Getting Started With Bullet Journaling
Five Things You Need and Five You Definitely Don’t
Not only did the one-year anniversary of writing Shelf Life pass by recently, but so did something like the one-year anniversary of my on-again, off-again, back-on-again relationship with bullet journaling. I do it for a while, then I use a planner for a while, then I do a digital planner for a while; this cycle repeats, though not always in order. It depends on how much energy I have for keeping life organized at any given time.
I feel confident, at this point, that I have at least done bullet journaling enough to provide the article I wish I had found when I first picked up the skill. That article did not exist so I am willing it into existence. Anyway it’s been a couple weeks or more since I did a sub-topical Shelf Life article. I will tell you the story:
It began with the scantiest possible understanding of bullet journaling:
people [can I become these people?]
hand drawing and hand writing [hmm probably not]
in notebooks [well, maybe]
I love books that exist to be written in. I buy every cute planner and notebook I see—and then immediately stick it in a desk drawer forever. It’s so bad that I have taken to ordering pretty notebooks and sending them unsolicited to my friends to junk up their drawers, because I can’t justify bringing any more of them into my home.
The crux of the issue: I wanted to do “this notebook thing” that I saw online but I knew I was unlikely to follow through therefore I did not want to devote a lot of money to it. But when I looked around for guidance on how to start, I encountered pages full of affiliate links to all the stuff you can buy for journaling but no good advice on what is the bare minimum you need to get started without overinvesting.
If you want to see an exhaustive comparison of the top three market-leading $25+ dot-grid journals so you can pick the best one, there are plenty of posts for that. Am I going to spend $25 on a notebook that has better odds of becoming a placemat than getting written in? No. Am I going to use one of the aforementioned abandoned desk-drawer notebooks that I already have on hand instead of spending more money on notebooks? . . . Also no. But. I am going to be reasonable about this.
Morgan Freeman Narrator Voice: She was not, in fact, reasonable about this.
Long story short, I have all the stuff. But I didn’t get it all at once. In addition to recommending all kinds of things that I did not need, the internet also neglected to point me toward several things that I did need. There were several occasions when I sat down to try something only to go “oh you know what I need?” And then I’d have to wait a couple of days to get it before repeating the process with the next thing I didn’t know I needed.
This is your chance to learn from my fail. Herewith, a list of the things that I actually needed. Then, a list of things I acquired that I definitely did not need and never used. And as a bonus for you, a list of the things that I like having and use a lot but don’t actually need to do bullet journaling.
Five Things You Actually Need
Notebook
You need something to write in. The main qualities you want in this notebook (in order of importance) are:
Dot grid
Paper that won’t let ink bleed through (high grams per square meter, or GSM)
A5 size
Pre-numbered pages are nice
Built-in index pages are nice
The journals that everybody seems to love that fit these criteria are Scribbles That Matter and Archer and Olive, both pricey brands. I bought a $7 notebook that had fewer pages and it was fine. It was $7. It has index pages, page numbering, and a dot grid pattern. I’m not planning to engage in a notebook-measuring contest. Getting a standard A5-size journal is handy if you have seen a lot of pretty spreads on Insta or wherever that you’d like to duplicate—you’ll have to completely refigure the spacing if you choose another size.
Over time I’ve learned that the biggest caveat for me with inexpensive journals is the dot grids don’t always line up across the spread, like they may be just a little bit misaligned vertically on the recto page compared to the verso page in any given spread. If you like drawing big grids across two pages this will be a deal breaker, so make sure you read the reviews on inexpensive journals before you buy. Misaligned spreads are a huge pain.
Other than spread misalignment, just try to get something with thick paper that an ordinary gel ink pen won’t bleed through.
Pen
You already know you need a pen. I’m sure you already have a pen. I don’t even know why I’m telling you this. See my old post on pens for more info but if you’re choosing only one pen for journaling, I recommend the Pilot G-2 or the Sharpie S-Gel, in .38mm size. You will appreciate having the finest possible point when you’re trying to write small and neat at the same time. Do you need a variety of pens in different colors and in .38, .5, and .7 mm tips? You do not. I have all those pens and then some but I barely ever use any pen bigger than .38mm in my bullet journal. Every now and then I use a .5mm for drawing borders.
Pencil
Okay, you need a pencil. You obviously need a pencil to draw all your layouts and hand lettering before you go over it with pen or marker and then erase the pencil. Right? Haha! It’s so obvious! It’s so obvious that nobody explained it to me and I 100% did not figure it out until I sat down with a pen and a beautiful blank page and said “wow I am gonna absolutely ruin this, if only I had a pencil so I could ruin it slightly less.” Personally I think mechanical pencils are best because sharpening is for chumps, and I like .5mm graphite because finer lines are also best. But what do I know. Do what you want.
Eraser
The eraser on the other end of your pencil is not equal to the task ahead. It will smudge graphite all over your pages and you will burn through it long before you run out of lead. Get a hi-polymer block eraser (those white plasticky ones) or if you really want to get fancy you could get a black Sumo eraser. I have a pen-style eraser that I rarely use fordoing fine erasing but mostly I use the block eraser because I don’t erase my pencils till after I’ve gone over the whole thing in pen, and then I erase the whole spread in one go, which would take forever with a pen-style eraser.
