It doesn’t seem that long ago that I last wrote my Diary, Planner and Journal Review, and given that it was just 3 months ago not much time has really passed. The last time I wrote about my planner, journal and diary I wrote about how I was still using my Filofax Malden and had also been using a bullet journal for all my blogging and life needs and not much has changed in that time.
I am still loving using my bullet journal which has become my main planner for all things blog and life related and my Filofax seems to be getting used a little less than before, its main use now is to accompany me to doctors appointments and when I go shopping.
I am really liking my bullet journal more and more every day and think I may have found the best thing for me to use for all of my needs, aside from my blog schedule, blog notes and other social media ideas I don’t have much that I need to keep track of day to day.
I really like that I can change around the layout from one month to the next, I have trackers to help me manage everything blog related, from writing a post, creating an image and even keeping track of when it has been scheduled which is a great help.
I have enough space in it to write down any thoughts and ideas that I have, space to write down reminders of things I need to do and a place to keep a list of things that I would like to do.
I know which layout I prefer and what sort of things I like to have on hand, which pages and layouts I use the most and the ones which don’t work for me. And, I am fairly sure this is the type of planner I will be using next year too…in fact, I am so sure that I have already got my 2020 Bullet Journal 80% set up already! The only thing I am not too sure about is whether I am able to resist buying any other planners for next year…only time will tell I guess?
What planners, journal or diary have you been using this year? Has it suited all of your needs? Let me know in the comments!
We are now half way through the year now and I have changed so much about how I organise and plan my time in general, my blog things and other aspects of my life that I thought I would do another re-cap on my diaries, planners and journals that I am currently using.
I started out the year with 6 different planners and diaries that I was using ( you can read all the posts here or click the tag in the word cloud on the right of the screen).
At the start of the Year 2019
As of March 2019
Along the way I have been working out what works for me and what doesn’t. While I loved the idea of the spiral bound home planner (similar here from Hobbycraft) I found that it was not really working for me as it was just too big to carry around with me. I realised that, as I was back in work and spent a fair deal of time away from home, that having a planner that I could only add to when I was indoors was not the best option for me. I found that I was thinking of household things that I needed to do and writing them on post-it notes and sticking them into my Filofax and never getting around to adding them to my home planner. I do have a few ideas of things I can do with this planner though so that it doesn’t just go to waste…I’ve been thinking of making it into a kind of scrapbook of memories for the year.
I am also not really using my “the Bright Side” diary either. I started using this diary as my blog diary, so I could keep track of my posts and blog schedule and it worked for a time. I have found though, that while I loved the size of it as the time, it’s now a bit too small for my needs. I still love the format though and would consider buying another one next year for general dates and birthdays and reminders instead of for blog management!
Anyway, enough about what I am not using… let’s take a look at what I am moving forward with…
My Filofax Malden in personal size is something that has stuck with me and I don’t envisage that going anywhere soon! I like that you can add pages and take them away, have sections for notes, add dividers and all manner of other things. It is such a flexible system that can work in so many ways! It comes everywhere with me and I use it to record appointments, make notes, write in my household chores, everything that is important goes into this.
I have also switched to a bullet journal for all my blog things. (You can read about my set up here). I used to use a bullet journal a few years ago (I had a dedicated Instagram page for it) but it all got a bit too overwhelming for me as I was pushing myself to be creative on all the pages and make them all arty and pretty. I did love the flexibility that it allowed me, adding different trackers, space for notes and planning and lots of other things too, and this flexibility is perfect for what I wanted in a blog planner.
I am still using my Happiness Project Journal and writing down a line a day and my Gemma Corell blog ideas book.
What planners, journals and diaries are you using this year? I’d love to know so leave me a comment!
I mentioned in my Monthly Goals for May post that I had recently set up a Bullet Journal for my blog. I found that the little diary I had been using didn’t provide me with enough space to plan out my blog schedule and add many notes. I had been using a bullet journal in previous years for my general life which worked really well for handling different elements of my day to day life and thought that a bullet journal may work better for me and my blog than my current planner.
I happened to be perusing the aisles of my local Flying Tiger one week day while waiting for my Mum and found a cute little dotted journal that would be perfect for the task of a blog planner.
The journal itself is A5 with a rubbery feel hard coated cover which has dotted punch out detail and an image of the star constellation Ursa Major (which is also known as The Big Dipper, the Plough or the Saucepan!) in a silver print. I chose the pink colour although there were several other colours to choose from! I can’t remember how much I paid for the journal but I think it was around the £6-£8 mark which I think is a fairly reasonable price to pay!
The inside front page is blank and the rest of the note pages are dot grid in a grey tone print. The pages are not numbered though I don’t find that to be a problem as I don’t really use an index system anyway though it would be easy enough to hand number them if you so wished.
The note pages themselves are of a thicker gsm paper than a Lechtturm and I would say that they are very similar to those of the Scribbles That Matter pages. The paper is smooth and lovely to write on with no catching of pen nibs or pencils! Pencil lines rub out really easily with no damage or marking to the pages and ink seems to dry fairly easily and quickly. There is hardly any show through from one page to the next, the only shadowing I had was from using highlighters and going over the highlighted parts a few times, but a quick swipe over with a highlighter does not show through at all.
