Track your habits – the pretty way

I love looking at those beautiful habit trackers and bullet journals out there on the Internet. Some great examples I’ve come across are this ‘5 creative journal ideas’ video by Goodful, some great posts on the blog of Urban Suburban Girl and Gouden Lijntjes (on Instagram). The latter also practices what she preaches when it comes to bullet journals – she’s got her own line of bullet journals.

That is all really inspiring, but also quite frustrating. Because honestly, mine will never look as good. And even if I could make it look as stunning as some of the examples out there- I do not have the time for it. Certainly not on a daily basis. But I’ve been wanting to, because it looks so PRETTY. And I’m totally addicted to notebooks, so it would be a good way to make some use of a few.

Bullet journal

Notebooks

At one point I was fully prepared to start a bullet journal, consulted friends about it, mapped it out and even mapped it all out in pencil. And then I didn’t quite commit. It just seemed like a lot of pressure to make it look so beautiful. With life being a bit stressful these days it would be nice to have pretty things as a distraction, but mostly I need something that is functional. So that is why I usually stick to a plain to-do list for the week, with sometimes a handwritten week overview.

However, a few weeks back I felt down and didn’t feel like doing anything I usually enjoy. Maybe it was autumn blues, maybe not, but in any case it did result in me starting a habit tracker to make sure I find a balance between the things I have to do and the things I want to do.

Bullet journal – first week

Bullet journal – second week

So the first one as you can see I did in pencil and then outlined it (partly) with a marker. Every activity has a different colour and I would colour in the boxes however I felt like. The reading tracker I split into 3 as in an ideal world I read during my commute in the morning, the evening and before bedtime. Below it I put my to-do list.

During week two I took the prep phase a bit more seriously and properly outlined all the boxes. The to-do list is still in pencil (I do like writing with a pencil) and I’m still tracking the activities in different ways.

Bullet journal – third week

Bullet journal – fourth week

Radical changes were made as you can see – I changed the direction of the notebook! Mosty because I didn’t like the horizontal to-do list as much, this vertical one suits me a bit better. I didn’t outline all the boxes again, and it seems like that Thursday was a really uninspring day (though I cannot remember why).

On my forth week I decided to use a brush pen for the title, but without any practice in weeks it ended up a bit meh. Other than that the commitment is there: everything outlined, all written in pen and even the colouring seems to have more motivation behind it.

And now we are starting to see some progress! I took my time drawing out this week’s tracker. I also swapped the days and the activities around, and I think I like it better this way. With the dates being confined to the left top corner it also gives me more space for my to-do list, which is good.

A last-minute addition on the second page is the simple log, inspired by a blog post I read on the blog by Urban Suburban Girl, which I mentioned above. It’s a very simple way to just log the actions of the day. However, it helps you to stop and think about what you did and how that made you feel. The space is limited however so you don’t need much time to fill the boxes. Anyway, we’ll see how that works out.

Have you tried keeping a bullet journal or some kind of habit tracker? Where do you get your inspiration from? Any advice for someone like me who is just starting out?

Advertisement