Hey Friends, today we're talking about my understanding of planners and bullet journals. This post was inspired by Anne's comment on this post (PS here is the link to Kae's blog that she mentions).
Takeaways:
- Yes we need a central Cool Bloggers Forum to discuss Cool Blogger Stuff in detail.
- I wanted to tell Anne more about how I organized my "I made it up myself" Excel sheet, but it was too bulky for a comment. Is it enough material for a dedicated post? Let's find out!
Confession: I'm not sure whether to call this thing that I'm doing "a
planner" or "a bullet journal". That's why you'll hear me use both
terms.
My History With Planners and Bullet Journals
Nada. The closest that I've ever come is my work Outlook and personal Google calendars. I mean, everything that I do is either because I *have* to do it or because I *want* to do it, so either way you look at it, I'm motivated to get stuff done.
Recently I started reading SHU's blog and listening to her podcast, and that plus the chatter that I've been hearing about planners/bullet journals elsewhere on the bloggos got me interested. I feel that I could be better at time management, and also I want to break the cycle of work bleeding over into my non-work life. I wasn't sure exactly how a planner would help, but I was interested in putting a toe in the water.
I know enough about myself to know that having a physical planner is not my jam at this stage in my life - I always know where my phone and computer are, so I don't want the added chore of keeping track of where the planner is. I'm sure there are a ton of digital products out there, but I wanted something free and private. I wasn't sure whether Word or Excel was the best medium, but after thinking about it for a bit my accountant's heart settled on Excel.
Getting Started
I hit up Google to get a feel for what a planner/bullet journal is supposed to have. The typical contents that I saw were an index, a future page, some kind of monthly/weekly/daily pages, a lot of them include meal/nutrition/fitness plans, yada yada. I found a few Excel templates out there but they looked too in depth/not me so I doodled around and sketched out what I wanted in a blank file.
Hopefully the screenshot will be somewhat readable, and yes I've taken out a few personal things that I didn't want to share. But here's the gist of what I came up with. I highlight things in yellow as I do them, and I'll explain what the peach highlights are in a moment.
- Index tab - uh, right now I don't have very many tabs so I don't need an index. Currently this tab has a list of my annual goals.
- 2024 tab (shown in screen shot) - I think properly this should be the "future" tab in a Real Planner/Bullet journal. Once I started sketching things out, it was simple enough to just do the whole year on one tab. I don't feel the need for separate monthly or weekly tabs since it's easy enough to just filter the dates if I want to drill down to a narrower time range. The categories that I came up with were:
- Thing - generally this is for "have to do" things like appointments. In my case I'm also using it as a prompt to schedule
appointments. Example, I needed to schedule a dermatology appointment and after procrastinating on it for a while I gave myself the task of scheduling it on January 15th==>and sure enough I made the call and got an appointment just two days later. This column also includes prompts to start working on various annual goals.
- Event
- similar to the thing column, but more for fun stuff, like birthdays and anniversaries. Since I
have Scout Camp in the "thing" column, it's easy to see what days I can
book for travel. I ended up not going to Indy due to a winter storm,
so I just crossed it off.
- Hike - I'm doing a hiking
challenge that goes through June, and the hikes are numbered. My goal
is to do one hike a week, and to start I just filtered the list by
Saturdays and numbered in 1-20. I've been able to do more than planned,
so I've changed the cells to the actuals as I've gone along. Due to
weather I chose to do hike #9 instead of hike #5 last weekend.
- Fitness
- this isn't for my regular workouts - I track those somewhere else.
This is for the "extras" that I tend to forget. This column is
specifically for the pushups that I do 3x per week - to get here all
that I did was to filter for every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in 2024
and filled in pushups.
- Fitness 2 - this is for my baby pull
up goal. Currently I've only filled in pull up bar hangs on Mondays
and Fridays in January. In February I'll figure out if I want to just
keep doing that or add something more to it. As you can see there was a
Friday when I didn't get around to doing either of my fitness add-ons
so they got the peach highlight and a ^ to indicate that I did them the
next day.
- DL - the boring one. DL stands for DuoLingo and I try to do one unit per weekday for the native language where my employer is located. It's better than nothing, though how much better than nothing I'm not sure.
- Cool Stuff - this is to document unexpected, fun stuff that happens.
- Daily Tab - this is too messy to show, but I've got a few lines for each day. TBH I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with this information but the point is that I've got it. It feels doable to have an entire month on one tab, and I'm pretty sure that I'll end up with "Daily" tabs for each month.
