Bullet Journal

26 Jan 2017 by Marcia Francois 5 Comments

Yip – I’m doing a bullet journal/ diary hybrid

I wrote a few weeks ago about my goals diary planner for this year. If you didn’t read that post, or just want to refresh your memory, you can find it here 🙂

And if you want to get your own copy, you can get it here.

Thanks to the comments and just common sense when I thought about it clearly, I’m going to do a hybrid this year.

This is my bullet journal

So how do I use each of them?

Let’s talk about the goals diary planner first. I use it for:

monthly planning of events
setting intentions and goals for the month ahead (I finally did January’s goals as a breakdown of my annual goals last week 🙂 Remember there are no rules for this stuff. You create your own rules)
weekly planning of the main things
weekly intentions: there are prompts for how you want to feel, what you’re grateful for, what you want to receive and what you’re giving yourself that week 🙂
monthly goals review (what I do on Goals Night. You can join me this year.)

And then, this is how I use my bullet journal.

Remember I don’t go super fancy because my aim in using one is getting stuff done 🙂 Here are my previous bullet journal posts.

I use it for my weekend to-do lists. This seems to be very popular on Instagram. Either that, or people are curious 🙂
Weekly accountability
Running list of things to buy
Friendship spreadsheet
Good ideas list (this is the stuff I get from the podcasts :))
Books read to me by the kids (they’re as motivated as I am by lists!)
Goals for 2017 (copied and pasted in)

Logistically

The goals diary planner lives on my desk at home.

The bullet journal moves around with me. I only don’t take it to the gym with me because I don’t want any accidents happening with my water bottle, my gel pens and my bullet journal.

So tell me, what are you doing this year as far as planning is concerned? Diary/ planner? Bullet journal? Hybrid?

PS I actually asked the people at Exclusive Books if they ordered Legami diaries this year – they didn’t 🙁

Filed Under: Goals, I love stationery, Intentional living, Time management Tagged With: Bullet Journal, goals diary planner, planning, shining planner, time management

5 Sep 2016 by Marcia Francois 7 Comments

How to do an annual birthday review

Birthday reviews are a little harder to do than the standard annual, end-of-year reviews, but only because it’s no-one else’s birthday but your own, and there’s no end-of-year madness to pull you along.

However, I’d almost venture to say they’re even more important to do because this is a review that’s completely focussed on you, to be done in your own time.

I took some time to review the year that was with these questions. I thoroughly recommend doing something similar if you’ve had a birthday in the last month or so, or have a birthday coming up. . . PS take a screenshot so you’ll have a visual reminder 😉👍🏼 . #liveintentionally #goals #annual review #birthday #planning

A photo posted by Marcia Francois (@organisingqueen) on Aug 16, 2016 at 10:18pm PDT

Create mental and physical space

I like to dedicate an entire evening to this practice. It won’t need an entire evening but it’s nice to not feel like you need to rush because of other things.

I make a mug of tea and assemble my favourite notebook for these purposes (Piccadilly) and all my favourite pens.

Review the year that’s just passed

Some questions you may want to ask are:

what went well?
what didn’t go well?
what do I want to keep doing?
what will I stop doing?
what do I want for this next year?

Do a version of the core desired feelings

You are aiming at answering the question, “how do I want to feel over this next year of my life?”

Think about all the categories like body, mind, spirit, relationships, work, etc.

If you want, ask God for a scripture

Mine is John 14:1 Let not your heart be troubled 🙂

You can make it even more complicated than that, but I prefer not to, so that it actually gets done 🙂

Have you done a birthday review recently? What was the most interesting insight?

If you would like coaching through your own birthday review, please email me to book your 30 or 60-minute session.

Filed Under: Intentional living, Planning, Time management, Work with Marcia Tagged With: annual birthday review, birthday review, Bullet Journal, review

4 Jul 2016 by Marcia Francois 8 Comments

What’s making me happier this week? 5

Guys, remember how I said before that my bullet journal was too pretty for scribbling?

It was all about the cute factor!

Well, I’ve got over that mindset challenge and I now scribble, make budgeting notes, highlight, use different colour pens on the same page, etc. I half-fill pages, I cross off things and I actually (gasp!) use my notebook.

And the fact that I have all the information with me in this little bullet journal makes me a lot happier.

Who else is bullet journalling?

Have you relaxed your standards, or were you realistic about the cute factor from the start? 😉

Filed Under: I love stationery, Intentional living, Planning Tagged With: Bullet Journal, what's making me happier

30 May 2016 by Marcia Francois 9 Comments

What I learned in May

1 year on Instagram has been super fun

2. 4 years since my book was published (go get your $4 copy!) and it still feels unreal

3. 2 years of Fitbitting 🙂 Here’s 1 year with my Fitbit.

