Since I started to bullet journal, my life has been heading in the direction I know my heart truly belongs. With a much clearer sense of priority and direction, taking action towards achieving what I truly value has been a much easier and less daunting process.
My bullet journaling journey started with reading the “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey in 2020. Then I started diving into other productivity, habits and self-improvement books and of course YouTube channels. Which led to this ‘final’ product of my bullet journaling habit. Definitely, it is open for refinement, but this would generally be how I’ll stick with it, at least for the foreseeable future.
Contents of my bullet journal
Front pages
- Core values lists — moving-towards and moving-away values
- Identity
- Wheel-of-life
- Focus areas
- Personal mission statement
- Goals/dreams of the year
- Daily questions
- Daily reminders
Main pages
- Monthly habits tracker
- Goals of the month
- Weekly pages
- Roles → Goals/Steps
- Focus areas and ratings
- Daily highlights
- Daily to-dos
- Daily journal prompts
- Weekly review (using journal prompts)
- Monthly review (using journal prompts)
- Monthly review (using journal prompts)
- Quarterly review (using journal prompts)
Ending pages
- Yearly journal prompts
My bullet journal influences
Books
- 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
- Make Time
- Atomic habits
Youtube channels
- Ali Abdaal
Journal prompts
Yearly journal prompts
- what would you attempt to do if you knew you couldn’t fail?
- what would you do if you knew that you would fail, but you would do it anyway?
- what is one thing you will celebrate achieving at the end of the year?
Quarterly journal prompts
- what are the core values (in order of importance) that drive my life and work? (maybe it’s time to reorder your moving-towards and moving-away values)
- how am I living and working true to my core values?
- how can I set a higher standard in the future?
Weekly journal prompts
- if broadly, the way you lived this week of your life was how you were going to live every week of your life, would you consider that a life well lived?
- how will you refine your ‘ideal week’?
- have I accomplished what I intend to do? If not, what went wrong?
Monthly journal prompts
- what goals have I achieved?
- what are my goals next month?
- what habits did I focus on and how did it go?
- what habits should I add/continue next month?
- am I closer to where I want to be?
Daily start-of-day journal prompts
- what is your highlight activity today?
- how will you increase your energy and focus today compared to yesterday?
Daily end-of-day journal prompts
- what is your energy level today?
- what is your focus level today?
- what did you learn today/what mistakes did you make today?
- did you make progress today?
- what have you given today?
- what is the most story worthy moment today? (I write this in my other ‘thoughts dump’ journal)
Core values & Identity
Moving-towards values
Extracted from Tony Robbins book of “Awaken the Giant Within”. Moving-towards values are basically values that attracts you to take the action. What values are you attracted to?
Moving-away values
When there’s moving-towards values, there’s bound to be moving-away values. What values are you avoiding? Or what values are stopping you from taking action?
As explained in more details in my blog on ‘how to take more genuine actions’, list and prioritise these values. It takes time (for me, I took a few days to come out with my first list), continuous reflection and refinement.
Since I created my first list in 2022, I’ve refined it more than 5 times. In fact, just as I’m writing this, I re-ordered my moving-away values and removed ‘humiliation’ from it. Because I realised I can’t control what people do, so even if they choose to put me in the spot and ‘humiliate’ me, I can only change how I see the situation. As long as I live by my moving-towards values and avoid my moving-away values, humiliation will not be a ‘reachable’ value.
My most updated moving-towards values:
- Health/vitality
- Love/warmth
- Intelligence
- Cheerfulness
- Honesty
- Passion
- Gratefulness
- Fun/happiness
- Making a difference
- Learning/growing
- Achieving
- Doing my best
- Investing
- Contribution
- Creativity
My most updated moving-away values:
- Guilt
- Anger
- Stinginess
- Laziness
- Depression
- Loneliness
- Frustration
- Failure
- Rejection
Identity
What is your identity? I know it sounds dumb to ask this to yourself, like how would you not know who you are? But do you truly know who you are or who you want to be?
On the other hand, it can be such a difficult to answer question for many others, or rather it’s a question they have never really sat down to ponder about. So, now is the time to just write it down.
Your identity is a mix of your roles, responsibilities, values and beliefs. You may not have been living by these values and beliefs, but it could be based on who you want to be. Any action and outcome is based on your identity as the core.
