Bullet Journal - 2017 // Planning

So this is my first attempt at Bullet Journalling and I can't believe I didn't come across this last year or the year before that. It was only last month when I came across it on Pinterest and decided to see what it was all about. The Pin led me to the blog "Sarah's Chapter" (http://www.sarahschapter.co.uk/2016/02/starting-bullet-journal.html) and the blog post inspired me to make my own bullet journal for 2017.

I started preparing my journal in late December (2016) because I knew I wouldn't get time in January as I had my finals. So technically I haven't even spent a month on this journal but I have been really enjoying it so far. One of the reasons I enjoy it (which I've heard many people who have bullet journals say) is because it is so flexible. You can literally decide what you want on each page (unlike in a planner). You can buy a journal and a few pens and you're good to go. I think of a bullet journal as a planner with more fun (and more organisation potential).

I love organizing everything and anything so I feel like a Bullet Journal is all I need. I was majorly inspired by Sarah's chapter and then I continued to hunt for more Bullet Journal posts on Pinterest for inspiration and ideas.

Here's what I have done in my journal so far (I'll probably post an update half way or near the end of the year)

My Bullet Journal // 2017

Firstly, I'd like to address that I didn't get any fancy or even known brand of journal. I just used a new random lined & hard-covered book that I already had at home.

On the first page (which I haven't exactly shown below) is a little blue sticky note with a key on it for my weekly and daily planning pages. I am about to graduate from high school and I have finished applying to Universities in the USA (post related to that will be up soon) and so I decided to keep the second page blank for my future class schedule. I thought it would be more convenient to have it on the first pages rather than dedicate a page to it in August (or whenever I get my schedule) even though I have an Index page. Keeping other bloggers' advice in mind I kept more than one page for my index. I kept two. I don't know if it will be sufficient but I'm planning to have two or three columns on both the pages and just roll with it. 

The first two pages of my bullet journal. You can even add page numbers to your journal and write the corresponding page numbers to each topic in your index

Here is where I overestimated my handwriting skills and thought I could freehand the whole annual calendar without any vertical guide lines or anything like that. The orientation wasn't exactly neat and I did this page really late at night when my brain was preparing to shut down hence I made quite a few errors and the page doesn't look blog worthy according to me. However to give u an idea, I didn't really customize this page. I really just almost did the same style that was done on Sarah's Chapter (again, you can click the link above - her journal is way more neater and better looking than mine. *heart eyes* )

Yeah, just skip to the next part.

Okay so I know how what you're thinking (once you've seen the picture below). It's not how it looks.
As I said above I didn't really get time to focus on "2017 - new year" because I had finals. But I 100% honest to god plan to fill this page in before the end of this month (or probably today? maybe? I don't know). Also on this page is my "TBR" (stands for "To Be Read" if you didn't know) section which I also plan to update but I have two books on it so far. I also stuck some washi tape to make it look prettier (not that any book isn't pretty - every shape and size of book is pretty okay).

No important caption here either, move along.

Next is probably my most functional page on the right and a savings tracker on the left. You can choose what elements you want to put on your planner, whatever suits you!

Here's a close up of the budgeting page (the date part is quite unnecessary). The positive sign basically means deposits (like income earned, etc) and the negative sign is withdrawals.

Future logs can be quite important in your bullet journal. I have filled in birthdays of people close to me (because I'm really bad at remembering birthdays) and will add other categories too
The future log can help you if you have some planned events for the next month or way later. You can just write it down in the future log so you remember to include it while making your weekly or daily logs.

Apparently I'm really bad at captions (also bad at captions on my instagram if you want to check it out @blackandwiseandwhite *wink wink*)

I have left a page blank to print out some stuff on sticker paper and stick it on it to create a sort of Inspiration board or Vision board - I don't know what direction I want to take that in yet. Then I've dedicated two pages (front and back - back not shown) to the "TV Series" tracker. As you can probably tell I watch a lot of TV shows. A lot. And I've added 2 more to the list since taking this picture (it's a problem, I know).

Comment below if you watch any of the shows listed above (i.e. if the text is visible)

I have one page for my grade tracker so I can just...keep track of my grades? Pretty self-understandable.

Bad at captions, remember?

Finally here comes the more date orientated part. I have an Activity tracker (only for Feb and March as of now. I skipped January as I was only studying the entire day every day #hustling ...yes I know hashtags don't work on blogger I'm not stupid). That is followed by the weekly log for the 4th week of January and I'll be deciding which week to include in February as I don't have much planned yet so I don't know which week will be busy enough to deserve a section of the page (dramatic, much?).

That moment when you have to put so many efforts into making the page look presentable (because you have sloppy handwriting) that you forget February only has 28 days.

So that's mostly it for now. I also have the last pages of the journal with the headings "Recipes" and "Quotes" as one of my goals this year is to learn to cook a bit and I love having some of the most relatable/ most impactful (personally) quotes written down to read whenever I need some inspiration or even just casually.

Hope you enjoyed this super long post (if you had the attention span to read it haha) and let me know if you've had any experience with maintaining a bullet journal and if you have any tips for beginners like me.