On to the set up…
The first page in any bullet journal that I set up is dedicated to a key which can be symbols or colours for different things. I kept my key simple with a colour code for each of my blog categories (which are the same as the colour code I use on my blogging spreadsheet). I use this key in my journal so I can see at a glance what posts fall on what days and have a variety of different post categories through the month.
The following double page is used for my yearly overview which is basically the year from May to December laid out in grid format where I colour code each posting day with the colour of that posts category. This layout means I can plan ahead any posts that I want and spread out the topics so that they are not all similar through the month. I added a strip of washi tape to the edge so that the page is easy to find (and to hide the unused grid dots…)
Following this page I then have my Monthly Overview page which I use to plan out the posts I want to write. I add the working title to the day I want to publish the post on. I use this page as a working planner and also to tick off posts that I have written and scheduled.
Next up is my Monthly Title Page. I like to put my title page on the right hand page as I find it easier to locate that month when flicking through the journal. I have kept the page pretty simple, with a square containing the initial of the month, so that I can write any ideas of things I’d like to add to my blog in the month that I have not yet scheduled into my monthly pages and am still thinking about. This helps me to keep the ideas in my mind and gives me something to work on in the month and develop.
I added another monthly overview page after the monthly title, this isn’t really necessary though I have been using it as a forward planner for items that I want to make a regular feature in my blog. I’m not sure if this will be something that I will continue with as, at the moment I’m not really using it.
The next series of pages are taken up with my Weekly Pages. I use one page for my weekly blog notes and the other for any extra things relating to my blog. I have also added sections for my social media accounts so that I can jot down any ideas that I have for them that are related to the blog.
And my final pages for the month are my monthly goals page and a page I added for social media. I thought that having my monthly goals page written out at the end of the month would help me to construct my Monthly Goals blog posts a little bit easier, at the moment these posts show my Goals for the month just gone and whether or not I have completed them and then list my goals that I am hoping to achieve for the following month. The social media page is an experiment and I’m hoping to track how many times I post to these sites and how many followers I gain or lose…
What sort of planner or planning do you do for your blog? Let me know in the comments!
I wrote about the diaries and planners that I would be taking into 2019 with me way back in October (Preparing for 2019…) and, today I thought it would be nice to do a little review of how they are still working for me (or not…).
Back when I wrote that post I had 6 journals and planners that I was hoping to use for the year.
This is what I started out with for 2019, from left to right – Hobbycraft Spiral Bound Planner, Ohh Deer Gemma Correll Planner, Paperchase Organise Me A5 Soft Cover Diary, Filofax Malden with Stripes Illustrated Inserts, The Bright Side Diary and a tiny Doodle a Day Journal.
This is the pile I am currently using! As you can see the diaries and planners are still the same as I started out with, with the exception of one…. I have added The Happiness Project One Line a Day 5 Year Diary to the list!
My Filofax Malden comes everywhere with me and has been really handy with writing down appointments as I make them, my work hours and other things that are important. I have a section that contains lined note paper which I have been using to jot down ideas for blog posts, shopping lists and things I need to do and I reach for this so regularly that it sits on my desk in eye sight most of the day.
The doodle journal I started with great enthusiasm in January but, along the way, I have stopped adding to this daily. I found that sometimes I just don’t have the energy or creativity to draw every day. That said, I have still been adding to it when I feel like it and it is still helping me to exercise my drawing muscles. I have also been looking at monthly drawing prompts and am thinking about undertaking one of those and see how it goes.
The Happiness Project Journal is something I write each day. It sits beside my bed and I write in it before I go to sleep. I’m hoping to keep up with this and fill the whole journal with a snippet from each day. it would be lovely to look back on in years to come.
The Brightside Journal is something I use regularly still, I plan out my months blog posts into the monthly overview section and then make notes of what I need to do before the post can be published and also what I need to do on the days that the posts go live.
The Paperchase Organise Me A5 Soft Cover Diary isn’t getting used much, I decided to use it for home and recording any events in it that take up more space and can’t get recorded in my Happiness Project Journal. I have recorded things like the outcome of drs appointments, things I have been doing, things I have done and notes on life in general. Though it is not really getting much use I find it really handy to have something available to record things in that I may need to refer back to but that I don’t want recorded in my Filofax or other diaries and journals.
The Ohh Deer Gemma Correll journal is still being used as my blog ideas keeper! I write down all my post ideas into it along with a few lines about what I’d like to cover in the post and a list of things I would need for the post such as any image ideas I may have. This gets used a few times a week, either I am adding to it or flicking through it to find ideas for future posts. I’m just over half way through it and I have no idea what I will use once it is full!
Finally, my Hobbycraft Spiral Bound Planner which I intended to use as my home planner. I still use this, but not as much as I used to, I tend to rely on my Filofax to keep all my dates and information in. I do sit down once a month and map out my month and what I would like to achieve in that month, things I want to do and things I need to do but aside from that I feel that it is not being utilised to its fullest. In all honesty, I cn see myself not using this much at all in the future. It was a nice idea, and if there were more than me in my household tracking the families appointments, classes and social activities along with any household tasks and bills etc, then this planner would be ideal as the stay home planner.
What journals, diaries and planners are you currently using? And are they the same or different to the ones you started the New Year with?
