My Bu-Jo Story
It has been almost 5 years now since I have started using To-Do lists to be more aware of my task completion and overall productivity. The first two years were mostly on and off relationships with regular notebooks, sticky notes, tiny paper notes and so on, but there wasn't a system or a clear structure, just simple task lists, and crossing after completion.
I have done lots of inspirational researchers that only made me more confused and discouraged about note-taking and task managing since all I have found was beautiful bullet journals with lots of decorations and drawings. I like drawing and doodling, and I am kind of good at it, but it is not something that I will do all the time, because it felt like a waste of time and additional energy and that made me skip even listing tasks for days or weeks. Then I find out about the actual creator of the bullet journal, Ryder Carol, and started following his videos about journaling that were posted on his Youtube channel and kind of got more clarity about what I wanted to do with my journaling process.
So for the next two years, I have purchased a predesigned planer and tried to make the most of it by actually creating a day to day habit about scheduling tasks. Also, during this time, I was learning about other productivity systems, hacks, tips and tricks. And I even got a book called "The Bullet Journal Method" from Ryder Carol, that dived deep into journaling, habit tracking, reviewing and making most of your journaling. Those were the years that I was consistent in my planing and got lots of benefits from it. I was more focused on what mattered and stoped missing deadlines, birthdays and reports. I felt more productive and in control of the time that I spend on actual work.
This year I have started with a blank journal. I created my journal from regular A4 paper ( on which I printed dots and cut them into 24x21 cm size sheets that gave me pages with 12x21 cm sizes, also learned some tricks on bookbinding :) ) and put into practice all that I have learned for journaling in the past years. I am still changing the layout of the journal from month to month by adding new things, but overall I am satisfied with my progress so far. Here are some pages from my current journal and hope it helps someone with their struggles with journaling. Since English is my second language, I have to say I am sorry that only some of the entries are in English and most of them are in my native language, Macedonian, but if you have some difficulties understanding the process I am willing to share more details.