Hey, everyone. It's me Wendy as many of you know normally here on [YouTube]
I make sewing tutorials but today I wanted to go through my whole process of starting my bullet journal for 2017
There's been a couple of questions about it
And I've mentioned [that] I said it as a hobby and that it's shown up in a couple of videos
And it's been going really great, but I came at it with no prior experience
or
pre-Built ideas and so this kind of goes through how I created a system to start from scratch without
overdoing it because I think in the world of bullet journals
There's a lot of creativity that can go into how it looks, and its beauty, aesthetics, it can get a bit intimidating
I'll go through what I was doing before
2016 I'll go through what I'm doing now
And how it's morphed into a system that I really like and hopefully if you've been thinking about doing a bullet journal
You'll see how you could go about it without being like I need to do beautiful calligraphy from the Get-go
No, you don't have to it's going to be okay. Let's get into this so one that I use every day. I had a moleskine
This is the like standard five by eight black leather. I would put my daily prayer
Reflection, any thoughts that I had
Truly like a daily diary, then I had a planner for every single day
I mean this planner is so pretty but planners have a specific grid that they believe is most effective for you
If it just so happens to not click with you. It's not going to work and over time
I found this one was not really working for me
I would plan my day in this then go journaling in this and then lastly
Throw my brainstorming ideas in this bigger book, it's also a Moleskine I
Would just draw my ideas
Put in the measurements it was very
Messy there was no chronological order to it
I was just kind of like put in these tabs to keep track of where I had most recently worked
It's weird because my brain actually doesn't work this way where I only
Do diary first for a certain part of the day and then only plan my day for a certain part of the day and only brainstorm like it's all
Happening at once that's what made me think a bullet journal would be a really good fit for me because the whole goal of it
Is to merge everything that you write, plan, think about in one book
and I also thought it would be a good fit for me because I
Found the really set planner system was not working for me, but bullet journals are flexible as you go you totally dictate
What's going to be the thing you want to put more space to less space to three books that I could not possibly
Carry around with me all day all system, and now new system
ONE!
So as you can see I stuck to the exact same shape and format as the previous one
this is a standard size in moleskine accept this, the old one was unlined (no lines in it) this new one has a
Grid dot the main thing
I would recommend for starting from scratch is to go basic and made a rule in January where I limited things to one black pen
one pink highlighter, and that's it and
Helps you to not get too distracted into the colors and designs and variety but to figure out
What are the exact things you need in your bullet journal to be productive after doing some research
I noticed a couple of things that seemed pretty common throughout bullet journals
So first I did a monthly calendar for January
I wrote down all the days of the year their day of the week
And then I invented a system where I wrote down
The major things that I need to get done each day kind of like the main focus of the day
I added a dot on the left side for every single day as it passed and then I added a dot on the right side
for every single time I successfully
Completed the thing that I meant to complete that day then the other thing on the right hand side was I put down a To-do
List I wanted to set a personal goal of being better at meeting up with friends keeping in touch
So I put a to meet or to talk list I
wrote down the videos
I wanted to make that month the ones that I was thinking about for the following months and then at the end
I was even a very good girl, and I wrote a reflection post January to think about how the month went and yeah
You just lay it out this way for the first time and you'll discover. You know there's whole areas that are blank
Maybe that's an area that you created space
But you didn't actually need that space
then there could be areas that are super jam packed and maybe what it means is you should have left more space for that then
I went straight into every single day for January so I might write down. What happened at Church service
What I was personally thinking about for my diary, I made a timeline for every single day
and I still followed the dot thing where I put a
Dot on the left for every hour that passed and a dot on the right for every time I completed the thing I meant to
complete in that hour
It was really helpful as a reality check like if you're not sure of how much you can get done in a day
It's so helpful to set the goal
And then measure whether or not you reach it and if you consistently don't reach it it means
You're too optimistic about your goals. Which is my problem
I'm too optimistic on my goals, but through this I can feel myself adjusting to be a bit better at managing my time
Which is amazing because I think my whole life
I've struggled with being good with my time I started to also figure out how to storyboard in my bullet journal for my videos and
Over time too this is super packed. I figured out ways to give it more space to clear out my thoughts February
