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6 Back to School Bullet Journal Spreads

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 18:24:53 +0100

Life as student can be very difficult. There are countless deadlines and quizzes, midterms and assignments, not to mention final exams! When I’m in school, my bullet journal does so much to keep me sane! I am able to track so much, and keep it all in one place! To help you do the same, I’ve come up with 6 different bullet journal spreads that I use to help me throughout each semester!

Spread 1: Class Schedule

How I Set It Up: To make this spread, I decided to draw a grid, and highlighted each time block where I have a class. I've taken out the information for each class, but I always include the name of the course, the course code, the location of the class and the professor's name. The grid has five columns, one for each day of the week, and 9 rows, one for each hour that I may or may not have classes. I used a different colour for each class so that I can see just how much time I spend on each subject.

Why It’s Useful: This spread is extremely useful for me to have on hand. I usually like to save it as an image so that I can compare schedules with my peers, share it with my family and fiancé, and reference it when I am trying to find time to plan events or meetings. I also like creating the schedule in Goodnotes, because the Lasso feature makes it very easy to move around, in case anything changes, and I can easily erase and rewrite any information that may not be accurate.

Variations: Some other ways to create this spread are to also include a space for any specific notes for each class, or to include the travel time between back to back classes. For example, on Mondays, I have two classes that are back to back, and it takes me about 9 minutes to walk between them. It’s definitely good to know that I have only 1 minute to spare for any delay on my way to class!

Spread 2: Course Info and Semester Overview

How I Set It Up: This spread also has 5 columns, one for each of my classes this semester. There is a row for the course title, one for the instructor’s name, one for contact information, and on for the grading scheme. The bottom half of the page is a semester overview. There is a row for each month, where I will write down the important due dates and test dates for each month. I kept the same colour code on this spread as I did on my class schedule.

Why It’s Useful: I use this spread whenever there is something about a course that I need to know. It is my dashboard for the semester. It is definitely good to know my instructors name and title, as well as their email, office location and course website(s). Last year, I created my semester at a glance on a different spread, but didn’t use it up very much, so I made it a lot smaller.

Variations: Instead of doing a Semester at a Glance portion, I was thinking about making a list of topics I would be learning throughout the semester. You could also add a section for the contact information for any Teaching Assistants, or if you submit assignments into a physical dropbox, it would be good to list the number of that dropbox somewhere on the page.

Spread 3: Assignment Tracker

How I Set It Up: Most of you have probably seen this spread on my instagram before, as I used it all last year, and it is also available on my Etsy shop (click here!). I have a column for the due date, the class name, a checklist for the questions I have to complete for that particular assignment, and wether the assignment has been completed or not.

Why It’s Useful: This is one of my most used spreads for my academics. Since I am a math major, my classes are heavily assignment based, and they are usually questions from a textbook or written by the professor. This tracker helps me to see what assignments I have on the go, as well as my progress on them. The checklist for each question helps me to keep track of which questions I have completed, especially since I haven’t done them in order. I also like to keep track if I have written a good copy of the question as well. Before using this tracker there were instances where I would complete the question, but fail to put it onto the copy of my assignment that I handed in! This assignment tracker has definitely come in handy! This specific format may not be helpful for students who’s assignments consist mainly of essay or presentation style questions.

Variations: A column that could be added could be one for the grade received on the assignment. Furthermore, if your assignments are more essay based, instead of making a checklist in the questions section, you could write down the thesis or topic of your essay, paper or presentation. You could also include the date assigned and the date due as two separate columns. Another way to track an essay’s progress would be to make a checklist for each paragraph planned, and any other portions (such as a bibliography) that must be included. A column could also be included where you make a note of the file type your professor requires you to submit your assignment in.