Let’s talk some more about this:

I’m not sure what happened but while I still wear my Fitbit diligently, I almost don’t really care about reaching step goals anymore. I think it started with our long, hot summer (8 months is a super long time to be too hot) but it could have been before that. I still wear the bracelet because I am mildly interested in seeing what I get to… but mostly I wear it because I love the sleep stats. Super love them.

You may remember that I had a serious goal at the beginning of last year to increase my sleep. That worked beautifully and so I continue to track my time this year because I’ve found that what I measure, I manage better. And I’m constantly at my 7 hours 30 mins of daily sleep which is great. I sleep way more than this some days which balances out the occasional 6.5 hour nights.

4. I can read 3 non-fiction books in a month. Yes, that’s what happened this month. I’m surprised too because I thought my absolute top limit was two books in a really, really good month.

5. When you don’t rest properly if you’re a bit ill, your body takes longer to heal. I know, all you clever clogs learned this long ago. It’s just a really bad time for me to be a bit ill, what with Spanish exams looming, 2 big business things happening at my real work and the not-so-small matter of selling and buying houses.

6. Konmari really works. We have move dates so I went through a few rooms thinking, ” I need to declutter so I can pack” and…. I threw out 3 knives, a pair of pants and a top. That’s awesome 🙂 If you’re thinking of moving, do Konmari 🙂

7. I actually can mess up my Bullet Journal. I’ve started to consciously write nonsense in there too because it’s not a shrine to plannerly goodness; it’s a notebook, for goodness sake.

Bonus – it is really fun to washi up some pencils. Try it and see. I grabbed everyone’s pencils at work and in one client phone call, washi’d them all 🙂

Go on then, tell me. What did you learn in May?

Filed Under: Goals, I love stationery, Konmari, Marcia gets craftsy, Time management Tagged With: Bullet Journal, Fitbit, Konmari, sleep goals., The Life-Changing M

4 May 2016 by Marcia Francois 7 Comments

Will I keep on bullet journalling?

So after experimenting with the bullet journal for two months, I find myself asking these questions:

will I continue to use the bullet journal?
do I even have a need for bullet journalling given the fact that I’ve added a to-do list to my diary?

Was I not keeping a notebook before that served the exact same purpose as a bullet journal, except for the scheduling?

Yes, I was.

The only things that are different between my notebooks through the years and this bullet journal is:

the bullet journal has numbered pages and an index
the bullet journal is slightly cuter and much neater than my notebooks used to be

Let’s talk about those two points:

Numbering

I followed the rules and went through the entire 80-page notebook, numbering each page. I made an index but to be honest, I never go back and reference any pages. Maybe that’s because I’ve only been using it for two months but I do have a very visual memory and I tend to remember exactly where in my notebook something was written. Also, because it’s a chronological notebook, once I’m done with a few pages, I attach a binder clip to the pages I’ve done with.

The cute factor

This was an interesting thing for me to notice. I’m not sure if it was because of the indexing or the numbered pages, but I don’t feel like I can just scribble notes in the book, like I do with my “proper” notebooks. I always have a notebook next to me at the computer and when I’m doing transfers between my bank accounts, for example, I scribble figures in my notebook. I would never do this in my bullet journal. Maybe I feel like I need a list of some type?

If you scroll through the #bulletjournal or #bujo hashtags on Instagram, you will see some AMAZING books in the planner community. And they are all very neat, or maybe that’s the stuff we all Instagram? Hmmm.

Still, don’t feel overwhelmed or intimidated by all the cuteness. Do what feels right for you.

I’m writing that to myself too because here’s what I decided going forward:

I’m going to use both my cute bullet journal and my scribbly HOPE notebook until the Hope notebook is used up, and then hopefully (haha!), I will feel able to scribble figures and such in my bullet journal.

2. If I do move onto another bullet journal this year, I won’t be bothering with indexing and numbers.

And then….. ta da da dum…..

I’m going to have a good think about only bullet journalling in 2017. At the moment I don’t think it would work for my style, given that I don’t want to be drawing layouts and such on a weekly basis, but never say never….

I do know that if I can bring myself to pay for a Legami weekly diary next year, I’ll use that one happily and only need a notebook for lists.

I am toying with getting a small, thin notebook (please let me know if you see them anywhere) that will easily fit into a standard A5 diary, because then it’ll be almost as good as those extra 50 pages at the back of a diary.

Where do you stand on the bullet journal and your personal organising/ planning style?

Filed Under: Goals, I love stationery, Planning, Time management Tagged With: Bullet Journal, planning, time management, weekly planning

27 Apr 2016 by Marcia Francois 4 Comments

Do you need a bullet journal or will your current system work?

Last week when I wrote about the bullet journal, I wrote about some reasons why you would possibly want to try one.

I believe in simplicity though, so I want to challenge your thinking a little today.

Should you even bother to change your system?

The quick answer is if what you’re doing is working for you, don’t change a thing.

