- Good morning, good life, everybody.
This is a video that has been much anticipated.
It is time to talk about, now that it
is a new year, new notebooks.
You know how we do.
This is my bullet journal process.
(soothing music)
I have two feelings about this video right now.
One is excitement and one is like,
do I really have to do this? (laughs)
I made a great video in 2017.
I was just re-watching it and I was like,
this covers a lot.
If you're interested in a very specific walkthrough
of how I plan my month, you might wanna
skip this video and just pop over to that
and watch how I do it.
In this particular video, I'm still excited
because I feel like I'm having a renewed motivation,
that's the word.
Motivation for bullet journaling because 2018
I kinda fell off, but as you'll see
in that older video, 2017,
my bullet journal was on point.
I love the concept of the bullet journal
because you can have off years
and you can have on years.
I still love that I have all
of these things documented in my bu jos.
Anyway, 2019, things are looking up again.
I got a brand new bullet journal,
shared it with you guys in a recent video.
Bullet Journal was kind enough to send it
to me, so pretty pumped about that.
It's a different color than the previous years,
which was good.
We got black.
My previous years I have had teal,
I have had pink.
I feel like we've covered all of my colors
at this point, might have to expand in 2020.
It's gonna be interesting.
I just figured I'm gonna do a walkthrough
now that I've kinda prepped it for 2019.
We are in January, so there's not
a whole lot in it, but there is January stuff in it.
I'm gonna have to blur out a lot of things (laughs)
because there's information that's either private
because it's business related and I can't tell you,
or it's private because it's personal
and maybe there's something in there
that people don't know.
No, this is not a pregnancy announcement.
Good Lord, I walked right into that one. (laughs)
It's kinda hard to actually share
a completed bullet journal, but I'm gonna give it a try.
Before we get into my journal, I wanna give
my Twitter shout out of the day.
This goes to TD Jones, @TDJones5.
Thank you so much for retweeting my last video
when it came out.
I appreciate your support, your tweets,
your love, your comments every single time.
If you would like a chance to be the next
Twitter shout out, then make sure
that you follow me on Twitter
and retweet my video when it comes out,
like this one.
If you're watching this one, it's brand new
or just a day old or so, then maybe think about
retweeting it for a chance to have
your name up here and for me to say it
because I like to give love
where love is supposed to be given.
You deserve that love.
All right, so first thing I'd like to point out
is this is the Leuchtturm719, 1719,
is that what it's called?
Leuchtturm 1917, mm, mm, mm.
Already messing up.
This is the official Leuchtturm1917,
but it's also the official bullet journal.
That's a notebook you can actually get
on Amazon that's not Bu Jo branding,
but I actually prefer the Bu Jo branding
if you can do it because
it's nice to have the guide.
The key is really useful if you
are brand new to bullet journaling,
or if you are not brand new and you just forget.
I do recommend this
official Bullet Journal version.
I will link to that, but I will also
link to the actual journal itself
if you want a plain journal to start with.
It's completely up to you.
It is available on Amazon.
The other thing to consider is if you
don't have a bullet journal, you can make
a bullet journal out of any journal.
If I had not given up alcohol for at least
January of 2019, we could have done
a mimosa drinking game for the word journal
in this video 'cause I have a feeling
it's going to be a lot, said a lot.
Pretty much any notebook that you take,
whether you like lines or dots
or graphs, I don't know.
What are those things called?
Grids, not graphs.
If you prefer a certain type of journal
and you're like, I wish I could turn this
into a bullet journal, you can.
There are just some basic things to start
and throughout the actual pages
that make it a bullet journal.
Throughout are page numbers.
You just need to go through and manually
page number it.
Then the things that we have at the start
are gonna help you to actually
be able to make it a bullet journal
out of anything you want.
Keep that in mind and just pay attention
to what those pages are.
One thing to note about this notebook for me
in particular and my process
is that it is not the end all, be all for me,
but I do feel that I remember things better
when I write them down.
When you think about things I need to remember
and where I should put them, I'm more likely
to put them in my bullet journal
than I am to put them in some sort
of digital form of note keeping
or project management.
The first thing you're gonna look at is the index.