Spread 4: Time Tracker

How I Set It Up: This is a spread that has shown up on my instagram numerous times, and I also have an entire blog post dedicated to it (Click here to read it!) It is also a template that is available in my Etsy shop (Click here to buy it!). For this spread, I have divided the day into 15 minute increments, and I have included a column at the side where I write down the date, the key to my colour code for the day, a section for any notes that need to be written, a section to write down what I ate, and lastly a space for a time allocation bar graph so that I can see where my day was spent.

Why It’s Useful: To read 5 reasons why I track my time, check out the blog post linked above! But, more specifically to school related reasons, I use my time tracker spread to plan my day out and keep myself accountable. Especially during exam time, I used to procrastinate and then wonder why I was so pressed on time to study for my finals! When I started using my time tracking spread, I became much more diligent in staying on task, which definitely helped me with my exams!

Variations: This format can be made as complicated or as simple as needed. It can be a much more simple grid, it can be divided into smaller or larger time increments, depending on what is suitable, and there is no need for a time to be associated each increment. To see another version of this (and where I got the idea) check out Matt Ragland’s video. (Click here!)

Spread 5: Semester Memories

How I Set It Up: I kept this spread really simple. I took time to create an elaborate heading, but other than that the spread is essentially a blank page. I plan to fill the space with pictures, notes, memories, and drawings.

Why It’s Useful: This is something new that I am trying, but I wanted to include it on this list as something a little bit more relaxing. Since this is my final semester of university, I wanted to create a spread to remember all the fun things that happen in between the stress of school! I’m hoping that after four months are up I will have plenty to look back on and remember from my time in school!

Variations: The blank space could be divided into sections, one for each different aspect of life. For example, one could be for social events, one could be for random funny occurrences, or one could be for good memories with family/a significant other. Another variation could be to do a spread like this for each month, rather than the whole semester at once.

Spread 6: Exam Game Plan

How I Set It Up: This final spread is one that I used last semester that really helped me to stay on track with my studying! At the top of each page, I write the class that the plan is for. On the left side, I have a box where I write down a checklist of all of the practice questions that I want to complete. At the bottom of this box is a little key for wether I understood the question, wether I almost understood it, or wether I didn’t understand it at all! On the right side is a box for all important information regarding the exam, such as the date, the location, the number of questions and the percentage of my final grade. Below that is a box where I list the topics that are testable. The last box is one where I write down any other notes, anything to motivate me to study for the class, and my plan of attack for the material!

Why It’s Useful: This spread is a way for me to determine exactly what I need to know for that specific final. It helps me to plan out my studying so that I can do it in the most effective way. The key at the bottom left really helps me to see what I need to study more and what I need to study less. The practice question checklist is my favourite part. This checklist also does not have to be only for finals, it could be used for midterms and other tests as well!

Variations: Again, if your exam will be more essay based, then the Practice Questions box on the left can be set up entirely different. You could write your plan there, a list of readings that you want to review, a list of terms that you need to memorize and etc… Another way to set this spread up would be to make it smaller, and then fit two different exams on one page.

Conclusion:

All in all, I hope that these spreads are useful for you, or at least give you some ideas to create your own tools to improve your academic career. If you’ve started school for the year already, I hope that it’s going great and if you’re starting soon I hope that you have an awesome semester ahead of you!

If you would like to see what my regular bullet journal set up is while I’m in school, check out my September Plan With Me! (Click Here!)

5 Reasons Why You Should Track Your Time

Thu, 31 May 2018 14:16:54 +0100

As you may have seen on my Instagram, lately I’ve been experimenting with tracking my time. Essentially, this means having a record of what I did during the day. After watching this video by Matt Ragland, I was inspired to take his 5-day Time Tracking Challenge.

Now, to be truthful, I had come across Matt and his video while I was using YouTube to procrastinate studying for my final exams last month. As soon as I started to learn what it was that Matt does, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try.

