Why I haven’t started bullet journaling

Blasphemy! How dare he not bullet journal, the sacred ritual of the instagram's world of beautiful writing and planning and organizing one's life!

There are a couple of reasons why I don't and do not recommend people starting bullet journal, because you'll quit eventually if you don't understand yourself enough and also these 3 keypoints:

Perfectionism and Comparisons

Social media have inevitably created a sense of false-beauty in the way we look at bullet journal. When you look up the bujo hashtags or the keywords on Instagram Youtube and Tiktok, there are countless videos and photos showing beautiful pages and layouts with hundreds of thousands of views and saves. However, question yourself: is life that smooth and perfect as shown to you through these photos?

You'll make mistakes, an extra word at the end of the edge appears out of nowhere and the OCD will kick in. You'll want to tear that page and suddenly, the journal is closed and you are done with it.

you would probably recognize a few of these as they were videos published in the late 2020 and yeah, I know, I didn’t even tick them all…

I know it is really satisfying to look at a perfectly written planner page that exudes an organized life ahead of you, but we cannot predetermine everything. There will be pages written but never used, or pages left blank because sometimes you just don't feel like doing it, and that's okay. As homo sapiens we change everyday, and so do our process and methods to go about our lives. To try and perfect your life from the very beginning is quite an impossible task, and thus you make changes along the way. I do make bulleted to-do lists from time to time, and the form factor changes slightly, but as long as it works for me personally, then it does its job, and that's the point.

You know what you need, and sometimes bullet journal isn't the thing, as it might bring invisible peer pressure by looking at perfectly aligned and neatly written pages that serve no purpose to what needs to be done for you to get on with life.

Too much, too fast, too furious

Ah yes, I need yearly goals, monthly reading lists, weekly plans, daily tasks., mindfulness reflection questions, habit trackers, stickers, water colors omg so many things...

Sounds familiar? The process of creating beautiful pages and personalized plans excites many of us, but it could also overwhelm us with the sheer amount of work and most of the times it would put our brains in a paralyzed position, and brain.exe would crash no matter what. As an English teacher, I face the same problem when building habits for students, where they would have to memorize all these actions and steps and knowledge, and at the end of the lesson, they would remember nothing aside from the sleepiness all of those tasks brought out.

The remedy for this is quite simple: start off with 1 thing at a time. Whenever you have a big task such as a project or a lot of things going on, start by writing them down on a page and cross them out once you're done. Each of us has different visual cues that appeal to ourselves, so the bullet and crosses might not be our thing, so change it up as need be, and over time, the whole process will become yours and every step of the way will be essential to you without the clunky bits.

plans that were delayed and still in progress…

Time

Ah, yes, the only thing in life we never have enough. Some of my audience really wanted to try bujo but fell out of it as life gets in the way and the simple habit of tracking everything seems to be an impossible wall to climb. Personally, with just a normal journal, I still found myself skipping days and sometimes weeks and finally came to terms with it - and that's okay!

Bullet journaling isn't for everyone, and please don't think of it as a permanent thing. It might come back into your life unexpectedly tomorrow, next week, even after a few years from now, as long as there is a need for it then. Moreover, inline with the previous point, the process of setting up your self for success with bullet journaling is to start really small, even if it's just 1 minute, so that you could get into the rhymth of the process and make sure the habit stick around for a long time.

still in progress…

Will I ever bullet journal?

All that being said, I think I can say confidently that I would never bullet journal in a sense of making lists and ticking them off on a day-to-day basis. However, I do find myself jotting down a couple of lines in reflection of the experience I've had throughout the day, and as the year 2022 approaches, I would like to turn that into a long term project for the next five years of reflection and tracking how much I'll have changed during that time with a Hobonichi Techo 5-year Journal. I am definitely nervous and excited for it and will certainly update you guys with the progress, so stay tune to find out more.

How would you bullet journal?