How I found/made the system that worked! A6 bullet journal - simplify your life

hi uh today i'm going to talk about the bull journal and how i came up with my system inspired by others and streamlined to work for myself and to understand how i got here we need to go back to the past and start at the beginning so many people in the bull journal community they started with an a5 it's quite a good size um however had my issues with it and i also started with already an idea how a bullet journal should look like which is not how should look like and um i'm going to show you now so you understand i started with something that many people have seen before spreads like these this is a yearly overview there's something like a year in pixels which which probably should continue doing and i did monthly spreads like these well um they didn't really work for me they are still quite minimalistic for the bull journal community um even though it uses highlighters and stuff it just it just didn't really work for me and you can see in the same vein um an overview for a week have a tracker a week again an overview for a week a week new month it didn't really work out um it was too visual and i'm a visual person i'm creative i do a lot of things in the creative area and i had the need to divide my planning and my just normal day with my creativity so i researched and found um a system that works a lot better the system was inspired by megan she's an amazing illustrator and lots of videos on youtube as well on her bullet journals and um on her illustrations and she used these little a6 ball joints which are about half of the size of the a5 and so i i felt this was to open i wasn't going to finish such a big notebook anytime soon so i needed something that i could complete quite fast quite easily and this was this small one so what i did was i defined what i wanted to have from a bullet journal very simple monthly overview that one day is one page and that i don't have to divide and kind of scene gather where a day ends and if they're going to be some more tasks that i have to add later and i had just wanted to have a day and have a new in the week that a certain task was due in a certain day that i could already write it on the page that it was meant to be on and um i tried out the system inspired by her i modified a bit and this is how i wanted the month to look like and then also thought okay maybe um also write the list form which is typical for the bullet journal so i kind of morphed both the monthly overview and the list form together then this is what i was planning on doing with the header of the each days with number the day the month and an acronym for supplements water outside and read so i could just cross them off when i did these things at the time those were the things that i wanted to do and wanted to be habits to remember to take my supplements to drink enough water to go outside and to read anything and these boxes are for the um young pixels i still want to do them and fill them in so i could then fill them in in here that's what i was going for and later i tried out how i wanted the month to look like this is um not how it ended but those are two ideas that i had and i made it much more simpler i'll show you how and then i was thinking about doing timelines like an agenda or doing um horizontally a week spread for a week but i i didn't really like it it was quite hard to figure out how i it it didn't make sense because this looked like my google calendar i had no reason to duplicate my google calendar in my bullet journal i wanted it to be for tasks and not for appointments that i know that will be happening because they're there every damn week um so i ditched that idea but it was there and that's it on how i migrated from an a5 to an a6 and the first version is this one this is like the miniature version of the big blue one and i used this from january 2018 to may 2018 and also used a bit of this was a stage where i still used the mouth liners in my bullet journals and then i ditched them because it was way easier to just one use one pencil and the pencil that i'm using i use most of the time in here were gel pens by muji now i'm a strong believer of this one zebra sarasa clip 1.5 this one can be used underneath a highlighter which is very rare for gel pen because they smudge very easily after you go over them with a highlighter so this one works very well the tip is very nice and the writing experience is just very good um but here i use fine liners as well as gel pens and yeah so this is the yearly overview how i did it um i did it for six months in total because this is how the page works first of all and also um i didn't have to plan in advance because this is just going to be three months and if i have an appointment later in the year in the year i'm just going to put it in my google calendar and that's it so i did just a day's line i didn't use any rulers because that would be again something else i would have to carry around and that would make the progress even more complicated or um more there would be more steps involved and i wanted to just jot down my in my ideas and my my tasks without having the extra step so it's just a little calendar and if i had a birthday coming up by someone i would just put it somewhere or concert whatever at a time or concerts were still possible right so um and this is how then the month look liked if you look at megan's original layout you could see i can see similarities of how i did the month and then put down certain events i also color coded them how i stopped doing that and also i didn't like that i had to put them just as they came up in a way that oh i'm going to have something on seventh let me just write it down here and not between the third and the twelve this is something i just i couldn't do um that's why i change this later with a whole um month written out um like the original bullet journal intended and um this works much better plus here is a general to-do list for the month then this is how my days looked um i combined the planning and journaling for a time for maybe a week didn't really work out um i'm going to get back into journaling but i'm going to do it differently not on the same page as the day but after the whole week um but here you can see the date month the um supplements water outside and read and the little square for the urine pixels for my mood that i wanted to track or how the day went generally and at the time i still use check boxes that i fold out i put a line through it when i started it filled out the half when i was doing the task and then fill it out completely when i was done with the task or if i didn't have didn't finish a task i would put narrow to postpone it and i also wrote notes for lists as such and then a little bit of uh journaling down here i was kind of torn between german and english so yeah but um i then later it was the same like a month and then the week in single days then i did something different i tried out doing an overview for the week so i took the one row of the week from the monthly calendar put it in one box and then i was able to put the most important dates and then to do's and it worked for a while um i'm not using it anymore i haven't used it in years but it was something that was helpful when i had a lot to do in the week and i also tried out these things just a typical monthly overview that you can see in many many journals um but i didn't really like it i it was really useful for that time because i had to learn for an exam but um yeah didn't really work out uh and on the topic of the exam this is um a spread i did for the exams that i had to do in the