As I mentioned above, tracking my time consists of one main step: write down what I did all day! Like Matt, I created a table that separated every hour of my day into 15-minute blocks. However, unlike Matt I included all my waking hours from 6 am - 12 am, not just the ones outside of school/work. I did this since my schedule changes daily and I wanted to use my Time Tracker as a tool to look back on the past as well as a tool to plan my day. In fact, since I use my tracker as a planning tool, my process to track my time is slightly different to Matt’s as well. I’ve outlined it in the steps below:

The night before (or the morning of) write in each block what you plan to do the that day
As you go through your day, highlight what you have finished as that time passes. I highlight my activities by colour according to category, so I can see what activities I spend the most time doing
If you differ from your plans, erase what was already in the block and change it to what you actually did. For example, if I was supposed to study from 10 o’clock to 11 o’clock, and instead I watched YouTube videos, I would erase the blocks that say “Study” and replace them with blocks that say “YouTube” or “Procrastinated”.
At the end of the day, add up the 15-minute blocks in each category to see how much time was spent in each one. For example, add up all of the blocks that say "study" in them.
Repeat!

Something extra that I also do (not related to tracking my time) is tracking what I ate on the same spread.

After doing this for a week, I noticed that I was so motivated not to write down the word “Procrastinated” in my blocks, that my productivity was greatly improved! Along with this, there were a total of 5 main benefits that I’ve associated with tracking my time.

REASON 1: An Incentive to be Productive

As I said earlier, the benefit that I realized almost instantly was the incentive to be productive. I found that I was so motivated to record a productive time block, that I didn’t let myself even open YouTube, Instagram, Netflix or Facebook. The goal I set for myself daily was to have a total of zero for the “Procrastinate” category.

By the end of the first few days, I found that I was so productive I entirely misjudged how much time I would need to study for each of my exams and I actually ran out of material to study. I ended up having a great mindset for my exams, as I felt well-prepared for each, was able to get a good sleep the night before (since I wasn’t cramming after using the day-time to procrastinate), and I was also in a much better mood since I felt that I had done something useful with my day.

Additionally, for many business owners and CEO’s, it is crucial to employ the mindset that “Time is Money”. If one’s time is being wasted, it is considered a financial loss, since that time could have been spent making money for the company. Even if not all of us are business owners or CEO’s we can still have the mindset that if we waste our time, it is time lost that could have been invested towards strengthening our relationships by spending quality time with friends, family or significant others, or it is time lost that could have been spent investing in our future careers by educating ourselves in our area of work or study. It could even be time lost that could have been invested in our physical and mental health, by exercising, eating and sleeping properly, and simply taking the time to have a break and let our minds rest!

Improves Focus

I also found that I was able to get myself into the mindset to focus on what I was during each block. Before tracking my time, I often tried to do many tasks at the same time to see if I could get them done faster. Obviously, this wasn’t as effective since I often became frazzled and confused between the many items I was splitting my attention between

With time tracking, I can force myself only to focus on the item in the time-block I am currently in. I can keep my attention on just one task at a time and since I know what task I am supposed to be doing and for how much time, I can keep my mind from wandering.

Since there is a set time limit that I know I will work on a specific task, I can remind myself that time flies and every minute wasted is another minute I could allocate to fun things after my work is done.

See Where Your Time Goes

Another benefit of time tracking is the realization of how you spend your time. There are many times where I have procrastinated an entire day and then justify it at the end of the day by saying: “Well, at least I finished this one thing I did at the beginning of the day.” It often happens that we waste time, but since we completed one or two of our tasks we don’t realize how much time we actually wasted. After my first day of time tracking, I shocked myself to see how much time I wasted, and that was one of the biggest motivators to push me to be productive the following days. At the very least, if I procrastinated a little bit, I wanted to make sure that I did not procrastinate as much as the previous day.