If it’s not working or you don’t even have a system, or you feel like you could do with something to enhance things a bit, then I’d suggest trying out a bullet journal for a while to see how you like it.

Nothing is permanent; if you don’t like it, you just stop.

My system works well but….

my weekly view takes up both pages, so I have to draw a line down the middle of each page. The left-hand side is for appointments and the right side is for my to-do list – there is thus the schlep factor of drawing a line which is not a big deal but still…
there is no space to catch those special lists, which is why I use the separate notebook, or if I need to discuss a few things with someone at an appointment, I put a post-it note on the page with my questions, or I use a Project Life card and washi tape.

So, it would be nice to have all of that in one place.

You know what would be perfect?

If the Legami people could put about 50 sheets of paper at the back of their 12-month diaries so I could have the exact style of diary that works for me. Then I’d carry one notebook for the entire year and be very happy.

1. Ask yourself what you need to plan your life effectively

I need a schedule, a to-do list and a master to-do list. A few other lists are nice to haves, and these are the things I typically keep in the other notebook, like blog ideas, photos to take (for blogs), projects, etc.

2. Ideas for what to put in your bullet journal

monthly logs
weekly logs
daily logs
monthly goals
master to do lists
checklists
shopping lists
workout stats
books to read
meals I’ve tried at restaurants

Additional resource: 3 must-use lists to manage your time

3. Ask yourself if the bullet journal might fulfil some of your other needs too

If you prefer a very specific diary outline that you’ve never seen in traditional diaries, you might want to draw those yourself in a bullet journal.

See this wonderful post with many different weekly layouts. Number 5 of the 32 layouts shown is my favourite.

The wonderful thing about a bullet journal is that if you try a layout a couple of times and find it doesn’t work for you, you can just change it.

Of course you can’t do this with a standard diary.

What do you think?

Next time – I’ll show you all the different types of pages I use my bullet journal for (obviously not for weekly layouts) and what I think of the whole thing now that I’ve been using it for just over a month.

Filed Under: Time management Tagged With: Bullet Journal, planning, time management

20 Apr 2016 by Marcia Francois 6 Comments

5 reasons for you to try a bullet journal

Long before the bullet journalling trend exploded, I ran across the founder’s site and had a read. At the time, it looked like far too much work remembering symbols and such, so I clicked out and that was that.

Then everyone online started bullet journalling!

(As you can tell, I am not an early adopter; I am more a wait-and-see-er)

I’m still not convinced that the bullet journal is for me, but I thought I should at least explore it properly and I’d get a blog post or two out of it, and then be able to articulately express why it is or isn’t for me 🙂

Some background

My “system” has always been to use both a diary and a notebook to organise my life. I’ve written many times on this blog about keeping a notebook next to your computer at work, and definitely at home too.

The diary is for scheduling and some to-dos, and the notebook is for everything else.

See this post for full details

I like a thin notebook because I carry it around in my handbag. The craft/ blue notebook came in a set of 3 different designs (blue/ red/ green) from Woolworths for R36,95. I’ll take a pic for you soon of all of them because I bought more than one set since I liked them so much.

So, here are my initial thoughts about why you should consider trying out a Bullet Journal:

will capture all your thoughts and lists in one place

I’m a big fan of a notebook catching all the bits and pieces, so this is awesome. If you’re someone with a list here, and a post-it note there, or a scrap of paper shoved into your bag, this is a great way to contain everything.

2. can be used for daily, weekly or even occasional planning

I’m a weekly planner myself, my husband is a daily planner and I know many Ps on Myers Briggs who are occasional planners. They only plan thoroughly for holidays, trips, etc.

You can make this system what you want it to be.

3. can be customised and personalised

This is where I see the real beauty of the Bullet Journal. I’ve written before about Finding the Perfect Planner for you, and this is one way to create your perfect planner especially if you don’t see something that suits your style and makes you want to use it.

Even the size can be personalised. If you want a big A4 journal, go for it. If you only need a tiny A6 journal, that’s also fine.

4. can feed your creativity

My diary/ notebook combo are purely a means to an end (getting organised) but I see so many people using calligraphy, colouring pencils, washi tape, etc. in their journals as a means of creativity. If you need a creative outlet, this could work really well for you.

Turns our Ryder prefers a minimalist BuJo too.

5. you don’t need to wait for the stores to start selling 2017 diaries

or use an on-sale 2016 diary with all that blank paper for Jan – April. This system will appeal to all those frugalistas 🙂

Grab any old notebook you have laying around, but make it a pretty-ish one so you’ll want to use it.

So what about my old-fashioned notebook?

Well, you’ll have to stay tuned. I’ll write more about that next time.

Are you bullet journalling?

If not, have I convinced you to just try it for a month?

The photo at the top is of my bullet journal. I bought that notebook at Exclusive Books for about R20 a few years ago!

Filed Under: I love stationery, Organising, Planning, Time management Tagged With: Bullet Journal, diaries, planning, time management