When creativity and practicality meet, you get a bullet journal, or Bujo for short. Your bullet journal journey is unique and personal, a process that brings you from planning to drawing.
Bujos keep you organized and stimulate your imagination.
Bullet journaling was the brainchild of Ryder Carroll as a method to orientate your past, present, and future and has since become a massive community of fellow bullet journal fans.
The best bullet journal ideas are:
1. Setting Up A Monthly Planner
It’s always great to be one step ahead of your month so that you don’t miss anything, and life becomes easier when you follow something that’s already been planned. Dedicating a few pages in your bullet journal for the month should get you in the groove.
You can create a cover page and make it pretty, then add a calendar listing your monthly activities in priorities in the date blocks. It would help if you left some space to jot down key notes you need to remember for the month ahead.
There are endless ways to design your calendar, and both block and list formats work. You can also dedicate an additional space for your monthly goals. Most people use one or two pages for their monthly spread, but the number of pages you use is entirely based on preference.
2. Creating A To-do List
Besides your monthly to-do lists, you can also track daily or weekly ones if you prefer to journal often.
To-do lists can include cleaning, exercise, school or work projects, and anything else that needs to get done.
You can leave a box next to each item to color in once complete and get creative with how your list looks by using different fonts, formats, washy tape, stickers, and colorful markers.
3. Orientating Your Personal Goals
If you need a space to map your goals, your Bujo is the perfect place. You can look at plans for saving, fitness, meditation, quitting habits, or anything you’d like to achieve.
Having your goals in black and white or even pretty colors makes it easy to flip through your bullet journal to remind you of them.
You can use the SMART goal system or explore questions about why you’d like to aim towards the objective and how long you’d like to take and create a plan to stick to the goal by exploring things that would stop you from obtaining them.
Start by writing out questions that orientate you to explore the ins and outs of your future wishes, then you can answer them using a different color or font, but you can design it any way you like.
Goal setting is the first step towards accomplishment.
4. Envisioning Your Future
You can envision the life you want to live by creating a vision board within your bullet journal.
The best part about vision boards is that you can make them beautiful with decorations, quotes, and stunning pictures from your Pinterest board. Vision boards can include both short-term and long-term goals.
You can gather some printed images, a scissor, glue, colorful pens and highlighters, glitter glue, and anything you’d like to add to create a gorgeous layout of your future desires.
The things you use to decorate this spread should be images, quotes, and anything that inspires you to reach for the stars. No goal is too small if you set your mind to it.
5. Starting A Gratitude Spread
Research shows that a gratitude practice rewires the brain to think more positively. Other things that researchers discovered by a gratitude practice were that it makes a person more caring and alleviates them by making them more forgiving.
Gratitude also releases dopamine and serotonin, so your bullet journal is a great tool to start helping your mental health by having a few pages dedicated to counting blessings.
You can have your gratitude section outlined with decorative borders and an attractive font to title the page.
You can list the things you’re grateful for daily or weekly by writing down anything good in your life, like family, friends, a great conversation you had in the week, and just about anything that makes you happy when you think about it.
6. Tracking Your Daily Mood
If you’d like to track your mood, it is a valuable tool to check in with yourself regarding your well-being. Tracking moods is simple and a lovely way to fill your bullet journal pages. Bujos are there to better your life, and mood tracking is one of the ways to do so.
You can get creative with mood trackers! You can assign your mood tracker colors to bad, okay, good, very good, and excellent.
Start by setting out the number of blocks for each day of the month. You can draw pictures, like flowers, to represent the days, and color them according to a key of colors for your mood.
If you detect some terrible days, you don’t need to worry; all you need to do is find out your stressors and chat with a friend or family member to alleviate what’s been bothering you.
7. Noting Important Dates
Bujos can be a tool to keep your life in order by reminding you of dates that matter. You can list dates like birthdays, important events, anniversaries, public holidays, and any day that needs to stand out.
With your bullet journal, you’ll never have to worry about forgetting dates again.
You can set up your calendar in list form to make your life easier. You can write the year in bold, then write the first month in a cute font and number the days between bullet points, then move on to the next month and repeat.
After writing out all the months, you can fill in the critical dates.
8. Starting A Brain Dump
Brain dumps allow people to declutter their minds by sifting through all their thoughts, and a bullet journal is perfect for that. To brain dump, you must jot down everything that comes to mind. You don’t need to overthink what to write; you just write.
When you write, it could be anything from feeding the cat to thinking of purple.
You can have fun using different colors to categorize your thoughts after you’ve finished putting down all your random thoughts, and then try to make sense of them if you wish.
If you’d like to structure your brain dump more than just random thoughts, you can ask yourself questions about how you’re feeling or what you need to get done.
Remember that anything goes and if you brain dump often, you may pick up reoccurring thoughts, which could be interesting to find out.
9. Keeping Your Favorite Quotes
There are millions of quotes; you can use any of them to create a decorative spread in your bullet journal. You can find quotes that inspire you, from your favorite movies, or anything you’d like.
An additional option to quotes can be funny things your kids or friends have said and collect them as you go along for memories and a laugh.
You can make your quote page beautiful and add pictures and stickers if you like.
10. Remembering Your Daily Affirmations
You are powerful, strong, and wonderful, and by writing it down in your bullet journal, you can read it over and over to remind you just how amazing you are and how you’re deserving of a brilliant life.
Affirmations have proven to help people’s self-esteem and grow their self-love.