In an article for inc.com, (read it here) Minda Zetlin said the following: “I was surprised to see how much time I devoted to a single not-very-high-paying customer. When I compared that time to the month's revenues from that customer, it wasn't a pretty picture. On the other hand, I know this client has the potential to help bring in more lucrative work, and that the more time I put in, the likelier that is to happen. I'm going to keep a close eye on how much time I spend on those projects, and keep looking for ways to make that work more efficient.”

It is important for us to see how much time we spend on tasks that do not benefit us and compare it with tasks that do. If we see that we spend the majority of our time on tasks that do not pay off, we need to see how much of that time we can re-allocate to tasks that do.

Be Realistic With Time Allocation

So many times I’ve set a massive to-do list for myself and have become frustrated when I couldn’t complete it all in one day. After time tracking, I noticed how many tasks took longer or shorter than expected. With estimating how much time I would need to each of my tasks, based on tracking that time during previous days, it has become easier to estimate how much time each task would need. For example, I know now that my morning worship usually takes me at least half an hour, as opposed to fifteen minutes. Since beginning time tracking, I have adjusted the time allocation for this task accordingly. Similarly, eating breakfast usually takes me fifteen minutes depending on what I eat, so I am able to allocate that time better.

Laura Vanderkam writes about the difficulties of realistically estimating how much time we need for certain tasks. She says: “We are prone to over- or underestimate things based on socially desirable perceptions or current emotions. For instance, few of us love the routine aspects of housework or household administration. Emptying the dishwasher or paying bills doesn’t take much time, but we feel like we’re always doing these chores. So if someone asks us how much time we spend on such things, we overestimate — by something on the order of 100 percent for both men and women — compared to the actual numbers recorded in time diaries.”

Realize When Your Workload is too Big

Connecting with number four, the last major benefit to time tracking is being able to realize when there is simply too much on your plate. If you plan out your day and allocate your time realistically, and you still cannot fit all the things you need to in your schedule, then you know that something needs to be given up.

Many times I have complained that there are not enough hours in the day to do all that I need to do. There was no way to do all the things I needed without sacrificing my health and sanity. Since we are not machines, trying to complete these tasks was an impossible and draining process, which caused me to suffer both physically and mentally.

When we really cannot set aside time for all the things we need to do to be productive, healthy and mentally stable, we need to realize that it is time to start saying no to new projects or even to end or delay current ones.

It is so important to have this work-life balance for our personal health, as well as the health of our family and community. As Shawn M. Burn, Ph.D. said: “People need time and energy to participate in family life, democracy, and community activities. They also need time outside of work for rejuvenation, and to develop and nurture friendships and their ‘non-work selves’”

Conclusion

To conclude, time tracking is something that does not have to be complex or very structured, and it never has to be seen by anyone other than you. Regardless of why or how you track your time, the main objective is to improve your productivity in whichever way is best suited to you! I encourage each and every one of you to try time tracking using whatever method or structure works best for you, and after a few days, a week, or even a month see how your productivity, health, and happiness has changed. From my own personal experience, I can say that, so far, time tracking has helped me to improve all of these things and more and I know that it can do the same for you!

Questions to Ask Ourselves as Bullet Journalists

Mon, 13 Nov 2017 13:43:29 +0100

We’ve all had those times when we look at our bullet journal and feel dissatisfied. We feel that there is something missing or we feel unmotivated to continue. It is at this point that we must ask ourselves a few questions on why we started bullet journalling in the first place

Question 1: Who Am I Doing This For?

This applies mostly to those people who share their bullet journals with the world via instagram, facebook, tumblr and etc. (myself included). When we ask this question we must figure out what is our aim for sharing our bullet journal. Are we trying to get likes? Are we trying to exchange ideas with other members of the bullet journal community? Are we trying to motivate ourselves to bullet journal more?

On the other hand, what if we aren’t sharing anything online? We can still ask this question. Who are we doing this for? Peace of mind for ourselves? To be more organized for our families’ sake? Or to have the world’s fanciest bullet journal?

