My weird trip down the minimalism hole took my bullet journal to a ridiculously simplified version. I thought I’d share how my layout looked last month.
The bullet journal I have is really not something you would find on pinterest with cute pictures and decorations because it’s taken down to a minimal necessity.
Page 1 – Challenge, key to-dos
Overtime I realised that writing “goals” and words like that was stressful for me. Goal is always something one must reach, and I don’t want that. It’s not that I’m not ambitious but I don’t want to overstress about not completing one. Hence, I renamed it into things that “I’d like to reach but it’s ok if I won’t”.
Page 2 – Tracker
A place where I note down things i’d like to keep an eye on and later see if I’m actually doing or I just think I’m doing. Big difference, I’ve gotta say. So far I had tracker for:
– meditate
– read
– exercise (weight or cardio)
– back exercise
– instagram (regular posting)
– natagemstones (side hobby)
– fruit (gotta eat those, man)
– stretch
– nightmare
Page 3 and 4 – Mood board
I don’t think I’ve ever properly wrote about mental health, simply producing here sub products of my weird mind, but last month I was somehow out of my lately normal cheerful-happy-balanced state and, being worried I might have depression creeping back in, I thought I’d rather keep an eye on how I really feel. Later I can look back and see if i was just over stressed and had few weeks down or there’s something worth further attention.
After talking to the person who’s going through similar things, the final thought was to divide the tracking into 2 parts:
1. factual feelings (did i feel panicked today? – yes/no)
2. emotional feelings (how i feel about today)
1. the first part is just about asking yourself honest question about the things i felt or experienced. they were both positive and negative. maybe they are not universal but they made sence for me 🙂
positive are
+ cheerful
+ accomplished
+ positive
+ calm
+ closeness
+ progressing
+ self-love
+ notice things around
negatives are
– panicked
– useless
– paralised
– sad
– no energy
– suicidal
– helpless
– angry
There’s 8 positives and 8 negatives, so when i made the graph scale (on the right page4) it goes from -8 to +8. if i had 2 negative feelings and 4 positives I’d put 2 (as -2+4=2). That’s why on the page i called it “facts” because it’s kinda cruel cold and mathematical 😀
2. the second part is emotional. For adding this part i have to thank my friend who gave me this idea from own therapy. Giving an emotional note to a day is popular thing in therapy because it’s not based on what happened but on how you trully feel about today. Sometimes even if a day is filled with positive things like spending time with family, loved ones, doing things you like most etc., it’s still possible to feel no energy and somehow shitty, which in such continuity might direct to having a depression or simply signify something is not ok in your life. This scale i simply put from 0 to 10 and marked every day.
Page 5 – Random
This month I gave up having premade weeks and days because I realised I really don’t always need them. For most of day-to-day things I use calendar and to-do app and don’t need to write things down. But I still want to have a place when i DO need it – to write down a nightmare, random thought, to-do plan for a weekend etc.
If this spread or bullet journal ideas are something you liked or would like to use in your bujo, comment this article!