“What the heck is bullet journaling?” is probably your first response to the title. That’s ok! Up until two years ago, I wondered that exact question.

Bullet journaling is simply journaling... but on steroids (and an uncomfortable amount of glue and tape, but we’ll save that for later). A bullet journal is most often used as a planner, but is meant to include a magnitude of your own creativity put on paper. That probably sounds super vague, and that’s because it’s meant to be vague: there’s no clear cut way to do your journal. You can have a bullet journal that is only planners, you can have a journal that only fawns over that one K-pop group that you have secretly been stalking, or can literally be pages upon pages of the

Communist Manifesto; it’s all tailored to what you want in your journal, so it’s hard to generalize what a bullet journal is supposed to be.

However, to a beginner bullet journalist, or anyone who wants to try something new to organize their life, and doesn’t know where to start, here’s a beginner's guide to how to bullet journal:

1. Buy a Journal. This seems a bit obvious, but this is your foundation. Should you use a lined (lined like your average school notebook), dotted (pages upon pages of grids composed simply of dots) or blank journal (i hope this one speaks for itself)? What size to choose? Should you get one pre-decorated? The reality is that the array of journals to choose from is vast, but by far the most common size and type to get is a generic A5 dotted Journal. An A 5 dotted journal is 8in x 5.5in, and typically people buy a plain one, as compared to one that already has decorations and designs already printed in. This type is most often used for it's small compact size which makes it convection to pull out and write on as you please,while still being functional. However, if you are like one of my friends who both loves space to mess around with and can’t stand having to read from small pages, you can get sizes B4-B7, most of which are found easily in the school supplies isle of your local Walmart.

2. Create a planner. As said before, Bullet journals are mostly used for planners. Some of you may ask “What is a planner?” and to that I say it is just a way to organize that day/week/month’s information, assignments, events, etc.. Explaining how to create a planner can be tricky since this is where so much creativity and customization goes. You can adjust your planner to be weekly if a daily planner doesn’t work for you, or to a monthly planner if a weekly planner doesn’t work, etc.. The best place to start is to google some inspiration (search “Bujo's daily/weekly/monthly planners”).

3. Make a Tracker. Whether it be a habit, spending, gift, or amount-of-water-you-drank tracker, trackers are an iconic part of bullet journals. What trackers do is simply tracking! They are meant to log the progression of a certain part of your life: for habit trackers, you can choose to log one (or many) habits you’d like to implement in your life and log every time you do that habit, or to what extent you did that habit. Remember that bullet journals are meant to fit you! These steps are merely a starter pack on how to begin, but if you feel like one of the parts just isn’t something you want or will use, then you are in no way obligated to do so. Heck, when I first started, I didn't want to buy an entire journal and the good pens for something I wasn’t sure I was going to like, so I took out an old school notebook and started drawing.

As you can see, it doesn’t take all that much to get started with bullet journaling, so if you have a knack for creativity and don’t know where to go, get out a journal, a pen, and get creative!

💬 Feel free to comment and react below!