There is nothing wrong with any of these aspirations, however, whatever our reason, it is important to figure out who we are bullet journaling for. This will help us to get the most benefit from our bullet journals based on what we want to get out of them.

Question 2: Is What I’m Doing Really Necessary?

Another question we should be asking ourselves is how necessary are the trackers and collections we are making. There have been many instances when I’ve created a spread purely for the sake of creating a spread. In other words, instead of using my bullet journal as a force against procrastination I was doing exactly the opposite.

Personally, the ultimate goal of my bullet journal is productivity and peace of mind. It reminds me of the KonMari method. For those of you who do not know what this is, it involves taking each item you own and deciding whether it sparks joy. If it does, then you keep it, if it doesn’t you discard it. I’ve begun to do this within my bullet journal! Before I even begin to create a spread I determine wether it will bring me productivity, happiness or peace of mind. If it does not fit any of the criteria then I discard the idea, since I deem it unnecessary if this is the case.

Question 3: How Can I Use This Information?

When I’m creating a tracker I can use it for a few different things. I could either keep it as a benchmark to check back on my past, make myself accountable in the present or to make plans for the future. In fact, I use all three! Every month when I look back at my trackers I am looking to see if I improved anything in the last 30 days. I’ve found that using a habit tracker also makes me more motivated to make sure that I check off every task for the day. Finally, I use my habit tracker to plan for the future. At the bottom of each monthly spread I have a space for me to review my habits over the month and plan how I’m going to improve them for the next month.

I have other trackers and logs in my bullet journal as well that I look at in this type of light. It is good to use these spreads as a method for self improvement, so that we can, not only use our bullet journals as a productivity tool, but for a goal setting one as well!

Conclusion

To conclude, I think we can all agree that as individuals, we are always striving to be the best versions of ourselves. In light of this, it is not enough for us to just ask these questions. We must ask them and then say: “now what?” We need to answer these questions and furthermore they need to be answers that lead us to action! The only way we can improve is by first realizing what state we are in and deciding where to go from there.

I strongly believe that it is important to be constantly asking these questions and even to think of more so that we can always be the best that we can.

Leave a comment below with a question or type of tracker that you use for self-improvement!

5,200 Tress and Counting

Mon, 30 Oct 2017 12:59:51 +0100

With the coming of fall, I’ve noticed the beautiful tress in my community looking even more spectacular than usual. Looking at the amazing colours and the stature of these magnificent trees just reminds of how blessed we are to have trees in general.

It’s caused me to think about how many notebooks and books I’ve wasted in my past years as a student. I remember as a child begging my mother to buy me these adorable notebooks that I just ‘had’ to have. I would take these notebooks home, write something in maybe two pages, then it would lay forgotten on my bookshelf and eventually thrown out when I was told to clean my room.

Even in recent years, as I matured when it came to spending money, I was still finding that I bought 5 notebooks per semester, and although I used them, there was still at least one third of wasted paper in the background. I would buy an extra three rough work notebooks as well per year. I barely ever finished these notebooks.

Over the past two years of my university life these notebooks have added up. I’ve calculated that in my first and second years of university alone I’ve used 20 notebooks with 200 pages for my ‘good copy’ lecture notes, 30 notebooks with 80 pages for my rough lecture notes and 10 notebooks with 250 pages for rough work for assignments. I calculated that if I roughly use ⅔ of each notebook on average, that means that I’ve wasted approximately 2967 pages in 2 years of university. This is not even included scrap paper I’ve used when I didn’t have a notebook, notebooks I used outside of school, PDF’s that I’ve printed that I could’ve just annotated on my iPad.

Let’s expand on this. There are approximately 30,000 students at my university. Let’s assume that on average they’ve all used at least 2,750, if we were to base this on me. This means that over the course of 2 years 82,500,000 sheets of paper have been wasted. This is roughly equivalent to an astonishing 5,200 trees! This is just one university among thousands in the world. The more that we think about this, the more mind-blowing the number becomes.

