Whelp, my October Bullet Journal walk-through won’t be very impressive. I had huge plans for October, but I over-committed myself and after a huge push to host a school-wide party AT MY HOUSE early in the month, I crashed. I crashed hard. It took me 3 weeks to get back into the swing of things and I’m looking forward to kicking butt and taking names in November! (New to Bullet Journaling? Check out the basics here!)
My November set up is pretty close to what I did (and just didn’t use) for October. I started with a sketch on a piece of scrap paper with what I wanted to do. Late into October, I added a section to my monthly spread with the headings “Open,” “New,” and “Closed” in it. This is taken straight from one of my business mentors, Lisa Jacobs, over at Market Your Creativity. Every month she was taking on more and more projects without wrapping up anything (ahem…sound familiar??). To keep herself honest, she started tracking all open projects, what she closed during the month **fist bump**, and the new projects she decided to take on only after making sure she had cleared enough off the list first. Since October made me realize that I was crazy-over committed, I’m all about giving this system a go!
Additionally, this month I wanted to add extra focus on Gratitude and Affirmations, so I gave them each their own page. I’m starting a “Miraculous Holiday Challenge” to do a Miracle Morning every weekday between Nov 1 and Dec 31. I’ll use this time every morning to record what I’m grateful for and to lift my spirit up.
I toyed around with the idea of deleting my Monthly Habit Tracker. I’m terrible at going back to fill it in…it just doesn’t motivate me to cross off the squares. What is wrong with me, you guys?? I DO still like the Power Block challenge (20 90-minute uninterrupted blocks of work time per month), but the other stuff I’ve been half-heartedly trying to track? I’m not sure it’s doing it for me, but I’m giving it one more try. I need to be crazy-focused and productive this month, despite the holiday smack in the middle, so I’m Team Monthly Habit Tracker still.
You’ll also notice I’ve included the first and last partial weeks of November in with this month’s Week by Week planning. When I have a week that’s split between 2 months (which is nearly every month, let’s be honest), I take a look at the week and see which month has the most days in that week. For this planning month, the Oct-Nov week has 3 October days and 4 November days and the Nov-Dec week has 5 November days and only 2 December days. So, both of these split weeks have been lumped into November, giving me 5 full weeks to plan out.
My weekly format has stayed the same for nearly a year now. Drawing this out only takes me about 5 minutes and another 10 minutes to populate, now that I’ve been doing this for a while. I just line up the blank page with the previous one, make dots along the edge where each line goes and either free-hand draw it or grab the ruler that lives on my desk. Every month I look at other templates and ideas, just to make sure I’m making a conscious decision to keep it the same. I keep coming back to what I currently use as the best setup for me, so no changes for November.
I am going to go back and add in some end of year goal review and some holiday planning, but in the interest of time I’ll get this post out and include those in my December Plan-with-Me post. Make sure you’re on my mailing list so you won’t miss it! (Pinky-promise I only email a MAX of once a month…)
What about you guys? What parts of your own planning need a freshen-up or do you love your system and stick with it all year? Drop me your comments and questions below!
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