Skip to content

The Bullet Journal-Workshop (Pt. 6): Moving from A5 to A6 and combining a Weekly Planner

Scrively and the Bullet Journal - Background (click to expand)
I have become a user of the analogue Bullet Journal organization system in the beginning of this year. For that, I have configured a Leuchtturm1917 A5 dot-grid (often the to-go notebook for Bullet Journalers) in the end of 2015 as my new years resolution, because I was tired of the – to me personally – rather ineffective digital ways of keeping track of my daily stuff. This is primarily because I have the feeling that in the digital world many things are somewhat fragmented all over the place (maybe connected by tags, which is not necessarily the most practical way) and it also is hard to really keep track of and see changes in what is going on on a daily basis.

I do, of course, effectively use many digital tools for dedicated organizational purposes (like note-taking apps, to-do lists and calendar), but use those for the rather large, complex or more long term things (e.g. larger life-goals, research projects, …). Anyway, I will soon have a separate major post coming on my personal note taking-system, which is a combination of various analogue and digital applications, products and techniques that all sort of tie into one another. This is why I won´t loose too many words on that one right here and now.

Also, I will not go too much into the details of the Bullet Journaling method because this is already covered very well on various corners of the web. I do only want say as much as the Bullet Journal being a wonderful and super-flexible method of organizing and keeping track of about anything you can think of. To use the words of the inventor of the the Bullet Journal-system, Ryder Caroll, the system “can be your to-do list, sketchbook, notebook, and diary, but most likely, it will be all of the above. It will teach you to do more with less.” And this is more than true. The system really has changed the way I go about my daily stuff. For further inspiration I can also recommend having a look at the pages of Kim and Kara, two people who also drive the BuJo-community in a way and that I do take inspiration from, too.

The Bullet Journal-Workshop is meant to share with you the ideas, add-ons, adaptations and small improvements that I have come up with myself, as I use and refine the Bullet Journal in my own everyday-life – being the flexible and open system that it really is.

I hope this section will be helpful to you, maybe serve as an inspiration and that you enjoy reading it!

Part 6: Getting more compact and eliminating the drawing of Future Logs

In comparison to my BuJo-Setup of 2017, I have made two major changes for 2018 that I’ll cover in the course of the video below:

  1. I went from the A5-format to A6 in order to be more mobile (and also because I figured over the years that I personally just much prefer A6 as a format)
  2. I combine the regular task-management and note-taking in the A6 dot-grid BuJo with a weekly planner – just because I both got really tired of drawing out the Future Logs and Monthly Plans by hand all the time and also because there just really is no satisfying and hassle-free ‘indigenous’ BuJo-solution for future planning of items.

This means: I’ll keep the planner throughout the year for planning, reference of important information/collections and yearly overview (which also gives me the opportunity for a quick reflective glance at each year ex-post) as I plough through a number of regular daily task-management BuJos. The latter then basically just allows for (flexible) extended space that the planner does not accommodate for. Two weeks into the new year 2018, this approach works really well for me – a lot better than last years setup.

On a final note: I really use this system for task-management only. My more extended journaling and/or thought-development for other projects (e.g. books or articles that I am working on, blog ideas, thoughts, creative-stuff, and so on) all happens in other notebooks. I don’t find the BuJo-system particularly useful for such kinds of things.

I hope my approach and the video below may serve as an inspiration for your own system, and I’ll gladly see you at the next Bullet Journal-Workshop!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.