very loosely) in any old notebook with any old pen. It doesn’t require fancy stuff but you can use your fancy pens and highlighters if you want. It’s flexible - use as much space per day or week as you need, or skip days if you need to.
Every month I create one page with a list of all the dates and upcoming events or deadlines. My “source of truth” is our family Google calendar, so the recreation in my notebook is to be aware of what’s coming up. I make another page with my “brain dump” of my tasks.
I then look back at the previous month’s pages and find anything left undone, and (this is key) DECIDE whether it really needs to be done and added to this month’s list.
Each day I make a super simple entry listing my tasks and events, possibly grabbing some from the monthly list. I might add some notes or “fun facts” about the day, or I might not. I try to write something I’m grateful for when I remember.
This notebook also holds meeting notes (work and personal) and all manner of lists for hobbies and activities. When it gets full, I go through it and transfer anything I want to keep really long-term into my Notion “2nd brain” reference database. In all honesty, there isn’t a TON I need to transfer - I’m mostly happy holding on to those notebooks, and digging through them to find something.
My “holy grail” notebook is a German nuuna L with 256 numbered pages and a teeny-tiny light dot grid on the pages. I found my first one in a bookstore in Norway on vacation and immediately fell in love. Trillian and I had a small business in Washington selling them in 2017 when you couldn’t get them in the US, and I have a few left over from our inventory that I’m hoarding.
But now Barnes and Noble carries a few (though not all of the cool designs) so I feel confident I can find one again when needed. I’ve filled up at least 4 of these with previous years’ Bullet Journals and I love having them as keepsakes of my life during that time - they feel more personal than a day planner due to the other stuff I include, like books I’ve read or clothing wish lists.
I started my 2025 Bullet Journal in June, and am already 50 pages in thanks to the American government class I’m taking. Due to the volume of notes for that class, I’m going to start taking notes for the next section in another notebook I keep for book summaries because I’m afraid I won’t have enough room for the rest of the year in the same notebook.
This is a habit I find easy and pleasing, so I stick with it especially if I have the right notebook and pens. My handwriting improves dramatically because it’s one of the few things I actually write by hand!
Have you tried Bullet Journaling? Do you like it?
I love the idea of bullet journaling and use many of it's concepts in OneNote. To sit and write in an actual notebook isn't something I can get into a routine for - especially for work. But I can with OneNote! I use the Move it forward, decide if it needs to be done, etc. And those photos of the kidlets...how were they so small?