April Review & May Set Up

With May coming in hot, the end of the semester is approaching AND… it’s time for a new month to set up in my bullet journal.  To start, I will do a review of how April went before I make changes for May – after all, the best way to look forward is to look back.

April Review

April feels like IT FLEW BY and I’m suddenly like, “Wait what? Already?” So let me look back at the month.

With the vacation to Charleston I felt like I was really swept up in prepping social media and blog posts, which took my focus away from some other things.  That’s something I want to tweak going forward – I love this little blog and developing some cool stuff but am very aware of how much work I put into it and don’t want to get too distracted from, you know, my life!

Main April takeaways:

• I suck at reading – I definitely didn’t reach my goals from my monthly, namely, reading!
• As I suspected, incorporating my gratitude and spending logs into my weekly works MUCH better than keeping it sequestered separately – I need to see it to keep up with it
• ….which then follows that I did not really utilize the monthly view last month
• I found myself wanting to reference some blog planning stuff in my main bullet journal as well as finding space just to jot down random thoughts

Which will bring me to…

My May Set Up

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Monthly. Yet another experiment – going back to a monthly set up for May in the traditional sense.  This isn’t really for my monthly appointments, but rather the things I find myself wanting to reference throughout the month – namely, monthly challenges and some blogging calendar stuff.  The rest of the events live in my Google Calendar, and don’t need to create that redundancy.

I’m using May Designs inserts inside a classic no 7 Foxy Notebook cover, with my trusty ruler, Black Staedtler Fineliner, and Tombow Dual Brush pens. I pushed two bullet-tips together to get this fun blended effect.

Monthly Rapid-Log. Throughout the month I found myself needing space to just jot down quick thoughts or passing-by-tasks that were not a post it.  So I incorporated that part of the original bullet journal concept into my monthly.  In some ways it’s less structure than in the past, and I’m hoping the organized-chaos version will make it more useable this month. From here, I can pull relevant tasks into my weekly.

Weekly. My trusty 5-day weekly layout.  I spend 12 minutes Sunday nights drawing this out -I put relevant tasks on the day they happen, as well as some of the events happening that day. This is the core of my week so I enjoy having the 5 days for additional space per day.

The second row is for my gratitude log, and the third row is for my expenses.  I have to figure out how to do the overview of my expenses, but for now, it’s helpful to have it right in front of my face.

Next up is my habit tracker + stamping block – I’ve had the same 5 habits for the past few months but it’s up for re-evaluation if those are indeed the key habits I want to track.

The space on the right hand side is for whatever I want – in this case, a huge focus on my class I teach, with open space for something that might emerge. That’s the beauty of the bullet journal – you create the structures that best fit your life AND leave room for the things you don’t know you need yet.

Weekend. The dailies-style version to wrap up the rest of the week gives me enough space for my big plans.  The open space on the right is for whatever calls to me – lately it’s been blog and post planning, but it’s also been a good page for reviews for the week.

So that’s what I have for you – how are you setting up your bullet journal? Do you have the ultimate Monthly Trick to rule them all that I should try?? Let me know in the comments!

Yours,

Jessica