Setting up my December planner and journal so Imma fill you all in on how my system is looking. It tends to change as my life changes, I’ve used coiled planners in the past (highly recommend Plum Paper to anyone who needs a starting place for planners, great paper quality and a really good price and customization compared to a lot of similar planners. I hear the Happy Planner is also a really good option for price and customization, but cannot speak to their paper.) as well as a travelers notebook system, which worked for me for literally YEARS and really got me writing AND journaling again. About this time last year I was in one book, my journal, with weekly layout towards the beginning of the notebook. I only switched to this system with the new job, partially because I didn’t want to have my personal journal out at work.
So, here’s what I am currently working with:
- Planner has three tabs: monthly calendar for events/anomalies, weekly overview mostly for work schedule, daily to-do list including habits I’ve noticed I’m bad at keeping and need reminders of as well as tasks for specific days.
My planner is currently housed in a personal size ring-bound planner and I use the Cocoa Daisy subscription pages/kit for that size as my big “splurge” on stationary each month. Generally written in pen, color varies depending on the kit. Because of the way ring-bound planners tend to be set up with card pockets, I also use my current planner as my wallet, which tends to guarantee I don’t leave my planner at home. (I like Cocoa Daisy because they have a consistent color palette each month, which means I have a range of colors to be matchy-matchy with. This soothes my soul and is, for me, worth the subscription fees. They also look gorgeous without my needing to decorate, which just isn’t something I have a lot of time for right now. When I was a student, in my Plum Paper Planner, I decorated the heck out of every week and loved it. One example of this changing with my life.)
- Journal is for a few things: morning pages/daily braindump, tarot journaling and tracking (card frequencies, card of the month/year, what decks I am using), journaling/processing, and “other”-- generally either therapy session notes or journal exercises I find online that look interesting. I also have a section in this notebook for monthly goals, including daily habits to work on and sometimes a word to focus on. (This month I am working with the idea of “investment”, for example.) I generally have a color code of about five colors so I can tell what kind of entry I am looking at very quickly. I also use the end pages for memory keeping, scrap-booking, and junk journaling-- things I enjoy but don’t really do much of, so keeping it to such a small place really takes the pressure off.
Each month I start a new, large size Moleskine hardcover notebook for my journal. I prefer a lined notebook for writing, but I have tried dot grids and squares in the past. I like to coordinate it with my planner kit, and often decorate with leftover elements from said kit. Generally use pencil in my journal, except for the color coding which is done with markers or highlighters. (I got used to the size of Moleskine pages when I was using their cahier style notebooks for my Traveler’s notebook. I used to have one cahier for planning, one for tarot, one for journaling, and one for stories.)
- Bullet Journal is for tracking what actually happens: notes on stand out moments of the day, tasks actually done (but not repeaters like the daily habits in the planner) of consequence, special lists/collections (savings goal tracker, npcs to finish for my campaign, christmas buying/crafting list), and Pathfinder session notes. Really been liking have a quick at-a-glance of the events that ACTUALLY happen during the day because sometimes your whole day changes after you’ve marked it in your planner. And, yes, journaling combats some of this but finding it in the BuJo is easier than thumbing through my very whiny morning pages.
Currently trying out a B6 size Scribbles That Matter dot-grid hardcover notebook for bullet journaling. It’s cool because it is more or less the same width as the Moleskines I use for journaling, which is why I like the Moleskines over true A5s (which are a little wider, which should be better because it means more space/paper but I am a creature of habit/comfort) but it’s a little shorter/stubbier, so it is easy to identify in my bag. So far, I’ve been using a black pen for all my bullet journaling, but I expect I’ll be bringing in some marker for some of the special collections/trackers.