I got my new kit for markers and pens I was so excited
So I kind of went all out on it
I was just like you know what Wendy you use whatever colors you want and you'll figure out
What works for you. I wrote the month across
went once again with the dates the day of the month and I added a goal tracker which I've noticed on a lot of bullet
Journals things like drinking water working out
Getting enough sleep
There's all sorts of personal goals that you know are good for your health are good for your personal development
pick a couple you really want to focus on that month and
Write them down here to test out
how it is that you like to track your goals that actually helped a lot to fill out the section when in January it was
Kind of Empty. I wrote down
How many of every single one I wanted to get done that month and I was gonna total it up and Whatnot but I
Really found over the month of every that this was not working for me
I was getting like all over the place with the colors as you can see it was not the best
So I knew I wanted to refine it a bit for March then I left tons of space for a very action-packed view success
left tons of space for people I wanted to talk to
Also success and the videos I want to do that month videos I wanna do next month also went really well
And you can develop your own
legend for how you want to cross things out I kind of do one slash
Which means I'm starting on it, and then two slashes means. It's done
If there's a horizontal slash it means I had to move it to the next month and if there's a vertical slash it means I stopped it
So it's like I tried
I finished I tried, but will continue next month I tried and then I gave up that actually is working pretty well for me
It's very simple at there's tons of systems little triangles dots lines many many options out there. It's best to figure out
What works for you. And then from there,
I started doing weekly plans for February because I notice that's a big thing for bullet journaling like do a monthly plan to a weekly
Plan and then get down to the daily plans. But I kept finding weekly plan would leave me with way too much free space
So I think I'm abandoning this for March. It's not something that I really really need to stay organized
This is my first time trying out a revised
storyboarding video editing preparing type of system.
I would write the title of the project
I would use the dotted line design that I got from Fashionary to sketch out the thing that I wanted to make
Then I would write down different measurements, the fabric, I use and then the steps from there.
Once I had the steps I translated over to which shots I wanted to take and as I got each shot done
I would highlight it to show it was done
Then I put in my key learnings what I wanted to shoot for how I filmed it
There's empty space here the storyboard didn't get used
So these kind of things should only be added in the future if I really need them.
Since right now it is March this is my most refined
level of this bullet journal right now, and I am really starting to feel like I have a good hang of how I operate.
So for March I went once again with the days of the month and their day of the week
But this time I spread it out...
...In a totally different order where I started from one at this point on the page and went up to 31 here.
That left me room here to write out my goals and to help me know whether or not I was on track,
I devised a system where I draw a dot for every day I complete it and then the number
five and then the number 10 and the number 15 for every time
I reach like a multiple of 5.
And this pink line is my score out of 10 for
How well I was able to reach
The things that I set for it. So for example, whenever it's up here in the 10 range that means my expectations versus reality
spot-on, but whenever it's really low like over here it means I thought I was going to get all this stuff done and reality
I've got this much done. So that's when I need a reality check. And then from there, started going into the daily
Timeline to do. I also added a ''today, I am grateful for'' and a
''today I'm excited for'' fields. Part of a nice planner is that it motivates you, you know there's ones with
Inspirational quotes or you know daily gratitude and so I wanted to put in a system where every day
I take time to reflect on what I'm grateful for every day
take time to reflect on what I'm excited for and it just helps you to have...
A more positive outlook overall about how your day is gonna go.
The markers that I use are the Zebra... (mid) Mild liners
They come in 15 colors if you buy the whole entire set. In the whole like, Staedler Triplus,
I'm really sorry for messing that, right, versus Stabilo in the end. I thought the
orange stick of the stabilo pens was so much cuter 'cause the reviews seemed really close. For my regular everyday black pen I use the
Sharpie pen I'm so used to using the Sharpie
Black pens on my Moleskine so I just stuck with that because they're really inexpensive. If you have any favorite bullet journal Instagram profiles tips
Things that are working really well for you, please do share them in the comments
I'm in a total max absorption mode when it comes to this. I'll obviously be coming back with more tutorials in the upcoming weeks
So look out for that, and I will see you all next time
Thanks so much for watching. Bye!
This video is made possible by my amazing patreon supporters, if you want to support me on Patreon go to patreon.com/withwendy