How to Bullet Journal (Life-Changing in 6 Steps!)

/ Well-Being

You may have been wondering how to bullet journal for a long time, but never got around to it. Or…maybe you have no idea what a bullet journal is but happened to stumble upon this post. Either way, I’m going to tell you everything you need to know to get your dream bullet journal out of your mind and into your hands.

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What is a bullet journal?

First, let’s get this straight. A bullet journal is a type of planner that houses your hopes, dreams, plans, notes, trackers, doodles, and basically anything you could possibly imagine or want. It is a book that is completely customizable by you. This may sound intimidating; believe me, I know. The first time I tried I wanted it to be exactly perfect. The first thing you have to realize when going into the process, is that it is NOT going to be perfect. Everyone makes mistakes and that is okay! How else will we learn?

Before you begin making up excuses that you can’t draw or you’re not artistic…let me reassure you; anyone can bullet journal. And I mean anyone. It doesn’t matter if you’ve taken hundreds of art classes and you’ve been drawing your whole life or if the most artwork you’ve ever done has been on a homemade birthday card. It doesn’t matter. You can do this!

Bullet journals (a.k.a. BUJOs) got their name by the task bullets that are often put inside of them. The idea behind bullet journaling is that each day you create a task list in which you write down everything you’d like to get completed. I’ll get to the system of symbols a little later. Although this is why bullet journals were originally created, you can use them for other things too (you can bet I do!)

Step 1: Buy a bullet journal

For the purpose of learning how to bullet journal, you definitely want to buy a dotted notebook. These dots make it easy to design the pages (without a ruler!), stay in a straight line when writing, and keep consistent with sizing throughout. It looks like this (you may have to zoom in to be able to see the dots):

how to bullet journal

You can find these at Staples or Target, but I prefer Amazon. They have some great quality ones for good prices. I got my recent one for about $10 and it came super quick (especially if you have Amazon Prime).

There are various colors and patterns out there for cover designs so make sure to buy one that you love; if you love the design you’ll be more apt to use it often. I suggest buying one that is the A5 paper size (5.8 x 8.3 inches) or something around there. 100 gsm thick paper is also a good choice, as pens, markers, highlighters, and other writing utensils will be less likely to bleed through. The one I have right now is Paperage Dotted Journal Bullet Notebook, Hard Cover, Medium 5.7 x 8 inches, 100 gsm Thick Paper (Blue, Dotted).

Once you have the journal, all you need is a pen to get started. These two things are the basic essentials to beginning. If you’d like to get more fancy, you can also buy a set of colored pens, markers, or highlighters to get you even more motivated! Some of my favorites to use are Paper Mate InkJoy Gel Pens, Fine Point, Assorted Colors, 8 Count and Stabilo BOSS Original Highlighter, Pastels – 6-color Set. I also like to decorate with Washi tape which can be found on Amazon or any craft store.

Step 2: Design your title page and index

These two pages are simple to add in and won’t take too much time to do! There is often a front page in the bullet journal where it may have a few lines at the bottom for contact information in case your book gets lost. I like to decorate this page. Add your name, maybe the date of when you’re starting your journal, a few doodles, whatever you’d like. It’s up to you! And remember: don’t think about it too much…just go!

Your index may be one of the most important parts of your bullet journal. It should be the very first page of your book and doesn’t have to be complex at all. A simple 2-column table will work (one side for page numbers and the other side for pages titles). Every time you design a new page, you should record these details in the index. This way, when you’re looking for a page in the future, it’ll be easy to flip to it without going through page after page. Make sure you reserve at least 3 whole pages for your index (maybe 4 if you think you’ll have a lot of different spreads).

Step 3: Set up your spacing guide and key

Next up we have setting up the spacing guide. Now, I know, this looks CRAZY intimidating but I promise you it’s not. A spacing guide is a series of lines that show you how many boxes (or dots) you need to count in order to get halfway, a third of the way, or a quarter of the way into the page. This is especially helpful when designing a spread and wanting to be able to just draw without finding a ruler.

First, label each box starting from the very top at one, to the bottom ending at the number of boxes you have (for me this was 38). Going across you start with the “1” box and label going to the right ending on the left side with however many boxes you have going across (for me this was 26).

To make your “halfway” marks, draw a solid vertical line down the page after the number that halves your page (mine was 13). Do the same horizontally (mine was 19). Next for quarters, use dashed lines and put them after the numbers that quarter your page (6.5 and 19.5 for me). To easily figure out your numbers divide the total number of boxes across by four, and then mark at those intervals (the half will already be marked). Do the same going horizontally (9.5 and 28.5 for me). Lastly, do the third markings the same way you’ve done the others (dividing the totals by 3 this time). For these lines, I did a pattern of 3 dots and a dash.

