Bullet Journal

I have been using the Bullet journal system for around one and a half year now and I love it. I love it so much that I want everyone to know about it. Then you can try it out if you feel like you could use more organisation in your life.

My mind is very unorganised. I have always felt like I have big chunks of my memory stored off on external hard drives and sometimes I just can’t connect them. Because of this very frustrating situation I have been searching forever for the perfect system to get my life organised. I have tried everything. Personal planners, Filofaxes, I bought an electronic palm planner before smart phones existed. A cheap one, it was really bad. I’ve tried all the web apps, to do list apps. Pretty much the whole nine yards. Some things work partly. I use notifications on my phone for all the events, meetings and tea-get-togethers that I need to remember. I’ve used Google calendars since they started. But I have never found a way to get all of it together. Until I discovered the Bullet Journal System.

Mind Body and Spirit

I am writing about the Bullet Journal and organisation here because I have a firm belief that to become whole human beings we need to develop all the parts of us. Even though my main goal in life is enlightenment I am not living in a cave in the Himalayas. And I am not on the way there just yet. I have two children to raise and I plan to do that well.

If we only work on developing our spirit we can easily become lost in the clouds. This is the reason why every decent spiritual teacher not only lets his disciples meditate but also clean the floors. And the toilets, of course. Discipline is the cornerstone to spiritual development.

Bullet Journal Trackers

But back to the Bullet Journal. I have never in my life felt so organised. I have everything I need to do and remember in one place. All my goals, all my intentions. My thoughts and ideas. All my to do lists. I’ve recently started to track behaviours I want to change and it has given me a lot of insight.

One of those has got to do with my sleep. I have always loved staying up late. When the world calms down my mind gets active. But I also like to wake up early…

One of my goals for 2018 is starting a morning meditation routine. To do that I need to wake up around 6 in the morning. Which I find very difficult when I tend to get to bed at 1 or 2 after midnight.

I have been tracking my sleep since the beginning of the year and now I have a visual picture of just how sleep deprived I can be. I am also tracking my moods so I can see how my sleep affects my mood. So far I have had two confirmations of things I suspected. First, it is very bad for me to sleep in. The two days I have slept in this month were both days that I felt less content than normally. Second, I must sleep at least 6 hours. Haha… I should have known that one, but seeing how it affects me personally is the nudge I needed.

Bullet Journal Structure

The most basic Bullet Journal consists of a Yearly Log, Monthly Log and Daily Logs. Then people have been finding all kinds of clever (and sometimes very beautiful and time consuming) ways to add to it. Google and Pinterest can give you some great ideas of what it can look like. I am working on a blog post about what my bullet journal routine looks like. I’ll post it sometimes in the next couple of days.