Since I am studying mathematics and statistics, I recently analyzed a poll that I ran on my Instagram where I asked my followers a few questions. The results were quite interesting.

First of all, I learned that almost 60% of followers never look at more than half of their bullet journal pages after creating them. If we assume that each of these people own a Leuchtterm 1917 which has 239 pages, this means that each person has roughly 120 pages in their Leuchtterm that are just sitting there.

Furthermore, approximately 35% of my followers say that they do not try to conserve paper while bullet journaling.

Finally, when I asked my followers how much paper in their workplace or studies could be replaced, over 65% of them said more than half could be replaced.

Now of course this wasn’t a comprehensive survey, I would need to take many more data points to be certain of my results, but I strongly believe it is a good indicator of what is going on in the bullet journal community when it comes to wasting paper.

Why do we care about all of these wasted pages? Does it matter how much paper we use? I was interested to know my effect on cutting down trees so I did some research. In the past two years, I’ve been responsible for cutting down 1 tree. If I were to approximate this over my lifetime as a student, this means that I have used up the paper created from 14 trees. (source: click here) There are a lot of discrepancies, but there are many statements stating that one mature tree can on average provide oxygen for a family of 4. So from 14 trees that means that there is less oxygen for 56 people (Source: click here). Now we know why our teachers in elementary school were always telling us to recycle!

Additionally, almost 15% of the world’s population depends on forests as a means for food, water, clothing, traditional medicine and shelter. Besides this, forests are a way of consuming carbon dioxide that builds up in the atmosphere as well. The World Wildlife Fund states that deforestation causes approximately 15% of greenhouse gas emissions. They also say that due to deforestation the number of square miles of forests that are destroyed per minute is equal to the size of 48 football fields. That’s 48 football fields per minute! Some other impacts of deforestation include disruption of water cycles, increased soil erosion and disrupted livelihoods. I won’t even begin to mention the impact that it has on countless ecosystems and species of animals.

Of course, simply wasting paper isn’t the only reason for deforestation, but it is a significant piece of the problem.

Enter digital bullet journaling. I currently have over 300 pages in that I use in my digital bullet journal alone. This is not including all of the class notes, church notes, and random notes that I have stored in my Goodnotes folders. That is at least 500 pages of paper from the past few months that I have not wasted.

Although I am only one person, I know that if I can inspire at least 2 people to try to save more paper than I am doing my part. And if those people each inspire 2 more, and this chain continues, then we can see exponential growth of a population of people who save paper.

If this little write-up has inspired you to try to conserve paper, then I encourage you to give digital bullet journaling a try. If you need to be even more convinced, then check out my first blog post about 5 Reasons for Bullet Journaling. Check out my downloads page for some great apps that can be used for digital bullet journaling.

We all need to do our part. There is no way that one person can make a difference on their own, but if we all join together than we can make a huge positive impact on our planet.

Photos by @hlasicaphotography, download Goodnotes here!

My Practice Bullet Journal

Mon, 16 Oct 2017 12:32:28 +0100

First of all I’d like to begin with what exactly is a practice bullet journal? Isn’t making mistakes and finding what works for you the whole point of a bullet journal? Well, yes it is. So why do I use a practice bullet journal?

To define what a practice bullet journal is in the simplest of terms, I would say the following:

A practice bullet journal is a journal used to store ideas, doodles and templates for future reference and/or inspiration.

I use my practice bullet journal for 4 main things:

Digital ‘stickers’
Spread templates
Lettering and banner ideas
Literal practicing!

To begin, many analog bullet journal-ers like to use stickers in their notebooks. Obviously, that’s not going to work on a tablet! Instead, what I like to do is take a stock image from the internet and just copy and paste it into my bullet journal, as you may have seen in my September Gratitude Log instagram post!

Now, if I ever want to re-use these ‘stickers’ I can save them onto a page in my practice bullet journal and just copy and past them from there!! I can also save doodles to use a stickers as well, as you can see in my doodle post.

