I’ve been following this simple habit tracker format for over 2 years with observable results. Though I like making incremental changes to my journaling style over time, when it comes to trackers, I go with “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
just want to scream from the rooftops about this,
the disc bound planner with easily removable pages
i couldnt handle the notebook, same disorganized flipping around. now i have my stuff in sections with dividers, a nice leather cover, place to hold a pen and loose papers, YES
I buy the premade yearly calendar on amazon, blank pages for everything else
In undergrad I really leaned on my bullet journal to keep track of test dates and assignments as well as research projects and work I was doing with social groups. But then when I graduated I didn't need the bullet journal because everything was organized through work and I didn't have so many different things to balance that didn't come with some kind of built in digital calendar. When I started medical school a couple of months ago I thought I would go back to the way I used the bullet journal in college, with the classic monthly spread and daily checklists interspersed with drawn out weekly visualizations of my time commitments.
What I found was that my lecture schedule was already digitized in a way that made using my Google Calendar way more convenient and up to date. I no longer needed the weekly or daily view, and I am using my Google Calendar to track asynchronous lecture videos, which I drag to different times to keep track of which ones I plan to watch when.
So the monthly and weekly spreads were a waste of time to draw out when I have so little spare time to begin with. What I was missing was a to-do list and a way to remind myself to upkeep my relationships with family and to eat something other than Cheez-its for dinner. I've been trying the Alastair method for the last few days and I am really liking it. At this point in my life I need my task management to be as frictionless and low-effort as possible and this seems like a good tool.
I'll probably adjust it with time to try to separate out the discrete tasks from the repetitive tasks and add lists of things for further out in the future. But I think this is filling in the gaps that I had from my more digital organization systems.
October has begun. This month, the school library is hosting an "Outstanding User" contest and a quiz competition, and the second-semester midterms are also scheduled. The preliminary round of the reading quiz took place this morning, and surprisingly, more questions came from the appendix than from the main text. In my poetry writing class recently, I had an assignment to write my thoughts and an interpretation regarding the Ninth Elegy from Rilke's *Duino Elegies*. Since I couldn't write notes directly in the borrowed poetry collection, I copied the poem out by hand into my bullet journal. I think the assignment went reasonably well.
In my new notebook I decided to put the future planning section in the back of the book - it makes more sense to my brain than having it in the front. I thought, why not try something similar with dailies for my work-life balance?
On workdays I usually open my journal right when I first sit down at my desk, and dump in all my tasks and appointments starting at the top of the page. But for the last few days, I've started putting my non-work tasks from the bottom up. Seems to be helping with the overwhelm.
I'm also trying to do some little doodles in leftover space, to increase my comfort working directly with a fountain pen instead of sketching with a pencil first. (We inherited an antique china cabinet that is becoming a book/keepsake shelf, and my cat has some kind of bump on her little ear)
Book: Leuchtturm1917 A5 in Copper
Pen pictured on 1st page: vintage Platinum pocket pen, B nib that writes a little stubby, J. Herbin Perle Noire ink
Used on 2nd page: Hongdian M2 F, Birmingham Burlywood