Organisation is not my forte! The natural instinct that some people have for keeping things ordered, tidy and methodical seems to have bypassed me. Before becoming a mum this never mattered too much, I could manage to balance the demands of a fairly uncomplicated life without too much trouble. Now with my gorgeous 14 month old whirlwind, life has got brilliantly, wonderfully complicated! I love the busyness of it, I love the constant flux and the new challenges, but I have to be organised. Being a Mum, nurse, owner of a crazy spaniel, trying to reorganise my small business to be compatible such a busy life while maintaining my fitness and harbouring a distant ambition of one day becoming an Ironwoman l can feel like I'm failing at everything, not able to give any part of my life 100%, but planning helps me prioritise and also gives me a sense that I am achieving more than I realise.
I used to have a trusty old Filofax, very 90s I know, but it was frustratingly inflexible and I gave it up for the convenience of a google calendar I could share with my hubby. However there's something distinctly unsatisfying and inflexible about relying entirely on an electronic calendar even if it is extremely handy. So when I came across the idea of bullet journaling it was the perfect solution, in fact it so obviously suited me that I couldn't believe I hadn't come up with the idea myself before! The basic principle is taking a blank journal and using it to organise your life into yearly, monthly, weekly and daily plans and goals as well as being a record of activities and achievements. In this post I'll share with you my weekly and daily layout to give you an idea of how you can use the principle of bullet journaling to help improve your organisation and productivity. For more on my layout for yearly goals see my previous post.
Weekly Layout
I've been meaning to write this post for ages but each time I planned out my weekly layout I felt like it wasn't neat enough, it wasn't pretty enough. When I look at other blog posts and videos about bullet journaling everybody else's pages look so beautiful with lovely drawings. When I thought about it however I realised that though I love the creativity of my journal I don't always have the time to do that, the point of my blog is to reflect real life, and the point of my bullet journal is to make my life easier so I have to remember that if I had hours to spend making it beautiful I should probably be spending that time doing the things on all my lists instead!
Squishy's Adventures: Bullet journaling is not just about lists and tasks, it can also be used as a 'journal' a record of a achievements, a log in which to record life. I'd love to have the time to keep a detailed diary every day, or even every week, but realistically it doesn't happen, so it's lovely to have somewhere to at least to record something about every week and a little about every day. This section of my bullet journal is for writing about things that Jemima has been up to in the week, milestones that she has achieved and new experiences so at least if I don't have time to record them in detail I have a record of them to look back on.
Nom nom: With 2 shift workers and a 1 year old in the house keeping everybody fed without ending up resorting to buying expensive, quick options or meals at work is a military operation so I have to make sure I plan our meals carefully. Also one of my resolutions for the year was to waste less, in particular food waste, though planning carefully hasn't eliminated it yet it certainly helps. 
To do/goals: The purpose of this is kind of obvious! I sometimes split it into personal goals, goals for Happy Geek Creations, tasks for work etc to make it more organised if I have a lot on.
Daily sections: This gives me a broad plan for the week, events coming up, when my husband and I are working, an exercise plan and jobs that need doing on a particular day.
Next week: This section is really useful because with a bullet journal you don't automatically have dates written into it for the following week. You can write it out in advance if you want but I tend to like to sit down on a Sunday and plan the week ahead. This means I need somewhere to jot down events and tasks that crop up that I need to add to the following week.
Notes: Self-explanatory, just somewhere to jot anything down you need to make note of!
Here's the overall layout:
Other ideas:
This is my current layout but there is a huge wealth of other ideas that you could use for your weekly log, these include:
- Weight-loss tracker
- Spending log/budget planner
- Sleep tracker
- Housework tasks
The Happy Geek
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