5 years of bullet journaling and this is what has changed in that time
I rummaged through my old Bullet Journals for you and picked out my June setups from the last 5 years. Here you’ll find inspiration and maybe some advice on what I’ve learned in 5 years of bullet journaling.
How have my weekly overviews changed?
When I started Bullet Journaling, I followed the setups of well-known Youtubers. I remember being super proud of my monthly and weekly overviews. After a few weeks, however, I usually found that I didn’t use them and I didn’t need them.
My typical weekly overview in 2017 looked like this: on the left, there was an overview for the whole week and then on the rest of the page, there were boxes for all the days of the week.
In 2018, it actually still looked almost exactly the same. It wasn’t until 2019 that I tried a running weekly for the first time. Plant Based Bride once did a great job of explaining exactly how this works.
In 2020, I experimented with many different weekly spreads. You can find my blog post about it here. My absolute favourite is the overview where I have half a page for each day and this header looks totally cool. It makes me want to try it again.
You can find my overview for 2021 in this post. The overview is a mixture of the previous years. On the left is the weekly overview and then half a page for each day.
Month-at-a-glance and cover pages?
I put a lot of effort into my first cover page in 2017. My handlettering was still quite forced and simply unpractised at that time. My monthly overview was divided into personal and school/university, plus monthly goals and a to-do list. All in all, it was far too much and I found the division totally stupid. This separation made absolutely no sense to me.
In 2018, I drew the cover page and the monthly overview on one page. Here, too, the handletting still looks pretty weird. But I found the overview I used here pretty great for quite a while. On the right were all the appointments for work and on the left all the others. Simple, but effective. I have also adopted this overview for 2019. But here I did without the cover page.
In 2020, I have a fancy cover page again that looks very similar in structure to the 2017 page. Compared to previous years, however, the font here is much more angular and fits in perfectly with the design. Funnily enough, I have the vertical monthly overview here for the third year in a row, except that I have entered work on the right and blog on the left.
I think I personally like my setup from 2020 best. Here I can also clearly remember that I really liked using my journal at that time.
It’s amazing how long I’ve been using my bullet journal. I’ve had many periods in between when I didn’t like using it or even some weeks when I didn’t use it. There are also setups with which I am absolutely not satisfied in retrospect, including my June 2021.
But one thing I have noticed over the years: my bullet journal grows with me. I started by copying pages from others, trying out everything I could find and creating overviews that I thought everyone should have. In the meantime, I know that my overviews don’t have to be everyone’s overviews. I don’t need too many trackers in everyday life, I prefer to have my month completely in view.
So if you’re in the process of setting up your first bullet journal or planning your setup for 2022, here’s my advice: try what you want to try, but don’t hold on to something that doesn’t help you or make you feel good. Everybody is different and so are our bullet journals.
When did you start your first bullet journal and what is your go-to monthly overview? Let me know in the comments below! Until next time, Xo – L