Label each kind of line once; it may be helpful to do them in different colors/fonts so that you can differentiate between them even more clearly. If you’d like, you can write the title “Grid Spacing” on it in a corner and then make sure you add it to your index!! Don’t forget this part; it’s better to get into the habit now!

Now for the key. This set-up is easier than the spacing guide and very customizable to you. There are various sets of “bullet journal” symbols, as the system is based off of bulleted tasks. The basic ones that I decided on after doing lots of looking around are task, completed, in progress, migrated, scheduled, cancelled, event, note, and birthday. You can see these below. Feel free to copy my symbols or do some digging of your own to see what else is out there.

I also included my color-coordinating system here too. If you like to color-code, you can put this here as well. Make the page fun! Add doodles, embellishments, anything you have. You should want to look at these pages every day! Don’t forget to add this page to the index as well!

Step 4: Choose your spreads

I’m pretty sure before I touched my book, I did hours of research on what things to put in it. I had seen all of these fun ideas on Pinterest…but how was I supposed to add them to my journal in an orderly fashion? I didn’t want random pages everywhere, and I also didn’t want to start with one page if I wasn’t definitely sure I wanted that one to go there.

I began making lists of spread ideas I found online, just trying to see every possible thing I could add into my bullet journal. Once I was satisfied with my list, I began ordering them. You may want your journal to only have daily task lists, and that is perfectly okay! This is your own creative personal space, so do what you want with it. I wanted trackers and pictures and words galore in mine. Do what fits you and your lifestyle. Below is a list of the spreads I chose to put in mine linked to an image of what these look like:

In between some of these I have quote pages where I’ve put some of my favorite quotes. These are only some of the ideas that are out there; maybe they’ll inspire you to do something similar or completely different!

These covered the first 29 pages of my bullet journal. Next, I added a monthly spread for April. This was a very simple outline not intended for writing things down for each day, but more for just a general overview of the month. I made sure to have a “goals” section where I made note of three goals I had for the end of the month as well as a “notes” section for any little notes I would need to make. You can see my April spread below.

An awesome tip I suggest is putting some Washi tape on the edge of these monthly spreads so that they’re super easy to flip to when your bullet journal is closed.

Step 5: Think about adding in trackers

Bullet journal trackers are a great way to see patterns in your life and set goals for the future. I love using trackers because I feel that it gives me a realistic view of where I am and what I’m doing.

I’m not sure if other people do this…but if I stay up really late one night, I tend to regret it the next morning and shove it to the back of my mind, ignoring the fact that I went to sleep later than I should have and pretending I didn’t make a mistake. I have a sleep tracker now so that I have to face the reality of my sleep schedule and realize that one slip-up is okay. It also gives me the opportunity to improve the amount of hours I’m getting if I notice it lacking. (It also just looks really pretty!)

Something you want to ask yourself at this point is what is something I’d like to improve my performance in? This could be various things. For example, I wanted to improve the amount of water I drank each day and the amount of hours of sleep I got each night. So…I added these monthly trackers into my bullet journal to trace my performance. (Since I had them go by the month I put them directly after my monthly spread.)

As I saw the specifics form overtime, it motivated me to improve just a little bit each day. I added a habit tracker, too, which identified 15 habits I wanted to begin doing each day. Before I knew it, I had a full month’s worth of data across 3 trackers and I was calculating percentages and averages (you obviously don’t have to go as crazy as that!)

The bottom line is, if you find that there are things in your life that you’d like to be doing more often (or you should be doing more often) a great way to achieve those goals is by creating trackers for them. They help motivate me and they may help motivate you too!

Step 6: Get creating!

Now that you’ve bought a bullet journal, designed the title page, index, spacing guide, and key, planned your spreads, and considered adding in some trackers, it is time to truly create!

There is honestly no wrong way to do any of this. Let your pen go where it wants to go and I promise it will take you some fun places. Like I said before, you may want it to be as plain as it can be with simple daily task lists or you could be the opposite and go all out with lots of trackers and colors and spreads. Either way, they’re both bullet journaling. You don’t have to try to appease anyone else; this is your bullet journal and you can do what you’d like with it.

Once you get to a good place with however many spreads or trackers you’d like in the beginning (maybe you do a monthly spread, as I did), there are endless options about where to go from there. You could try writing about an experience, adding a task list, adding other spreads you come up with, or anything else. You can add to it every day, or every month. It’s all yours!

Mine completely changed my life (for the better!) I feel more organized, more in control, and overall happier! I hope that bullet journaling is something you decide to try; maybe it will help you in ways you didn’t know it could!

Bee happy and have fun with it!

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