Hey everyone, hope you all had a good February and are doing well. Today’s post will be a little different from what I usually blog about. It is the beginning of a new category on my blog and sadly the demise of another.
Previously, I used a bullet journal as my primary method of planning and organisation but recently I found it to be too much work, to organise my journal than actually organising my daily tasks and tracking my habits. This post will explain in detail why I stopped Bullet Journalling and how I found digital tracking and organisation websites/apps much better.
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I began journaling in 2020, when the pandemic had terrorised us. Having no classes to attend or work to do, I found myself wasting my time and being very unproductive by just sitting around my house and watching anime. During that time, I was also very depressed and started questioning myself on how many days I was actually happy or rather in a decent mood (keep in mind I was 18 and very scared about my future, which I still am but considerably less than before).
It was one of these days that I was scrolling through YouTube and found AmandaRachLee’s video on bullet journaling. Her video of creating her September Bullet Journal spreads inspired me to make my own journal and to try my best to use the time I had in my hands productively and also monitor my mental well-being. Preparing those spreads was not only fun but it sparked the creativity inside me.
I religiously made bullet journal spreads for every month until the end of 2022. At this time, I was in college and had way too many things to focus on and simply didn’t have enough time to make the bullet journal spreads. A bullet journal is very helpful for college students but in my opinion it made me hate bullet journalling.
My bullet journal slowly became a burden on me. I felt that it added onto the pressure of the other tasks I was supposed to do. It was time consuming and was not at all pocket friendly for a college student. Being a huge procrastinator, I usually skipped recording items and tasks on to-do lists and habit trackers and by the end of the month it would be hard for me to analyse them and I was left with empty unused templates that I couldn’t reuse.
For all these reasons I searched for a reusable, digital and pre-made version of such journals and I came across Notion. Notion is an online planner with countless templates for organising tasks, making budgets, tracking habits and many more. You can customise them and create your own pages with this app/website. I use Notion not on a daily basis but whenever I need it. I record my college routines, books, expenses and savings, yearly goals and many other things. It is easily accessible at the palm of my hand and I can delete an item without having the guilt, that I am creating waste. For daily tasks and habits, I use the app Productive.
Hence, this is why I stopped bullet journalling and adopted a digital method of planning and organisation. Feel free to let me know in the comments if you still use a bullet journal or have you switched to digital methods or if are you using both.
EJ signing off…
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