Everything here is pretty self-explanatory.
It's every single thing in your bullet journal,
ideally in the sections or in the collections
that you make.
I'm not gonna get super technical
about bullet journal terms.
If you wanna know what specific things are called,
other than what I've blatantly decided
to talk about today, I would definitely
go watch the free resources, especially on YouTube,
that Bullet Journal has made to tell you
about their process and how it works.
I don't know if I've nailed what collections
technically are, and I'm still learning things
about how to use the event signifier
and things like that.
I just wanna show you sort of the basics
of what I'm keeping track of so that you
can understand how this notebook
plays a role in my productive life.
This index is going to have a documentation
of all of those major sections
and what is in them and what page
I can find them on.
This, all by itself, game changer for me.
To be able to say, "Oh, I know I was keeping track
"of something," and go to that page number
and see, oh, there it is, I love.
The index is just a game changer.
It's so much better than, oh, I wrote this
on loose leaf and then I wrote this
in a journal over here and then I put this
on a legal pad and then I put this online.
It's so nice to know that I can
pretty much find everything that I'm looking for
in this index list so that I'm not
furiously thinking, did I even write it
in this notebook?
That's an annoying feeling to me.
That alone is a great way to start
as counterproductive as possible
because the mindset of I don't even know
if I put it in here will make me
probably not find it. (laughs)
The kickoff for my journal and all
bullet journals is the future log.
This is an interesting space where you may
or may not know how to use it when you first start.
I had no idea.
My future log was pretty blank
for most of the first two years
of me using bullet journal.
Your future log should start with February
because you're gonna wanna split
these pages up into six sections
across two pages.
Then there's gonna be a total of four pages.
That last section is gonna be January of 2020.
You wanna make sure that you're putting things
in there that will go into your next bullet journal.
Pretty much anything that has either
already gotten demoted from January
and pushed to the future because
it has to happen, but it's not happening yet,
is in the future log.
Woo, I feel like there's a way better
description of a future log someplace else. (laughs)
Still trying to figure that one out.
The next section of my bullet journal
is how I like to start every bullet journal,
and that's with what I see for myself
in that year.
What I have here is basically a spread
of my goals and resolutions.
I wrote resolutions because I don't have
a better name for it, even though I technically
only have one resolution for this year.
But there were some other things,
as I told you before, that I'm thinking about
that I would like to start, stop and continue
in this year, just little reminders here to do that.
My goals are none ya business, so, sorry,
they're blocked out, but you can get the idea.
List your goals here.
I don't have very many.
Some of them are lofty and some of them
I think I really have a good chance of hitting.
I like to have a little blend of both here
'cause it really keeps me motivated.
On the resolutions side, I have my
word of the year, which you guys
may have already heard is poise,
and then the one resolution that I have,
as well as some things that I called
other betterment because I didn't want them
to be law, and I just wanted them
to be things that I'm thinking about habitually
if I can, if I can start to integrate them.
My next spread here is my monthly stats tracker.
This will probably be more interesting
for somebody who is a creator or a potential creator.
What you can see here is I kinda created
my own grid of what I like to track
on a monthly basis to make sure that I
am moving forward with my content.
The things that are happening here on YouTube,
on my podcast and on other social media
for me are extremely important to my business.
So making sure that certain metrics, not all,
definitely not all, and even some of these metrics
don't actually matter,
from a decision-making standpoint,
but they are important to track
that they are going upward and onward,
not necessarily dying for some reason
if they are actually important to me
and a part of my daily, weekly, monthly strategy.
Just to show you what my shorthand means here,
if you can't tell, I have a column,
or excuse me, I have a row for each month.
In each of the columns, it says YouTube subscribers.
I'm just making sure that that number
continues to go up. (clicks tongue)
You can make that happen for me in January
by making sure you press the subscribe button
and maybe the notification bell, too.
Next, we have YouTube views.
After that, it is the YouTube average number
of views in the first 24 hours.
Then there's YouTube watch time,
which is an important metric overall.
Views are not the end all, be all on YouTube.
If you have people watching considerable minutes
of time on your channel, that's good for
the health of it, as well.
