Walkthrough of my 2024 bullet journal set-up

Anyone else keep a bullet journal? Would love see YOUR set-up

I’ve just finished setting up the first seven months of my 2024 bullet journal, and thought I’d share the nice, clean version with you before I start scribbling in it:

In case anyone is curious, I mainly use digital note-taking and calendar-related tools, but I find that using a paper bullet journal helps keep me from feeling overwhelmed.

I start every regular work day by opening up my bullet journal to the current week, and write a list of things I want to accomplish on a particular day or during the week. Just the act of physically writing things out is calming, I find, and helps me prioritize.

As far as I know, the idea of a bullet journal was first made popular by Ryder Carroll. You can see the “official” website at BulletJournal.com, but you can also search for the term “bullet journal” online (and especially on YouTube) so see the wide variety of bullet journal set-ups.

Here’s the basic overview of “How To Bullet Journal” originally posted by Ryder years ago:

Over the years of keeping a bullet journal, I’ve been tweaking my own set-up to be one that works for me. In the beginning, I had lots of fancy layouts with art and trackers and collection pages. Now, I focus on functionality rather than eye candy. Nothing wrong with the latter, especially if it’s part of your own bullet journal prefs, but I have found that having a journal that’s TOO pretty makes ME less likely to use it.

Here’s a page spread from my 2021 bullet journal:

I am also a fountain pen fan, and a bullet journal gives me the excuse to use my pens on a regular basis. My favorite pens for journalling are my Pilot Falcon Soft Fine and my Pilot Custom 823 with an FA nib. For the notebook, I prefer the Rhodia Webnotebook, A5 size, with a dot grid.

I also have several rubber stamps I sometimes use for tracking habits or daily goals; two are custom-made and ordered via Etsy.

I haven’t had much in being consistent with using a habit-tracking system, though, so am currently thinking hard about how I want to use any of the above in my 2024 bullet journal, or if I want to use them at all.

In the end, I always have to remind myself that I don’t want my bullet journal to be just another time-sucking pseudo-productivity tool (I have a weakness for those, I confess), and that’s why I need to design it in a way that works for me.

Any other bullet journal fans out there? If so, I’d love to hear about your own preferred set-up, or feel free to post a link to your own bullet journal walkthrough.

My husband got Covid a week ago but I managed not to catch it; we’ve been sleeping in separate rooms and wearing masks around the house. He’s fine now and tested negative today (yay).

Here’s a music collab I did with my niece Olivia early in the pandemic.

Have a peaceful holiday season, everyone, and a Happy New Year!