- Daily mood: I stole this from the Evidation app, I track my mood every day but the app doesn't let me see the data afterwards.
- Sleep: also stolen from Evidation. I include notes about any insights I have about whether my sleep was good or bad.
- Workouts: a list of what I did for exercise that day.
- Media: I stole this idea directly from SHU! A list of podcasts, TV, books, movies, etc. I'm not documenting every frikin' YouTube video that I watch, but I'm doing the best that I can.
- Work Experience Tracker: how I feel about the work day overall. I just recently added this because I want a way to quantify my overall work experience - the "it's fine, I don't mind this" days, the OK days, the boring days, and the horrible days.
- A few sentences about what happened that day.
(Hmmm...I probably need to move the daily mood/sleep/and work experience items to the 2024 tab and give them their own columns...like I said, this is all a work in progress).
- Meals - this is dual purpose meal planning/food log. I'm still working on the format.
- Miles - just for fun, I'm tracking the slowest and fastest miles for my hiking challenge. So far the fastest mile is 17 minutes and the slowest has been almost 30 minutes.
- Cleaning - snooze. I have some cleaning goalz for the house but I'm not ready to officially write them down or track them yet. So far I'm just taking notes on a few specialty projects that I've taken on this year. Spoiler, I'm going to write a post soon about one of these projects.
How It's Going Observations
- Overall my time does feel more manageable. I can't explain exactly why, and maybe it's a coincidence and there are other factors. But I think it has something to do with being able to see all of my stuff in one place
- I still use my Outlook and Google calendars for appointments - I need something besides this sheet to tell me when it's 15 minutes before an appointment and to block off my work calendar for me.
- I think that somehow the planner/Bullet Journal makes it easier to do things that I don't want to do. For a case study, let's look at doctor's appointments. At the beginning of the year I had a whole host of medical appointments to schedule for a bunch of routine, boring stuff. Example: the dermatologist for a skin check. Look, I don't want to do any of these appointments let alone make the phone calls to set them up. There's also no urgency besides getting them done sometime this year. So I scheduled in the task of making ONE APPOINTMENT PER MONTH. Even I can keep up with that.
So anyway, that's my starting approach to this new world of planners/bullet journals. Tell me everything about how you do it.
I read EVERY WORD with intense interest, Birchie! I have never really used a planner before, either (or, at least not in the past 15 years) and I am thinking it would be very helpful to me at this stage of life. So I am taking so many notes about what you are tracking. I especially like the idea of tracking mood and sleep. Such a brilliant idea! Especially if you have come up with a brilliant way to turn it into usable data! Spreadsheets are awesome. Love your digital approach, too -- like you, I always have my phone handy and my computer nearby, but I'm a little wary of a paper planner. (Despite this, I am going to TRY a paper planner, just for kicks.)
ReplyDeleteOne of the things I am "struggling" with is that we already use Google calendar as a family and I don't want to change that. So now am I going to have to do double work to keep track of things that my family needs to also know? Yuck. So if you have tips for how to coordinate the two, I am all ears. I am also curious how much time you spend a) tracking the things you track and b) planning ahead. Like, do you have a day each week where you plot out the upcoming week?
Thanks for breaking down your process! So fascinating!
I have to admit that I'm curious about paper planners even though I don't see using one right now. I need to go out and browse sometime.
DeleteMy planner isn't a replacement for my Google calendar at all so yes it's double work. The purpose of having my appointments in the planner is so that I can see what I've got on tap for the month/week/whatever, and the purpose of having it on Google calendar is so that I can invite others and so that I get the reminders when it's time to do stuff.
If it makes you feel better, I have my personal calendar, my work calendar, we have a family calendar with the four of us, and then we have a shared parenting calendar for stuff that we do with the boys' mom..and yes our rate of putting stuff on the calendar is not 100%.
This is good!
ReplyDeleteI'm happy to see that I'm not the only one who has an DIY Excel planner!
Yes, it's double work as there's an overlap with Outlook/Google (the calendars sync). But it's handy.
I print out the Excel which shows the next 5 months and put it on the kitchen table. We pencil in stuff as they get scheduled and then I print out an updated version every 10 days.
I use a physical diary where I take a few notes about the day and then rate them from -2 to +2 (most days are +1).
Then, for stuff that I need to do (like doc appointments) I have a simple sheet of paper next to the Excel list. As stuff gets done, I cross it out.