So when I want to re-use one of these doodles, I can select it using the Lasso tool and just copy and paste onto another page in my bullet journal!

I also use my digital bullet journal as a place for the original versions of my spread templates. This way, I can always access the original in case I notice a mistake, or I just want to change what isn't working anymore.

I also use this notebook as a place for me to experiment with lettering and banner ideas. I spent an afternoon once just thinking of different ways to write the date in my weekly spread!!

And lastly, I use it for literal practicing of drawing techniques, handwriting techniques and etc. There isn’t much to explain about this purpose for a practice bullet journal, but I will mention that the old saying is definitely true: ‘Practice makes perfect!’

Personally, a practice bullet journal is the perfect place for me to look back at when I’m stuck on inspiration for a theme or a banner design or lettering style. I can save anything that I want to this space and look back on it in the future. I can even create a whole page of ‘stickers’ to be used for my next theme. I can save any of my favourite random little doodles onto a page so that I can reuse it again and again! I can edit and practice with my bullet journal templates, so that I can tweak them to work perfectly for me!

All in all, it’s a place for organizing all the random little ideas I have. Its like my archive of bullet journal dreams!

It’s so easy to set up too! You don’t need to create any logs or an index if you don’t want to. All you need is a notebook! In this case of digital bullet journaling this is as simple as pressing a button. In the analog world its as simple as going to your bookshelf and finding a notebook you don’t use anymore. It doesn’t have to be pretty, you just need a place to store your ideas. You could even use scrap paper that you find when an idea strikes you, and then save it in a file folder after!

The ways to do this are endless, and can be as simple as possible. I would suggest to any and every bullet journalist to keep some sort of record of their ideas and inspiration, as an outlet for all thoughts related to bullet journaling. Especially for digital bullet journalists, it is a way for you to keep track of things to reuse in the future or things to motivate you as you create new spreads!

Happy Bullet Journaling!

To download the app I use to digitally bullet journal click here!

5 Reasons for Digital Bullet Journaling

Wed, 04 Oct 2017 17:05:39 +0100

Hello! Welcome to the first ever blog post on this website! Today I thought I would share with you something that I believe makes my bullet journal unique from the others out there!

Obviously if you’ve seen my Instagram you’ll notice that I don’t use paper to bullet journal (hence the name plan.paperless).

There are a few reasons why I switched from pen and paper bullet journaling to digital, and a quick summary of them would be:

Never ending journal
Save money on buying pens and notebooks
Mistakes are easier to deal with
Flexibility
Back-ups and syncing

So without further ado, let’s get to it!

Reason #1: It’s the journal that never ends!

When I started bullet journaling, I was in a thin Moleskine journal that I used every last inch of!

When it was time for me to switch into a new journal, I didn’t know what to do with all my collections! To me, they were all worth transferring over, because I do like to go back and refer to them… and I don’t want to have to dig though my bookshelf to find a specific journal!

I tried to do a “refer to this page” collection in my 2nd bullet journal, but then I would have to recreate that in every new bullet journal I ever started!

I thought about using a Filofax instead, but I knew it would get full pretty quickly, and I would have the same problem all over again.

I love collections! If you look at my Instagram you will see that I post a LOT of pictures of the various collections I use. I have everything from trackers, logs, recipes, random little lists, packing lists, tips and hacks, and everything in between. I love my lists, and I want to be able to refer to them easily and when I want to.

Furthermore, I had trackers that I used in my old bullet journal that were too much work to put into my new one… so I ended up carrying more than one bullet journal with me, just for those one or two pages I used every day.

This is when I started thinking about digital bullet journaling, and it is probably the first reason that I made the switch!

With putting my bullet journal onto my iPad, I am able to carry all my collections with me wherever I go, I don’t need to go digging for old notebooks for a certain collection and I can redesign my collection pages whenever I want!

