My 2016 Bullet Journal setup

Setting up Bullet Journal

It was January 17th and I'd finally sat down, spread out all of my assorted note devices and set up my brand new Bullet Journal for 2016.  I'd planned to do this over the holiday period, but life and work got in the way. Days passed and I delayed, noting down tasks and thoughts on whatever came to hand.

And you know what?  It pained me.  My stress levels shot up, I worried I was missing important deadlines, I felt bad.  It reminded me why this system works so well for me and why the effort is worth it.

So I sat down with a cup of tea, my new Leuchturm and some pens and set up this year's Bujo.

I thought I'd share my setup with you, dear reader.

Firstly, this year I'm moving from Moleskine to Leuchtturm. I love Moleskine, I've used them for years, but I liked the idea of a notebook with built in page numbers, index and dot gridded paper.

Bullet Journal and Midori

For writing, I thought I'd try out a lovely pen I was given as a gift for Christmas, a Midori Brass pen. It writes a very fine black line ,  looks like a brass bullet and is extremely light to use. On first impressions I liked writing with it and the ink, but I did notice it smudged slightly if I rubbed new ink.

I also added a Leuchturm pen loop to the back page. This is one of those brilliant ideas, a stick-on elasticated pen loop, that allows you to keep a pen on your Bullet Journal ready for use.

Forward Planning - The Alastair method

Next I turned to the first double page spread and set up a full year's Forward Planning page using, well, it had to be "The Alastair Method".  You'll see here, on the right hand page, where the Midori ink smudged.

Finally, I set up my initial collection pages, based upon those that I used most in my previous Moleskine Bullet Journal.

Initial Bullet Journal Index

It was then a simple task to migrate any list content from my old to new journal so I could finally retire last year's edition with all of the facts I might need at my fingertips.

Confident that my paper brain is now complete, I'm ready to start my ongoing monthly and daily task lists.

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