Hi everyone!
This is going to be a really quick post because I just had to share this with you all before I forgot it. I’m a sucker for anything planner, or stationary related. Today as I was reading through a mix of reviews of Ryder Carroll’s Bullet Journal system followed by DIYfish’s Life Mapping Planner post, I had an idea.
You can use just about any journal with the Bullet Journal system, but I can bet most people are using a grid notebook. What else uses grids? The Life Mapping system…
Why not merge the two by using DIYfish’s index system with the Bullet Journal to have the Bullet Journal’s super simple system with an easy way to find everything using the Life Mapping index. Using both gives you the option to rely on the Bullet Journal’s index with page numbers OR flipping through to quickly find things via the Life Mapping index. More is better right? It’s also a fun and useful way to add some color to your Bullet Journal.
I’m really drawn to both these systems, and despite moving away from paper, they’re calling to me now that I’ve come up with this idea.
Do you use the Bullet Journal or Life Planning systems? {Or maybe both?} Let me know. I’d love to know how it works for you.
P.S. One critique of the Bullet Journal is that it doesn’t handle forward planning. I’ve been toying with the idea of setting mine one up from the beginning with monthly spreads at the front and using the rest of the pages afterwards for the daily notes which will allow me to have pages to track future events and tasks.
According to Andrea 
That is what I have done. I started using a bullet journal type system in September and the first thing I did was draw out September to December monthly spreads. I love how it works for me.
I think the brilliant part of the Bullet Journal is that, unlike a lot of systems, you can take bits and pieces from it without using the whole thing.. Putting the months in in advance has really made me like the idea more though.
I mostly only use my planner for future events and tasks, so the bullet journal won’t work for that. But I do love the simplicity of the bullet journal.
I’m admittedly still using Google Calendar and Things to track the bulk of my plans and tasks, so the Bullet Journal would be just for planning out my daily life and notes. I really don’t have much to track on paper, so for me the monthly spreads at the beginning for events, tasks, and birthdays are plenty for me. I’m interested to see the tips Ryder Carroll has talked about adding for making it into more of a forward planning tool.
I’m currently playing around with the structure of my Bullet Journal; I’m on my third physical notebook and generally begin with a four-month calendar view on one spread, and then follow with a one-month calendar/task spread, then follow that with my day-to-day tasks, sketching, and note-taking. With this notebook I’m going to try putting the index at the very back and annotating it in reverse order so there is no need to begin a new section of my book due to a lack of space in the index!
That sounds like a fantastic idea. The Moleskine I purchased as a Bullet Journal is admittedly still sitting in a drawer in my office. If only I could get over my fear of ruining new notebooks.