Modifying my green book

I've been using a planner (with a green cover) for quite some time. I call it my green book. In that time, I've tried different things with it here and there, and tried different planners, but I usually returned to some incarnation of the green book.

But it wasn't really working for me. I didn't have the space I needed for notes, and the layouts of the pages locked me in to using the planner in a very specific way.

It just wasn't working.

So as I was wandering around online to try and find some workarounds, I discovered bullet journaling, created by Ryder Carroll. It's a way of incorporating planning, scheduling, notes, and to-do lists all in one place. The foundation of the method is simplicity and flexibility. You can use any notebook and pen and find a way to make it exactly what you need it to be.

Here's the video on Carroll's website:

If you Google bullet journals, the image results will be full of artistically magnificent pictures of layouts and notes and oh, my goddess the pretties. And that's wonderful for those using their bullet journals as an artistic outlet. That's not me. I express myself in words, not visual art.

So I'm sticking much, much more closely to the original method developed by Carroll. I've incorporated a couple of chart-style trackers and I'm using a different method for indexing, but other than that, my bullet journal is very simple.

I can tell you that even using this method just this month has helped me stay much more organized. I have everything in one place, and the method plays into my need to write things down in order to remember them. (I ♥ analog planners!)

Because of the method's simplicity and flexibility, I'm able to make it anything I want it to be. I use it to track projects for work, it includes my blogging editorial calendar, planning and task lists for our upcoming family vacation, and even my "40 before 40" list.

I plan to stick with this planning method through the end of the year to decide whether I really like it or not. If I don't, I can go back to a different planner at the beginning of 2017.

In the meantime, I like it quite a bit.