The next few columns are other content
that I care about, so that includes
podcast downloads, how well are the podcasts
doing on a monthly basis and also
podcast downloads on average,
how they did in the first 24 hours.
Instagram followers, Instagram Stories.
I like to track my average Instagram Stories viewing
just to make sure I know how many impressions
I'm getting there, and Twitter followers.
Now we get into January.
I have a really basic first January page here.
The first thing that I do is list out
all of the numbers, the dates of the month,
as well as the corresponding day.
This documentation I am taking
a little differently than I have in the past.
What I've done in the past is used this
basically to rewrite my calendar,
which felt really stupid.
I was like, I don't know why this
is what this page is for.
I have a digital calendar.
I don't need to write down when
my hair needs to get done, even though I
did write that here in January more because
I'm looking forward to it.
But what I am using it for instead now
is to start documenting things that I
would wanna remember about that day.
Kind of as like a one-line journal,
which, it's a bullet journal,
so shouldn't we be doing that?
Probably.
Definitely wanna remember the day that we hit
300,000 subscribers on YouTube,
so that's on there, too.
Really using this as a journal.
The second part of this spread
is just general tasks.
What I use this list for is something big,
kind of, that needs to be remembered
about the month, something that might take
a little bit more time, I'm gonna write that
in this tasks list so I'm always looking at it
when I'm on this page, how have we moved on this.
Then I'll think of smaller bite-size tasks
that I can write on these next pages,
which I'll show you, that will help me
get that one big one done.
This is also where I will probably come
and write down things that were in
the future log for this month
so that I can remember, oh, yeah,
I tasked myself with this for this month
because it didn't work out last month.
I will put that on this page.
This page does not fill up very often
because it's kind of what I feel like
is my starting point before the month has started
to think about what I need to get done in this month.
That's pretty much what I use this task page for.
The next few pages, and I usually pre-design
only three spreads, so six pages total,
for just individual daily tasks.
I have a stamp that I got from Amazon,
which I really like 'cause I'm sick
of looking at my handwriting at this point, usually.
I will date the section for the day,
and then I will start to fill things in as we go.
A lot of this is gonna be blocked out.
You're not gonna see a lot of it because
I can't share a lot of what I wrote.
I'm using the typical key for bullet journal
to write down tasks.
You have your dots for your tasks,
you have your circle for events
and you have your hash mark for the notes.
I really like using this note thing
because I'll often find that I have an idea
and I wanna write it down, and I don't have
a space for it, but I can write it
on that daily list.
It's also nice to know when I have
certain ideas or when certain things come to me,
to be able to go back and say, like,
"Oh, why did that happen?"
Oh, all this stuff was going on
when I had that idea.
The next couple of things that I have here
are internal notes that I can't share with you,
but basically I'm trying to keep
meeting notes in this journal, as well,
because it's a lot nicer for me to write it down
and be able to remember it
'cause I wanna remember things that my team says
or I wanna remember things that we're planning
on doing as a company for the year.
If I just type it out, I feel like
the same connection doesn't get made.
That's just a spread of notes that
were happening at a certain meeting.
The next spread, another thing creators
might find interesting, is my editorial tracking.
The same idea of what I had for
the yearly tracker, this is the monthly,
so it's on a micro scale.
You wouldn't have seen individual video results
or individual podcast results
on the yearly tracker, but this is the
monthly tracker, so what I'm doing
is I'm writing the date and the name
of the videos that I've created.
Those things that I'm averaging
or keeping track of on the yearly scale,
I'm writing them here.
The 24 hour views for these videos
that I've made throughout the month
or the 24 hour downloads of these podcasts
that I published.
Then I'm also keeping track of the
30 day views for each of those publications,
so whether they're videos or podcasts,
just to see how does something do over a month
versus the first couple of days.
That's super interesting.
I definitely recommend when you're a creator,
your metrics matter a lot.
For me to have these spaces to be able
to look at them at a glance
and write them in, that helps me feel
a lot more purpose in my content,
but it also makes me feel like I am
engaged in what is happening with it,
what works and what doesn't,
what to do more of, what to stay away from.
My next spread here is just more notes.