Affirmations shift your perspective to focus on your strengths rather than weaknesses and help you achieve your goals and aspirations without fear.
You should write your affirmations in the present tense, and you should repeat them daily for you to reap the benefits.
You can create your affirmations using the words ‘I am,’ such as ‘I am enough,’ but you can also find many on the internet and write down the ones that stand out to you in your Bujo.
11. Budgeting Your Monthly Spending
The future is golden when you budget your money, and making a creative bullet journal entry while crunching numbers is a fun and productive way to spend your time. Budgeting helps you reach your financial goals and prevent you from overspending.
To start your budget entry, gather up all your financial information. Such as your total income, monthly bills, taxes you need to pay, and any other data of your money spent and money coming in.
Once you’ve got the information, write your total income, and write down everything you need to pay. The money you have left over can be distributed to your luxuries and savings.
You can use a 50/30/20 budgeting practice where your spending should be 50% on necessities, 30% on wants, and 20% on savings, but it depends on what works for you, and there are plenty of ways to budget.
12. Logging Your Monthly Savings
Watching things progress is hugely satisfying, and watching your money grow is exhilarating. Bullet journal budget logs are a fantastic way to keep tabs on financial goals in both a practical and creative way.
You can create a bar for each thing you want to save for and set money increments until the needed amount on the bar, and you should color in the increments each time you save.
You can include sayings and images that inspire you towards the thing you’re saving for so that there is extra decoration, making your Bujo look attractive.
Measuring your savings motivates you to keep doing so and prevents you from spending and losing progress. Bullet journals are meant to help you on life’s journey, and a savings tracker helps in that endeavor.
13. Saving Your Favorite Recipes
Have you ever cooked a delicious new meal inventively? Bullet journals will help you keep track of your signature meal. If you love cooking and journaling, bullet journals should be your go-to, so you can flip back to a pretty recipe and cook to your heart’s desire.
If you’re not much of a chef but still love to cook, you can search the web for recipes you’d like to try and jot them down into your Bujo for the next time you need a new way to make dinner.
You can also record a recipe of your favorite meal that a friend or family member makes to make the journal entry extra special.
14. Planning Your Workout Routine
Nowadays, the fitness movement is booming, and if you’re a gym-goer or just starting your fitness regimen, it helps to have a structure in your exercise routine.
Your Bujo is easily accessible so setting up your routine on paper is an excellent way to get moving.
You can draw out a 7-column box for each weekday and label it Monday to Sunday in a good-looking font.
Under each workout day, you can list the type of exercise you want to do and how long you want to spend doing the exercise.
A fun addition could be to have a page dedicated to recording information from your smartwatch or fitness watch so you can look at all the progress you make.
15. Having A Space For Doodles
Bullet Journals are made for creativity. Having a space to doodle while you’re on a phone call or simply just bored is fantastic for the artist in you.
Drawing is a great stress reliever and cures boredom like nothing else.
You can dedicate as many pages as you like and border them with frilly motifs and washy tape. Once you’ve completed your drawing, you can color them in with different markers.
Buying colored markers and pens are always fun if you’re a stationary lover. If you don’t draw, you can print images and paste them into your Bujo to color them instead of drawing.
16. Journalling Your Dreams
If you’re curious about your subconscious mind and are interested in finding the meaning of your dreams, then dedicating a page or two in your bullet journal is the way to go.
Recoding your dreams helps you tap into your creativity and enables you to find things about yourself.
You can draw a fluffy cloud for each day of the week and write your dream within the cloud. You can read through all you’ve recorded at the end of the week to make sense of it. Another fun thing you can do is write a story at the end of the week based on your dreams.
17. Storing Essential Contact Details
Your phone might keep your contacts for you, but storing a number the old-fashioned way could be your saving grace if your phone breaks or goes missing.
Keeping contacts in your bullet journal doesn’t have to be all about phone numbers, they can be emails too, which is extremely handy for work situations.
You can also keep emergency numbers in your Bujo or numbers for service people like your trusted plumbers and exterminators since you never know when you might need one.
18. Creating A Monthly Time-capsule
If you want to put something unique in your bullet journal and enjoy me-time, you can keep a monthly time capsule.
Once a month, you can reflect on your favorite memory, the song you’ve listened to on repeat, and the series you binged or the book you read.
You can get creative on the things you’d like to add to your bullet journal time capsule; all you need to do is write down the topic and answer it.
You can even print out a small picture you took in the month as a keepsake that you can glue to the page.
19. Keeping A Wish List
You can have plenty of fun listing out all the things you’d like to buy so that when you have some extra money, you can look at the list and choose something you’ve wanted for some time.
You can also use the wish list for birthdays and Christmas if someone asks what you’d like.
Keeping a wish list helps you prioritize your wants instead of just your needs and prevents you from splurging on an impulse buy.
20. Setting Up A To-read or To-Watch List
If you’re looking for a leisure-orientated Bujo entry, a to-read or watch list could be just the thing. If you’re a reader, you can draw a bookshelf with books and list the titles and authors on the drawing you’d like to read.
If you’re a movie or series fan, you can get creative by listing the things you’d like to watch, adding bright colors, and drawing TV screens to put in the titles.
Keeping track of your to-read or to-watch items will help you next time you’re lost and looking for the next thing to enjoy.
If you’re eager to enhance your bullet journaling skills, our article on how to bullet journal like a pro offers expert tips and tricks to help you streamline your journaling process and create beautiful, functional logs.