My Bullet Journal Set Up: Weekly Layout
Bullet Journal for Adulting with Austin @MinimalJournal
July 21, 2016#PlanWithMeChallenge August: Anniversary Edition
July 25, 2016
I talk a lot about why I prefer the weekly layout to the dailies – but in short, my brain works in an arc.  If you’re familiar with the Gallup StrengthsFinder, the strengths I have means that my brain visualizes the future and rearranges what has to happen to make it so.  Seeing the week allows me to manipulate and adapt my plans for things that come up, and I know what’s on my plate so I am more aware of what I can say yes or no to.
One of the things I hear about a weekly is that it takes a long time, and that they’d rather “use that time to get stuff done.” I have mixed reactions to that statement – because it’s too hard to say what takes time to someone else. Â If I think a doodle set up takes too long, what I’m really saying is “that would take too long… for me to do.” And, who am I to say what makes someone else productive? Perhaps their starting point was struggling to get even just a few things done, and now they are accomplishing more of what they want to accomplish. That is what I’d call a success. Â For me, since I’m still able to rapid log tasks in a somewhat “organized chaos” fashion, it works.
And, once you get familiar with some structures that work for you, you can do it relatively quickly – this layout took me 8 minutes to do.
I hope you find what works for you!
Featuring:
- My cat in the shadows
- May Designs inserts
- Pilot G2 pen pack
- Ruler
- Tombow dual brush markers
- Weekly Tracker Stamp
- Acrylic Block
Hope this helps! What are you trying in your weeklies? Let me know down below, or tag me on Instagram @PrettyPrintsAndPaper so I can check it out!
Jessica
11 Comments
I find it really hard sometimes to remember to get my daily layout done the night before. I really ought to try a weekly layout. That might work a little better for me. Thank you for sharing!
I feel you on that! One night to plan ahead for the week is a great rhythm for me 🙂
I prefer weekly lay-outs as well. This was an interesting video.
Thanks a lot!!! I love the way you are doing this!!! So inspiring and you make it look so easy! 😉
[…] A big decision is weekly or a daily – I definitely use a weekly. […]
I use a weekly sometimes–my life doesn’t require it, but it’s sometimes nice to come back to one page the whole week. I find it anchoring. I have the week going down one side so I can write what will happen those days, and a little box for if I had a nightmare (I get them a lot and like to see if there’s a pattern), and a “focus” box for something I’m trying to incorporate, such as cleaning before relaxing or asking for help more. Mine looks so different from yours, but honestly yours inspired me to try because it’s so unique! I did like you said and tested out different layouts until I found one that worked for me.
Sometimes though, I just turn the page on a new week and begin a daily instead. 😉
I LOVE that – I totally believe in experimentation. I like the idea of the focus box – I wonder if I could try having another small row for “intention” for the day…. hmmm…. you got my gears going!
I only recently discovered weekly layouts, when I had a couple of weeks off work with lots of scheduled events but few tasks, but I’m finding I really enjoy that high-level view of my week ahead. Now that I’m back in the office I’m using a weekly spread as my base and only incorporating dailies when I absolutely need them.
I’m surprised some people find weeklies take too much time, though; I find I take less time with a weekly because I only have to create the setup once a week and I’m migrating tasks less often as they live in the weekly task list until I assign them (rather than having tasks rolling from day to day to day because I *know* it needs to be done but other priorities keep pushing it to the next day).
And I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who counts the dots/lines to make sure all my boxes are the same size 🙂
Oh that’s SUCH a good point about the time that it takes to set up! Especially if folks are using a little more structure in their pages than what the original system calls for (aka just a header lol) – weeklies are a must for me <3
[…] Nothing much is changing here (you can find longer explanations of this layout here and here).  What I do want to try is adding more structured project tasks in the bottom right […]
I’ve been toying with the idea of different layouts for my weeklies and I do like your way of sectioning off – I tend to use both weeklies and dailies.. a weekly as an overview and a daily for the nitty gritty
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