10 Bullet Journal Tips For Your First-Ever Bullet Journal

Keeping a bullet journal not only helps you to stay organised but can be a brilliant way to encourage children to write on a regular basis. While a traditional journal (or a self-journal) focuses on reflecting on how your day went or reflecting on the past – The goal of a bullet journal is to plan ahead and keep your day, month or even year organised. Best of all if your child is feeling overwhelmed with all the tasks or chores they have to complete, a bullet journal can help to map out their day and follow a schedule. If you searched for bullet journal examples on the internet, you might think that bullet journals are only for creative people –That’s so not true! Everyone, whether you’re creative or not, can keep a bullet journal. And if you’re new to bullet journaling, here are 10 bullet journal tips for your first-ever bullet journal.

10 Bullet Journal Tips for Your First-Ever Bullet Journal

1. Materials you’ll need

Fancy or expensive materials may help you get a more creative end-result. And certainly, if you’re a more experienced bullet journalist, this could be a good idea. But if this is your first-ever bullet journal, then it’s best to keep things basic. Some of the basic bullet journal equipment you will need include:

• A dotted paged notebook (or a square page maths book)
• Pencil
• Ruler
• Highlighters
• Fine Line pens
• Coloured pencils

2. Keep it simple

To begin with keep your bullet journal ideas simple. It’s easy to go off and start creating hundreds of lists and collections of things you like. But with no real structure, this can get messy real quick! We suggest starting off by thinking about what you plan on doing tomorrow or what is your to-do list for the next week? Note down around 10 things on a regular basis and see how you find it in a month’s time. If you are enjoying it, then keep on expanding your lists and creating more collections. If you are still struggling, then take a look at tip 3 below.

3. Give each entry a theme

Sometimes creating endless to-do lists can get a little dull, so to spice things up a bit start thinking about different themes/collections. For example, ignore your to-do list or chore list for a moment and think about what do you really love doing? Is it cooking? Sports? Watching movies? Reading? Whatever your hobby or interest is, you can keep a collection for it. For example, you can use your bullet journal to keep a note of football season scores or every upcoming match dates for your favourite football team. You could keep a list of all your favourite books or favourite book quotes (see our bullet journal layouts for writers). Whatever you enjoy can be kept in a bullet journal! You might also be interested in these February bullet journal ideas for a romance themed bullet journal.

4. Use tracing paper & Stencils

Search the internet and you’ll see a ton a beautiful and creative bullet journal ideas. The problem is you can’t even draw a circle properly. What do you do? Get some stencils (or tracing paper if you haven’t got any stencils). To secret to a clean looking bullet journal is keeping things consistent and stencils are great for this. Plus if you’re not good at drawing like some of us, using tracking paper to trace over pictures or stencils to draw perfect lettering is a brilliant idea.

5. Keep an index or key

An index is a way of labelling your bullet journal entries, so you understand what each symbol or highlighted text means. There are two ways you can create an index. The first way is to use the first page of your notebook as the index page. Or the second way is to include an index at the bottom/top of each journal entry.

Example of a bullet journal key

6. Plan before you start

Before you actually begin writing, you might want to plan your bullet journal layout ahead of time. Decide on whether you are doing a basic to-do list, a mood tracker or any other layout and draw it up beforehand. Then as the days or weeks go by you can easily add to it. You could even have another notebook to try out new layouts in and then once you’re happy you can copy it over into your “real” bullet journal.

7. Create an inspirational workspace

One of the biggest problems most writers face is finding inspiration. One way to inspire you is to have clean and light workspace. So throw away anything you don’t need and start adding inspirational décor like pictures of places you want to go and things you enjoy doing. You could have a notice board nearby with bits of inspirational stuff from magazines, quotes and anything else you like looking at.

8. Write in it regularly

Bullet journals are a brilliant way to track your progress and to keep a note of all the good and the bad things. A brilliant way to help you to write in your bullet journal regularly is to use the habit tracker layout

9. Not just for to-do lists

While to-do lists may be the most practical use for bullet journals, it is not the only thing you can include in your bullet journal. The only limitation to your bullet journal is your imagination. You can include your favourite collection of movies, books and games. You can even use your bullet journal to include poems, favourite quotes or images that inspire you. In fact, your bullet journal could be the ultimate story idea generator which can use to inspire you at any time!

10. Create an ideas page

We left our favourite bullet journal tip until last! An ideas page for your journal is a brilliant way to keep any ideas you have throughout the day or night noted down. These ideas could relate to bullet journal layouts, collections or even related to school projects.

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Got any bullet journal tips for beginners?

We hope you found these bullet journal tips for your first-ever bullet Journal extremely useful. And we would love to hear your thoughts on creating a bullet journal.