Do you have any physical calendars or printouts or is it all digital?
Yay for DIY Excel planners! I really like the -2 to +2 scale...that makes perfect sense to me and I might just steal that idea for myself.
DeleteRight now I'm all digital EXCEPT that we do have a paper calendar in our kitchen that we write birthdays, vacations, scout camps, and really important meetings on.
Well, I'll just be that elderly eccentric woman in the corner holding a big, thick library book and thumbing through a paper planner. I like writing things down (with a pen) and turning the pages. My son thinks I'm absolutely insane. I think he would be happy if he never had to pick up a pen or pencil again in his life (I'm not kidding about this.) But, I did get something out of this post. I need to have a better way of tracking things like sleep and other daily goals like that. Also, I like your method of PUTTING IT ON THE SCHEDULE when there's something you've been putting off, like making a doctor's appointment. I'm also way overdue for the dermatologist, because I just can't get myself to CALL THEM and make the appointment. So, this was interesting and helpful. I always love seeing how other people manage these things.
ReplyDeleteI love seeing how other people do things as well, so I'm hoping that this post will be "bait" to get more insights.
DeleteThe only answer to paper vs digital is what works for each of us. If your son or I were stranded on a desert island with no electronics and a paper planner we'd figure it out. And yes, in my case my problem isn't going to appointments, it's picking up the stupid phone to schedule them, so that's the action item that I need to go after.
I LOVE paper planners and I LOVE that others like digital planning. I have tried to do things digitally many times and, for day-to-day life...it just doesn't work. Once a month I track all my workouts from the month, based on data from my Watch. I also have a Christmas spreadsheet where I organize holiday stuff. Aside from that, everything is on paper.
ReplyDeleteI'm very "you do you" with planning and I think you've laid out a FABULOUS template for people looking to pursue digital planning. I think you'd make a great guest on SHUs podcast :)
Correct: "you do you" is The Golden Rule. My highlights are kind of the equivalent of your gold stars.
DeleteYou are very kind and I KNOW you will be a great guest on the potential podcast that you mentioned yesterday for Christmas. All I know is that it will be an auto download for me.
This is so interesting!! I was actually just interviewed by SHU on Tuesday for Best Laid Plans all about how I do my digital planning! So, you can listen to that if you want when it airs. :)
ReplyDeleteIn brief, I use Google Calendar for calendar events, kids activities, etc. I use Google Tasks (lives in sidebar of Gmail or Google Cal) for all my to-do lists. I have 15-20 lists but the top 3 are "DO TODAY", "THIS WEEK" and "UPCOMING". I look at those lists every single day. Then all the other lists (Household, Kids Stuff, etc.) I look at usually at least once per week- and I then decide which items should get "bumped up" to either today or this week or Upcoming list. I use Google Keep for note-taking/ reference type things, as well as my grocery list and tracking ongoing projects, saving ideas, etc. I use Google Sheets for my time tracking spreadsheet (basically my journal + habit tracker). I make a sheet for each month, with a tab for each week. Then I record what I do during the day up top (in half hour increments) and at the bottom I have rows for: "Workout, Walk, Screen minutes, Listen (what podcasts etc), Watch (shows/movies i watched that day), Read, B/L/D/S to record my meals, and then, my favorite part: Accomplish (list 3-5 things I accomplished that day), Happy (random things that made me happy, like... seeing sunset on my walk, or a good chat with my son, etc.). Gratitude (a few things I'm grateful for that day) and finally Bummer (list a couple things that kinda sucked that day!). I have an additional tab which I set up like a grid notebook and track other habits there, with date across top and habits down the left- that's a whole month view and I just mark the boxes with an X when I do certain things. (e.g. Floss, skincare, new recipe, work on photo project, email cleanout, etc.) I like this monthly view but really my most important things I track on those weekly/daily sheets.
Anyway, I'm loving my digital systems! I adore having all the Google apps on my phone and accessing from there OR my computer, and I keep my Google Calendar (and by default, Google Tasks and Google Keep, since they're in the sidebar) open all day long while I work. It's been a game changer for me!
YESSSSSSSS!!!!!! I don't auto download very many podcasts but SHU is an exception so you'll be in my podcast queue as soon as it comes out. I am looking forward to your episode.
DeleteI really like the idea of of having a bummer list - no I don't want to dwell on the bad things in life but I think it's important to acknowledge that stuff happens. And hey the "worst" case is that you'll end up with an empty bummer list someday. I'm adding this to my "steal" list from these comments.