This is actually guest notes that I
was making throughout the process of reviewing
the podcasts that I am publishing.
If you're familiar with the podcast,
I do a detailed recap or I give a bio
at the beginning or I give you a teaser
at the beginning.
For me to know and remember what great moments
happened in the interview, I have to listen to it back,
I have to edit it a little bit
and I have to write down the things
I want to say in my intro and outro.
That's what I'm using this space for.
This one's a little interesting if you
are getting serious about fitness or your body,
you might want to try something like this.
I'm probably not going to share my metrics with you,
however, but I'm basically tracking
my body weight and my body measurements
as I'm continuing to do a workout plan
with my trainer.
It's a reminder in my journal, which I could have
just made all work related, that I'm trying
to put more things in my life in here.
It's good to have that reminder of did you
eat right today, did you drink more water,
did you go to the gym like you said you were going to?
It's nice to have that in here.
The next one is gonna sound really silly,
but I wanted to put something about Lucy in here.
Lucy is my dog.
Lucy is turning 15 this year.
Lucy doesn't get as much exercise
as she used to.
When she goes to my mom's house,
she gets a ton of exercise because
there's a lot of land for her
to walk around on.
Not that she needs a lot of it
'cause she can't see it, but (laughs) it's still
a lot better than apartment life here.
But she's also very much used to apartment life.
She's actually really, really good
at apartment life.
So good she'll poop on a sidewalk
anytime she feels like it.
But I do try to get more intentional
about making sure she does get that exercise.
The more water she drinks, the better she eats,
the more exercise she gets,
she's more likely to live longer with me.
I created this really, really silly grid
that I thought would be fun to fill out
of all the times that Lucy goes on walks
because it means Amy got walked, too,
(laughs) and Amy needs her steps.
This next spread is just a couple of things
I needed to kinda get out of my head.
The first one is a fun tracker.
I think you should try this one if you like it.
It's called when did I last.
I basically put a few sections
to fill things in here, and then lines
next to them that are intended to be for dates.
When was the last time I took Lucy to the groomer?
When was the last time I called the cleaners?
When was the last time I had Lucy's glands expressed?
That's a process we don't have to talk about here
because nobody has the stomach for that.
These are things I need to keep track of
that I'm not always like going back
in my calendar and trying to find
'cause sometimes if I put something in my calendar,
like Lucy's gotta go to the vet,
I don't put exactly what happened at the vet that day.
That should probably be something that I do,
but I don't.
I created this list of Lucy's going
to the groomer actually today
and she's getting her glands expressed.
I want to track that because if for some reason
Lucy needs to go back to get her glands expressed
too soon, there might be something wrong with her,
and so we need to go back to the vet.
When was the last time she went to the vet?
I should probably add that one on here, too.
God, I love how Lucy farted at that exact moment.
Lucy, we're going in five minutes, okay?
Just, geez.
The other side was things I wanted to write down
of things I needed to batch because I
was starting to batch out 2019
and I just wanted to make sure that I
didn't forget certain things.
That's pretty much all I have in my bullet journal.
The only thing that's really, really missing
from this right now is my content ideas section.
This is where I start to come up with ideas
for videos and podcasts that I wanna share with you,
but I figured you guys would understand
what that list looks like.
I'm not gonna add it yet 'cause it's just
another thing I would blur out because
it's always a surprise.
I like to surprise you. (laughs)
I'd be curious to see if you are interested
in a consistent bullet journal update
over the months, if you wanna see me
continue to do this whole how do I plan
my month thing as I go throughout 2019
'cause as we keep going, it will continue to evolve,
and I would love to share that with you.
Let me know in the comments below.
Oh, look at this straight hair that's just
been hanging out all day.
Hello.
Do you have a bullet journal?
Are you interested in this kind of thing?
Are you using a different note taking technique?
I would love to hear what you're doing
to get more productive in your daily life
throughout this new year in the comments below,
as well, so make sure you share that with me before you go.
That's all for today.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
I appreciate it, as always.
Make sure you subscribe for good vibes.
Kiss the ones you love. (blows a kiss)
Remember, go after the life that you want.
Cheers.
(soothing music)