I love using day/week/month planners, but have always found them to be far too rigid. I usually end up with a weekly planner, a food and exercise tracker, and at least one or two other notebooks with things like grocery lists and to-do lists of various types. As an artist, I also tend to carry around a mini sketchbook and a larger sketchbook for drawing while I’m out and about. If you’ve been doing the math up till now that is something like 5 or 6 notebooks in my purse…which gets a bit heavy when added to a pen/pencil case, wallet, various meds that I keep on my person, a cardigan (I do live in the NW), and whatever else I happen to be carrying around.
From bottom to top: Canson 10×7 Sketchbook, Weekly Planner, Lined Notebook, Diet and Exercise Journal, Strathmore 6×6 Art Tiles, Small Moleskine Notebook
With the baby on the way, I know that I’m going to need to slim down my personal items so that I’ll have more room for carrying around her stuff. So I’ve decided to take up this bullet journaling craze that has been sweeping the creative community for some time now. The dot grid planner is far more versatile and can combine all of my notebooks into one, though I will still carry around a separate sketchbook, but hopefully not two.
If you have never heard of bullet journaling, check out this blog, Boho Berry by Kara Benz. She has compiled a huge library of inspiration, ideas, and tricks related to the idea of bullet journaling and planning. This is a great place to start, but don’t stop there! There are tons of ideas out there in the vastness of the internet and the great thing about it is that you can adapt it to fit your exact needs and change it up if you get bored or if it stops working for you.
I ordered a dot grid journal and some colorful pens (not that I need more of those) from Amazon which will get here tomorrow or Friday, and I’m very excited about it! After doing a ton of research into how other people have used their bullet journal, I decided to start doing some pre-planning for how to best use mine.
I know that I want to have a weekly format with space for each day, here are a couple of the images that I’m feeling inspired by:
I want to keep track of daily information like water and food intake, appointments, and daily to-do lists. The weekly sections will be for meal planning, important tasks and projects for the week, as well as my weekly weigh ins.
From Megan at pageflutter.com
For the monthly planner I’m really only looking for a basic calendar layout for tracking birthdays, holidays, major events, and monthly body measurements. Something similar to the one above should suit my needs well.
On top of this, I’m planning to make some extra monthly pages for habit, chore, and expense tracking.
The main thing I want for the year is a yearly overview with space for major events, goal setting, and savings goals.
There are a couple of other things I want to be able to track like house remodeling projects, a semester overview once I start back to school, reading lists, and gift ideas. That shouldn’t be a problem, I’ll just add them in wherever I happen to be in the notebook and then make sure to add them to the index so that I can find them later.
All in all I’m really excited about getting started and can’t wait for my supplies to get in! If you’ve used dot grids to plan out your life before, what are some of your favorite layouts? Would you consider using this over the more traditional planners or digital calendars?
Nerdy Wife, Nerdy Life 
You’re right! I’m intrigued. I may have to wait until I get there to have time to play around with it, but it sounds cool to have everything all in one place like that.
LikeLike
I might try this… Tho I don’t think mine will look as neat as yours!
LikeLiked by 1 person