I've always struggled with what my perception of bullet journals are, which is that you need to be good at drawing and that world of creativity to do it "right"... so, even though I have bought a few in past years (even one with graph paper), I've never been able to truly give them a chance.
ReplyDeleteWork is organized by Outlook calendars and the Mr. and I share a Google calendar for us and our daughter. We also have a paper calendar in the kitchen that I keep activities and playdates on for my daughter's awareness / love of anticipation. I also use the Notes app in my phone for lists, but I've been using it less and less...
Being so behind the times (the least cool of the Cool Bloggers? Cool Bloggers Fringe?), I've recently discovered that the Google Sheets app on my phone connects with Google on my computer, so I have been exploring tracking there (reading, health goals, those ridiculous to-dos that my brain/heart loves to to-don't) because of the flexibility. I desperately want to be a paper planner person, but my perfectionism can't handle my messy handwriting, basically.
Lindsay, I think you and I are handwriting twins...as in I go to great lengths to never handwrite anything. Let's just say it's not my strong suit and leave it at that.
DeleteI took a break from paper planning for a couple of years and now this is my 3rd year in a row of using a Wonderland 222 which I learned about on SHU's blog. It's kind of like a Hobonichi (sp?) in that it has super thin paper and a similar layout, but it's a woman-owned company based in the pacific NW. I admittedly don't plan all that much these days? Like I don't have any sort of daily page. I use the pages in the W222 that are meant for daily pages for notes/to do lists/etc. I don't have access to any google applications at work so it precludes me from being able to use google like Kae does. I hate that I can't access gmail or google sheets! But my company is very LOCKED DOWN.
ReplyDeleteI love the peek into how you use excel for planning, though! That is smart!!
Yep, any planning that I do for work is on work systems or the notebook that I have on my desk.
DeleteI know that when I get super busy there's a limit to the amount of planning that I can do - I just have to roll with the punches. So what you're saying about lists makes sense.
It's a very interesting topic to me! I kind of want to think about what-all I do, but I'll make a note to blog about it soon. A note on my calendar!
ReplyDeleteI will admit that I didn't "plan" to write this post lol.
DeleteWell, now you've given me an idea for a Wordless Wednesday. A picture of my incredibly simple system. I don't track much, so I have a Franklin Planner that is very small and shows me a month at a time, and I put birthdays and appointments there. If I decide to make a 'to do' list, I use a pad of paper. I go through periods when I use a list and others when I don't. I find it satisfying to check things off, so I will put things on that I don't need to be reminded to do, like take my morning walk, and sometimes things that I've already done. Then I go through periods when I don't keep a list at all. My husband and daughter think I'm extremely organized, because they don't track anything.
ReplyDeleteWe have a big calendar on the fridge that we sort of use, meaning I write things down and they ignore them. If they have appointments, they put them in their phones. I just want them to know where I am if they come home and the house is empty. They can go to the fridge and see, "Oh, she went out with her friends." Maybe. More likely they would call or text me.
I do have spreadsheets to keep track of my PTO balance, bills, and quarterly credit card points. The last one is for my one credit card that has quarterly categories that get 5% points, but only up to a limit. After that, they only give 1%, so I keep track, and when I hit that limit, I switch over to my 2% credit card.
I'm looking forward to that post! At least my family is really good about tracking all of their activities and knowing where they need to be - well, at least my husband is good at tracking activities for the boys.
DeleteI highly approve of tracking your credit card rewards! Right now I'm building up a stash of hotel points so I'm only using one card, but once that's over I'll figure out a strategy to maximize the rewards.
I used to be team paper planner all the way and I do like having pages to flip to and the entire thing laid out all together. However! I was entering/writing things several times in some cases. Like, I like to have a monthly view so I can see everything all at once but then I want a weekly view for day to day. I have been using digital for years but until about three years ago, I had a paper one too. I just kind of lost enthusiasm for it at some point and since then I have not looked back.
ReplyDeleteI love your layout and I do use Excel for a lot of scheduling things too but I have found a combo of Google calendar and Keep to be a good combo for me. I am like Lisa though and don't have access to any Google things at work, so I have to use my phone most of the time. It works, but is not perfect. I actually have started experimenting with Monday.com for trip planning and so far I like it a lot, and may even do a post on it after I have had a little more time to use it.
