How to set up a no-frills bullet journal

Bullet journals are really popular for good reasons. Our schedules are overwhelmingly cluttered with different tasks, To Dos, and personal interests, and it’s hard to keep it all organized. The bullet journal method adapts to you. If you’re an artistic type, there are a ton of bullet journal page layout templates online that are over my head in colors and design. I’m not artistic, so I do a no-frills method.

Why do I like a no-frills bullet journal method over a traditional agenda to track my To Do lists? Because I know I won’t be consistent every day, and as soon as I leave too many days blank in a dated agenda, I will feel guilty and avoid using it. Bullet journals don’t keep track of your lazy days. They only track your productive ones :)

I also like that it adapts and expands to my life over the year.

Here’s how I set up my no frills bullet journal.

Step 1: Find a journal that you like. I prefer a lined, hardcover journal—bonus if it has a ribbon or elastic attached to serve as a bookmark. This is my 2024 bullet journal.

Step 2: Number all the pages. Annoying, but important to contain the disorganized mess called your brain.

Step 3: Create a Table of Contents on the front page (or an Index at the back). Add sections that you know you want, and no worries if you aren’t sure yet, you can add as many new ones as you like throughout the year. This is one reason it can fully adapt to your life over time.

Step 4: I highly suggest you make the monthly overview/successes layout. As kid-lit author and educator Michelle Cusolito advocates, it’s where you list all the big and small accomplishments and milestones for the whole family—a wonderful section to reflect on at the end of the year because by December, we often forget how much we’ve recently experienced.

Step 5: If you have goals or projects you are working on, you can make pages for them with accountability checklists. I added a few stickers this year to mine for some motivation.

Step 6: You will then have a bunch of blank pages left. Do not date them! These are for To Do lists, shopping lists, random ideas, etc. Don’t add them to your Table of Contents unless they are something you will want to reference again in a month. That way if you miss a day, no guilt! I keep my ribbon bookmark on my current To Do List page for quick access.

Throughout the year, if I suddenly want to track a new goal or list and refer back to it, I make a spread for it on any empty page, and then I add it to my Table of Contents with the page number. It makes it easy to find all the things that I’m tracking because they are numbered.

However, if I quickly need to jot some short term notes, I can do that on any blank page and leave it off my Table of Contents. This has really helped my brain juggle with life clutter, and knowing it easily expands with my life and interests over time is priceless. I embrace the fact that my To Do Lists are sporadic throughout the main pages of my bullet journal as I create more sections throughout the year…and that’s the joy of it!

Hope this helps inspire you to get organized. I’d love to hear if it worked for you and how you made it your own.