first semester in english and i think i would was doing like a checklist for book learn and revise maybe um and yeah i noted down the the results um i failed both classes twice yeah but uh turned out good at the end um very good grades um but this is like a thing that if you need it for academia or for like you want to write a very good shopping list with everything on it you need for project for anything you can just do checklists like these um and write them in their own spread and then continue um yeah and then i just continued with with normal tasks normal days and sometimes i glued something in i um what do i have something like these here these things um just a printed um fake and stacks but yeah this was the whole beginning of the journey with little ball journal and i'm going to continue to the next one continued in 2018 with a wonderful beautiful copper one and i really like them and used them for some time and um this one is also this one has less color as you can see it isn't highlighted with anything um i tried doing like appointments with a triangle and this is also the end result of how i do my months still to this day and then i ditch that thing for just one list and yeah yeah this is once again i did a week and also dash because um the month started here um and yeah this is just just normal day and i did line here i used the ruler i ditched that as well um [Music] here's like a typical just two days that i did and still with the check box and notes were points bullet points which i changed later as well and it's still the same black and white just one pencil and it worked really really well for a time um just doing that and nothing more and yeah on to the next one this one i forgot to put um sticker here but um this one was october 2018 till september 2019 why because i stopped using them and i don't know where the jump is i'm really confused where it is if i really did such a big jump or if i was mistaken with writing these but i don't think so maybe no it's actually right cool um yeah this is like at the beginning once again the same thing with the month months nothing here wow and i also put at the beginning and the first page we decided to do is um the semester overview so that i know um when i have classes when i have free time and um yeah then the month nothing there cool yeah you see i didn't really use it and week and week again and this is something just it's the same as in the last one it didn't really change um my task once again and also um the check boxes instead of the old points i used later then i guess it changed around here maybe earlier stopped using it for a while and then the first occurrence of wait nice this is the first occurrence of how i do my days now um i do the day the date and an abbreviated form of the month and then i'm not underline it and that's it i just start today with that and then anything else follows and i'm doing tasks with a bullet point and cross it out depending on how far i am um and this is how i continued doing this and then i did this i started using stickers um i used these stickers here pastel ones and different colors and um yeah that's what i did i wrote out the same way um the calendar same way i did before but then i stuck a sticker on it depending on what the day was mainly about if it wasn't work if it wasn't university day with classes if i was studying if it was kind of an event something like this appointment um i go through the system in the different video where i have how i do my bullet journal now but this is where it started i got these stickers i used them um megan the person that uh inspired this whole system um also uses these stickers but to kind of mark ideas and she has an index for different things so if she had an idea for something she put it on a page and then she was able to find it more easily i used it to resemble my google calendar and the color blocking i did over there um then i just had normal days and then i also tried journaling and okay we have like once again a normal day and just some tasks i tried to do like a perfect free day what i would do if i would be at home or at the cafe and yeah this is this is just something i try to do and planning and then i tried journaling yeah i was researching about russian witches for a book and then i kind of like wanted to do something cool out of it and then i noted down something i don't know why with a yellow because of university but yeah but this is something i find very cool and how i continue doing um journaling and i will do is in a box so that i have the text contained in a box and yeah um that's that's how it looked in 2019 continuing to the one of the most recent ones this one uh once again a copper one i really like them and it was october 2000 until january 2020 time where everything was good and not chaotic and yeah and no wonder that i stopped after that so i had a very stressful um exam season and then i stopped doing this and and now a year later i'm back on it yay so um what i did here once again was my semester and yeah the overview and then month with the same things and then you kind of see but i also stopped doing stuff um but yeah i have here another month i don't know i think orange was sports it was february and then everything sports related was cancelled well and um this was like the calm before the storm and also exam season and then everything got cancelled and then kind of fell apart right yep march and i stopped using it because i think of the stress of exam season then i also did things um for revision for my exam which then was transferred into a compensation term paper but still i was um checking off what revision notes i did but i stopped doing this as you can see it wasn't relevant anymore yeah things like this just normal lists then um yeah stopped and then suddenly it's it's september that's right october and i tried doing this again in january this year and tried out doing tasks on one side and then this kind of timeline thing on the other side tried it out a few days it worked kind of and yeah that's just that's just it nothing more then i got this horrible thing oh my god i am not able to use this because of the color it drives me crazy um i thought it would be maybe more mellow and and and warmer yellow but holy no it's um i can't i can't do that and i tried i really tried did the same thing same system and then also tried it out with that and then i just uh took some notes on stuff but oh my god it i i can't i can't see this thing it's it's bugging me so so much um i will use it up because it's it's a waste of paper if i don't do this so i'm thinking of um just illustrating something on here and then just using it as a catch-all notebook for whatever but this is where we are now and i'm going to show you how i did my system for this year 2021 oh my god it's 2021 i did the system in here how streamline it how i got back to what worked and ditched what didn't work so yeah um i'm going to see you there bye

Channel: dorotheaenss

Views: 818

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: bullet journal, bujo, calendar, a6, leuchtturm, notebook, mildliner, instax, planner, add, adhd, autism, planning, neurodivergent, neurountypical, system, minimalistic, minimalism, focus, stress, university, college, school, project, dark academia, academia, light academia, art, artist, illustration, Journal, journaling, desk setup, productivity, studyspo, studyblr, studyspiration, motivation, inspiration, study, aesthetic, medieval studies, english studies, anglistic, literature, photography, stationary

Id: IhKYw7AzwQU

Length: 24min 39sec (1479 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 16 2021