We use Monday at work - I can definitely see how it would be useful for trip planning. Right now my "trip planner" is a Word document where I have lists of what I've done and what I want to do and then I list out my current trip at the end. There is definitely room for improvement - that's my long winded way of saying that I'd be interested in seeing that post!
DeleteThis is very ambitious! I'm a paper planner gal, though, so the digital gig is a bit overwhelming, LOL. My youngest gave me a fantastic planner last year for Christmas, which I LOVED. I couldn't find the 2024 version of it, so I had to settle for a different formatted one...and it's driving me crazy. I know I'll get used to it, and find a rhythm (??) to it eventually, but right now it's a bit of an UGH thing.
ReplyDeleteOh man, that's the worst when you have something that's perfect and then you can't get it anymore and have to use something that's not as good. I don't have the answer but I've definitely had the problem.
DeleteWhen do you journal? I mean, when do you sit down and input all this into your Excel spreadsheet? At the end of the day? The beginning of the day? I ask because I have a pseudo-bullet journal/handwritten spreadsheet I use because I couldn't bother to make myself turn on my computer at night, so any attempt I had at tracking digitally just didn't work, but maybe if I just did it first thing in the morning it would be better. *sigh* Why does everything have to be so complicated all the time?
ReplyDeleteExcellent question! Right now it's catch-as-catch can. I might fill in stuff like workout details, mood, and sleep in the morning on a break from work, and filling in stuff like my work rating, media, sentences about the day, etc at night. I ended up having a very busy weekend for reasons that I can't wait to tell you about, so I slacked for a few days.
DeleteOMG, this is amazing and I love it so much! You've inspired me to try out a digital system because I keep trying paper planners/bullet journals and NOTHING WORKS for me. I think an Excel spreadsheet might be just what I need. I'm excited!
ReplyDeleteOh gosh before you start, check out Kae's post: https://gratefulkae.com/2024/01/30/monthly-vs-weekly-recurring-tasks-digitally/
DeleteI think I might steal some of her ideas.
I love reading about everybody's planner habits and I can totally see how you can make an excel sheet work! I love excel for all kinds of planning purposes and I love how you are using it as a dated planner. I am using Google for a lot of my digital planning with the adventage that it can send "reminders".
ReplyDeleteI also have a bunch of spreadsheets for tracking stuff, as one does!
As one does;-) You're among friends here.
DeleteThis. Is. AWESOME. This is what I was picturing, and seeing it work for you makes me think that it will work for me (and, apparently Stephany, too!) too. Thank you for sharing! I shall be pursuing this once the chaos (sigh) dies down. Unfortunately, at this point, it seems to be the "new normal". And gosh, I dislike that phrase...
ReplyDeleteI am now intrigued about a) your "very busy" weekend (an adventure?), b) what your cleaning goalz are, and c) whether we might be separated at birth. (I also saw in a comment on Julie's blog that you were ALSO born in CA and ended up in the Midwest-ish.) Just sayin'.
I'm sure that as Cool Bloggers we have more in common than we could even begin to guess!
DeleteNot to keep dredging up this post, but... two things. 1) I cannot figure out how we can set up a Cool Bloggers forum, sigh. Unless we start an organization and fund a site for that or do our own reddit and yeah, no, I can't be in charge of that. Also, 2) Can you do a post on your rewards credit card(s)? I keep getting offers from my CC company and I'm debating whether the $95 annual fee is worth it. :) Thanks for considering!
DeleteNo worries! I'm not far enough into my credit card journey to do a post, but for me it would come down to what are you getting for the $95? After YEARS of going back and forth I finally got the Chase Sapphire card which gives me a $50 hotel credit and $1,000 in intro points so getting the card put $955 in my wallet. I also got the Chase Hyatt card which gives me a free night at Hyatt each year plus oodles of intro reward points. Both cards have travel insurance and it was pretty fast and easy to get the money that I spent on my cancelled Indianapolis trip back. So far it's been worth it for me, but if I ever get to a point where I'm not getting the $95 back then I'll be cancelling the cards. Between teenagers and traveling I'm in a spendy phase of life, so I figured I might as well get some perks.
DeleteThis is next level. My daughter organises her life using excel spreadsheets. Menuplan planning,, running plan, job hunting are all on seperate ones. Maybe I should send her here to get some more ideas. I have a number of years all in paper bullet journals where me whole life including book notes, class notes are contained. Now I use ROAM research because it is easily customisable, especially once you learn a few tricks. I had planned to do a some posts about it, but it will be after my holiday now.
ReplyDelete