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I absolutely LOVE the idea of bullet journaling. A bullet journal is basically a planner that you completely create yourself. You choose what you want in it and draw those spreads on your own in a blank notebook.
I could watch people create bullet journals in Plan With Me videos all day. I get inspired by seeing other people’s creativity and how beautiful the spreads turn out. It just seems like such a perfect way to feel like you have your life together. You can have literally everything you need in one spot because it’s completely customized to you. You can have mood trackers, habit trackers, calendar layouts and lists, literally whatever you want.
Time Consuming
I love the freedom bullet journaling provides, but it came with some negatives.
The first was that it is extremely time-consuming to set up each month. First, I would come up with the theme. Then draw the spreads out in pencil, erase, adjust, redraw and then I would color over with marker. So essentially, I was drawing each individual spread out twice.
I only drew out one month at a time so I had to keep a list of events/appointments that went out farther than one month. That list got pretty long and I realized I prefer being able to look ahead and put it into my calendar right away.
Amount of Upkeep
The next downside was that I had a hard time keeping up with the trackers I included. I would forget or just not feel like filling out the trackers every day and once I fell behind, I would tell myself that I would just do better next month. I would then continue to look at it and feel guilty that I spent time creating the spread and then didn’t use it like I should have.
Basically, it was too difficult for me to keep up with it. I’m such a perfectionist, so drawing out the spreads took me a lot of time because I wanted it to end up being perfect.
After a few months, I decided to leave out the tracker spreads. That left a monthly calendar spread, a weekly calendar spread and a to-do list spread. At that point, I decided that it wasn’t worth it for me to continue with a bullet journal. As much as I enjoyed the creative freedom and the customizable aspect of it, I just found it to be too time-consuming for me. It was no longer worth it to me after I cut out the tracker spreads.
The spreads that I actually used were the same ones I could find in a planner I could buy. I could then spend the time that I used to take to make my spreads every month and use it in other creative ways. (I have a lot of Cricut projects stacking up).
What I use now
Instead, I now use a Happy Planner. It has the two spreads that I used the most, the monthly spread and the weekly spreads. I put my to-do lists under each specific day. The Happy Planner doesn’t allow me to customize the spreads as much as I could with a bullet journal, but I can use stickers to really make it my own and make it work for me. It’s a lot less time consuming and still has everything that I wanted in a planner.
As much as I love the idea of bullet journaling and being creative with my planner, it wasn’t for me. When it comes to a planner, I have realized that I prefer to have something ready for me to fill up, rather than having to draw out my calendars each month.
I really give props to all those bullet journalers out there. I wish that it would have worked out for me. Let me know what you use for your planning!