Project Planning in my Bullet Journal
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Today I am talking about a favorite bullet journal spread that I shared during my Tombow Takeover – my project planning spread. I’ve used this layout for so many different things – it can be adapted for any increment of time over a variety of kinds of endeavors to get a birds-eye view of a single project, your job, family calendar/vacations, assignments, classes, and more. And of course, it’s a great excuse to use your favorite color pens. I’ll share my method and hopefully you can adapt it to your own needs too!
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PROJECT PLANNING IN MY BULLET JOURNAL
Supplies featured:
- A5 Leuchtturm dot grid
- Cork-backed ruler
- Tombow Monoline Drawing Pen
- Tombow Twintone pens
I will be using this spread to get an understanding of my work flow and what is on my plate. This is the basic outline – I leave room for the project areas, then count out 3 boxes for each month in the year (to signify beginning, middle, end of the month). The column on the right is room for related page numbers, for related notes I take for those projects.
To fill in the left-hand side, I did a brain-dump of all the different parts of my job. There’s the main chunk of projects that are staples to my job, and then a few things that are one-offs or ad hoc committees.
Then I get to do the fun part: choose colors and fill in the chart!
I am digging rainbows these days, so you’ll see I started listing the projects with the super fine tip of the Tombow TwinTones on the left, and then shading with the broad-tip in the calendar section. I darken the shading in the times where I’m particularly focused on the project. As you can see, it becomes clear when I’m busy and when the load is a little lighter.
I don’t actually reference this throughout the year but the process of breaking this down helps me understand the ebbs and flows of my work, the capacity I have for taking on new projects…. or more importantly, take vacation!
So you can do this with your school assignments, the classes you teach, family calendars, research projects, phases of a strategic plan, summer vacation for people at work…. anything!
What do you think you’ll use it for? Let me know in the comments 🙂
Jessica
9 Comments
I’ve seen you do this before and thought that it wouldn’t work for me because the nature of my work is not planned out that far ahead – and my work is downstream of product releases and a lot of my timelines are dependent on those releases. But I’m going to try it for Sept-Dec and see. I’m hoping it gives me an opportunity for a “big picture” view of milestones and major tasks.
I did this for work, but in Excel! And actually, I do something similar in my planner or on flash-cards when planning what papers and research projects to work on. Maybe I’ll post on it on my blog someday!
I used your idea to plan out my PhD tasks, and it turned out quite nice! I also posted about it and referenced you: anacademicplanner.wordpress.com/2017/10/09/planning-the-long-term-phd-process/
[…] Today I am talking about a favorite bullet journal spread that I shared during my Tombow Takeover – my project planning spread. I’ve used this layout for so many different things – it can be adapted for any increment of time over a variety of kinds of endeavors to get a birds-eye view of a single project, your job, family calendar/vacations, assignments, classes, and more. … More Project Planning in my Bullet Journal […]
Hi Jessica, I am going to try this for the last quarter of this year. I have several projects I need to complete and this may inspire me to get them done. Thank you for sharing your method.
Great idea. I have lots of tasks that come back every year and this is a great way of seeing where the wholes are to add new and exciting tasks. Thank you for sharing.
Such an amazing blog. I love your ideas and creativity. I will definitely start checking your posts. Brilliant! 🙂
I love this idea. I am retired so I will have to plan how this could work for me. We have many spur of the moment tasks but I am sure this could be helpful in things we have to plan.
[…] I found the following blog post titled “Project Planning in my Bullet Journal”. I used to do something similar to that at work, but in Excel. It worked really well, as I was able […]
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