Ruler
A transparent ruler will work best. A 12-inch ruler is kind of unwieldy on a small notebook but a 6-inch ruler won’t be long enough for some of your vertical lines; pick your poison. If you want to be really cool, like as cool as me, get a transparent leading gauge ruler. Here is where I have to drop a link because I want to make sure you see the specific thing I mean, this thing. Alternately called a pica ruler or even “the screaming ruler,” as one of my editorial assistants used to call it, because “it goes eeeeeeeeeeeeee.” (I apologize that you had to read this far to get to the insider publishing humor you come here for.) This is the queen of rulers. Every household needs this bad girl. One straightedge to rule them all.
Five Things You Definitely Do Not Need
Stencils
I implore you, do not waste money on stencils. Plastic stencils, metal stencils, shape stencils, lettering stencils. Just don’t. These do not work well and everything will look worse than if you just drew it with a ruler. Try to use a marker or a pen? Pigment will bleed under the edge of the stencil and your edges will be blurry. Use a pencil and draw over it freehand with pen? It will still look terrible. I have no artistic talent whatsoever but the pages in my journal started looking better as soon as I gave up on the stencils. I do not have good hand-eye coordination but when I want to draw fancy letters I type them on my screen in the font I want and then just try to freehand draw them. If you have more hand-eye coordination than a toddler then you probably already have more than me and I promise this will look better than using a stencil. Stencils are terrible.
Layout Stamps
People make little silicone stamps to stamp calendars, designs, layout elements, and illustrations on your journal. They seem like such a great idea but they are harder and more tedious to use than to just draw and write your own calendars and layout elements. They’re tiny and slippery and flexible and hard to get inked and imprinted neatly. You will never want to use them.
Planner Stickers
You can buy big packs of stickers to use instead of writing your headings. Fun, themed stickers with month names, day names, holidays, calendars, stuff like that. If you want all that stuff pre-done, don’t buy a blank journal. Just buy an undated planner. Panda Planner is a really nice one but there is no shortage of daily, weekly, and monthly undated planners if you don’t want to draw all the stuff yourself. Don’t beat yourself up. Get the thing you really want.
Printables
You can find these free all over the Internet or buy PDFs on Etsy. The idea is that you download the PDF, print it off, three-hole punch it, and then use a binder instead of a journal. I browse these to get inspiration but the whole point of journaling for me is flexibility and drawing drawing in the notebook. That’s the zen part.
Washi Tape
Don’t get me wrong. I love washi tape. I have, in fact, what I consider to be a very reasonable quantity of washi tape in my home. I use it to decorate mail and cards and gifts and other stuff. I did not enjoy using it in my journal. Every time I decorated a page with washi tape, it looked silly and I ended up peeling it off. The only thing I successfully used washi tape for in my journal was as actual masking tape for when I was highlighting rows, to have neat edges.
And while we’re on the subject of things you don’t need to have, here are some freebies: artistic talent; steady hands; good handwriting. You don’t need them. I don’t have any of these things. Don’t let their lack stop you from trying.
Five Handy Bonus Items
Practice Notebook
I had just started out when I was reviewing a blogger’s complicated spread and his instructions for duplicating it, which began thus: “First, in your practice notebook.” Reader, I screamed. I write in this notebook for a hobby and now I’m supposed to have two notebooks so I can write everything twice? We have composition books in the house for doodling, so I grabbed one and now I do appreciate having it. I use it to try out lettering as well as to design envelope art. A+. Totally worth the fifty cents. Get a really cheap spiral bound book or composition book if you’re worried about messing up your pretty journal. But remember, if you mess up a page you can just turn the page and start a new page. It literally does not matter.
Correction Pen
Don’t get the bottle (the brush won’t be precise enough for your needs) and don’t get the tape (when I tried, it would not stick to my journal’s paper). You will be glad you have this the first time you draw your parallel lines in uneven heights by accident. Which I did the first time I tried. And have continued to do, on and off, ever since because I never learn from my mistakes.
Brush Pens, Markers, and Highlighters
For fun lettering but also for organizational purposes. I use a grey highlighter to highlight every other line if I’m making a list or table, rather than drawing a thin line between each row. Or I use a colorful highlighting system in a free-association spread to code words as character names versus place names versus thing names. My number-one top pick is the Zebra Mildliner highlighter in gray. For more information on writing implements of this nature, I have an old post on markers. I’m not great at lettering with brush pens, but you don’t have to be. It’s fun anyway.
Angle and Circle Maker
I have a thing called the “Helix Angle and Circle Maker With Integrated Circle Templates.” I 100% do not understand how this thing works. Even as I’m using it correctly and watching it happen right before my eyes, I don’t understand how it works. This thing is Spirograph’s straightedge cousin. It lets you draw perfect circles in any size and I think you can also use it to draw precise angles somehow if you’re smarter than I am. Yes, it came with instructions. I read them. I still don’t understand.
Sticky Tabs
Most notebooks made for bullet journaling come with a built-in bookmark ribbon (or three) but that is not enough bookmarks for me to keep track of all the pages I need to refer to regularly. It’s a great tool for quickly getting to my most recent page but that’s all. I always have lots of earlier pages and spreads that I need to refer back to. I got a box of sticky margin tabs (mine are made by Avery) and whenever I have a spread or page that I reference often I put a tab on it and write the name of the page on both sides of the tab so I can get to it quickly. For instance, I keep a little log of mail sent and to send (birthday cards and stuff like that) so I have a tab on that page that says “Mail Log.” When the mail log page fills up, I make a new one on the next empty page of my journal and move the sticky tab to the new mail log.
This post is especially for my friend who thought they might try bullet journaling but it “seem[ed] like a lot.” It’s not that much. As someone who can barely draw a straight line with a ruler and has poor penmanship, if I can manage it then probably anybody can.
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