Reason #2: I save money on new pens and new notebooks!

I use my bullet journal a lot. Like, excessively. And that meant that I was running out of pens every other month. This is also the reason I switched to taking my school notes digitally, but that’s another story.

I also wanted to get a really nice notebook to do bullet journaling in, but then I saw how expensive they were! Being a struggling student, I don’t have that kind of cash just lying around.

I did, however, have an iPad that my parents bought me almost 5 years ago. I’ve taken care of this iPad, and I already used GoodNotes for taking notes at school and at church, so I was comfortable with the program.

With my iPad I would have endless access to any colour of pen I want, that pen would never run out, and the pigment would always be perfect!

I could also just do a quick google search for any ‘stickers’ or even wash tape I would want to put in my bullet journal… for free!

ALSO, instead of buying ‘printables’ and printing them every month, wasting ink and paper, I could just create my own templates (that I could personalize, that I actually liked better) and reuse them every month, week, or day! I could make templates for trackers, and I could even change them to my liking if I found that they weren’t working out like they were supposed to.

I guess this reason could also be: “More artistic freedom” since there are really no limits to what you can do on a tablet these days.

Reason #3: It is easy to cover up mistakes or even just get rid of them altogether!

I’m definitely not the best artist. I struggle with drawing, colouring, and everything in between!! I used to hate some of the pages I had my first bullet journal, and the only reason I didn’t rip them out was because I couldn’t stand the thought of how messy that would look!

With my iPad, I can make a million mistakes… and just undo them! I don’t have to worry about writing in pencil first, and I don’t have to stress about making everything perfect the first time I put pen to paper.

Even if I see a page that I used to like but don’t anymore, I could literally just delete it from existence and start over!

It is no big deal at all if you mess up on a tablet, because all you have to do is press that little ‘Undo’ button, and you’ve got a whole second chance to do it the way you want to! Or a third chance… or 5476th chance in my case!

Reason #4: You can move pages around, duplicate pages, and more!

I think one of my favourite parts about digital bullet journaling is that I can move a page to wherever I want. I can categorize like pages and put them together, and I can continue pages by simply inserting a new one where it is needed… rather than having to say that page 6 is ‘continued on page 77’ I can just move that page right after page 6!

I can also bookmark these sections and specific pages, so if I need to find something quickly, I just go to the page I need right away… rather than search through my whole bullet journal!

And I know that’s what an index is for, but let’s be honest, barely anyone actually uses the index the way they are supposed to!

My point is, there is so much freedom to do whatever you want in a digital bullet journal, because there are no physical restrictions.

Reason #5: Everything Syncs and Backs-Up!

Actually this is my favourite part about digital bullet journaling. Even when I don’t have my bullet journal with me, I can still access it! I can go on my phone and open the Goodnotes app, where my bullet journal is right there, ready to be used!

I can even open it from my computer, since Goodnotes gives you the option of backing it up as a PDF, meaning that there is always a PDF version of your bullet journal that you can reference from any device connected to the internet.

You can’t sync a paper bullet journal. If I were to lose a physical notebook, I can’t get it back… there is no ‘data recovery’ option for a lost notebook. If my notebook were to be destroyed by water or fire or whatever else was thrown at it, there would be no way I could get it back!

But if my iPad were destroyed, my bullet journal (as well as everything else on it) would be safe and sound in a storage cloud somewhere, if not backed up to my computer manually.

There is so much peace of mind that this statement gives me, because I know my bullet journal will be safe no matter what.

So in the end,

To sum all of this up, digital bullet journaling fits my needs and wishes much better than a pen and paper journal. And while I understand that not everyone owns and iPad, you could do the same thing on a computer or even a smart phone, if you wanted to! You don’t even need a stylus… when I started, I was just using my finger as a pen!

You just need to be a little creative and figure out what works best for you… which is really what bullet journaling is all about!