I followed the BuJo system religiously for almost a year, trying to put my entire life into a bullet journal. It stopped working for me. I found it too distracting to have my day job, my personal stuff, and my novels, all in the same Leuchtturm A5 hardcover notebook. After racing through notebooks alarmingly quickly — when I got to two notebooks a month, I gave up. In the time I was copying Collections to new notebooks, I could have written a new chapter.
If you’re just starting out with the bullet journal system, I recommend using a single journal, until you realize that you need more.
After losing track of notes I’d made for research and hunting through several journals, I decided that I needed ONE book, to contain bibliographies, reading lists, research, and research ideas. Keeping all my research together made sense.
Similarly with goals, and time tracking. A master journal for work on goals (work, home, and writing) means that I can track goals more easily.
Use your bullet journal, or journals, your way
Many people in our writers’ group are keen journalers, with multiple journals.
The uses include:
Family/ and or pets’ health journal. Very useful if you have several people in the family with health challenges. A pets’ diary is especially useful when you’re away. Not only does your pets’ minder know their routine, and diet, but your vet will also find the journal useful if an animal becomes ill while you’re away;
Food/ diet and recipe journal. Are you attempting a vegan diet, or trying to lose weight? A food diary makes it easy to track everything you need to lose weight, or develop a healthier lifestyle;
Camera equipment and photos. One of our group is a keen photographer, who enters competitions. He keeps track of everything in a bullet journal.
A bullet journal slows you down and helps you to get more done
The primary benefit of a bullet journal of any kind is that it helps you to track what you’re doing, so that you’re more productive.
I don’t decorate any of my bullet journals, although I do doodle in them, to help me to think.
Your use of the bullet journal system will be as individual as you are. One journal or many? It’s up to you.
A Regency time travel romance... What if you could escape across time, and find your soulmate?
Pure evil dispatches gorgeous Tara Ballantine across the centuries, to Regency England. Tara lands on Adam Jervoise, Earl of Hillingworth -- literally -- as he's riding through a bluebell wood.
Hillingworth is handsome, rich, and kind. He's also set to propose to an heiress.
When Tara realizes that she's falling in love with the earl, she fights the feeling.
At 24, not only is Molly Ballantine stunning, she has two sisters she loves, and a wonderful career. Then her eldest sister Tara vanishes, and her life disintegrates.
Molly's life is about to become even more chaotic. She wakes up in a brothel with a man who's too good-looking for her peace of mind.
22-year-old Priscilla Ballantine wakes up 200 years in the past, naked in the arms of handsome aristocrat, and master spy, Dominick de Roche, Lord Bellemieux. Priscilla's accused of spying, and is in danger of summary execution. She can't help thinking that she wouldn't be in such a mess if Dominick de Roche hadn't mistaken her for one of his contacts...