To become the person you want to be, as James Clear mentioned in his book “Atomic Habits”, the core of any action you take to become who you want to be is your identity.
I am…
“I am an uplifter of people. A daughter, sister, friend, teacher, mentor, learner, student, writer. I am loving, humble, patient, mature, intelligent, adventurous, courageous, fun, cheerful, passionate and purposeful. I am productive and intentional with time. I am a do-er and actioner. A disciplined and fit martial artist. A confident and impactful speaker. A strong and flexible yogi. Healthy and balanced in all aspects of my life. I am NOT a quitter, complainer or blamer.”
Wheel-of-life
- Draw a wheel.
- Divide it into 3 equal parts to represent: Purpose, Health, Social.
- For each division, there is 3 subdivisions.
- Purpose: Mission, Money, Growth
- Health: Body, Mind, Soul
- Social: Family, Friends, Romance
- Add an extra division, on the side, for ‘Joy’.
- Rate each subdivision on a satisfaction scale of 0-10. (10 means you’re at your ideal, 0 means you’re no where near your ideal state)
- Colour in the spaces to represent your satisfaction scale.
Here is what I did:
This serves as a visual reminder on where I am now and what I need to work on to get to where I want to be. I only just started doing it this year but it really helped me gain so much insights about myself. The moment I colored it in, I can clearly see the areas that I lack a lot in that I want to work on (star-ed). Looking forward, I’m eager to see my wheel-of-life being filled up more and more.
Focus areas
Basing on the 3 divisions from the wheel-of-life, the 3 focus areas are: Purpose, Health, Social.
You may add 1-2 more subdivisions you’d like to focus on outside of these 3 focus areas. For me, I added: Money, Growth
For each focus area, I like to write down 1-2 grounding statements that binds to all its subdivisions.
Writing these down serves as a reminder while I’m doing my weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly reviews. It keeps me grounded and more aware if I stray off the path.
Personal mission statement
Adapted from “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. According to Stephen Covey, writing a personal mission statement is a critical first step in the process of goal setting — beginning with an end in mind. It serves as an inspiring reminder while we strive to achieve our long-term goals and the principles that we want to guide our life. Ultimately, the process is what eventually leads to the goal. A great process is what makes the goal worthwhile in achieving.
A personal mission statement crafts the big picture — the life you want to lead, the character traits you want to embody, the impact you want to have on those around you.
My personal mission statement:
Goals of the year
Limit this to about 3-5 goals. Any more you’ll lose your focus and may end up not completing any of them.
Each goal should be a project that takes some level of effort or consistency in the span of the year to complete.
Look back at your year-end wheel of life. What are a few areas you want to see being filled up more? What is a proficiency you want to develop? What is one thing you want to celebrate at the end of the 12 months?
Questions to ask myself daily
- Am I inventing things to avoid the important?
- Am I making progress towards my goals?
Got this idea from Tony Robbin’s book “Awaken the Giant Within”. You can create your own daily questions to ask yourself at random moments of the day or when you’re transitioning from one task to another. These questions should be focused on time intentionality (whether you’re intentional with your time). Asking ourselves these questions will motivate us to take actions that are progressing us towards where we want to be and stop actions that are slowing us down or even pulling us backwards.
Daily reminders
Having daily reminders can help us manifest the life we want to live. I occasionally change my daily reminders (once in a couple of years or whenever I feel that I resonate deeply with a new quote I come across).
My current daily reminders:
- Awareness, equanimity, impermanence (I remind myself of this while doing my daily meditation practice)
- Be too noble for anger, too large for worry, too strong for fear, too happy to permit presence of trouble (I try to remind myself of this every morning when I do my yoga stretch)
- Treat every moment as if it’s your last, stay present fully (I try to remind myself of this when I’m starting to do a new task)
Weekly pages
An idea adapted from Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. It’s a weekly calendar view but it includes a to-do list for each day. I have 4 to 5 views per month, 1 view corresponding to 1 week. The best thing about this is that in 1 view, I get to see my goals for the week and my focus areas which will help me plan each day. And at the same time, I can also easily complete my daily night journal prompts by looking at what I did for the day and whether they align with my roles, goals and focus areas.
Roles → Goals/Steps
All of us have roles to play — in our professional or personal life. And we don’t only play one role. We are a daughter/son, sister/brother, teacher/student etc. With each role, comes responsibilities. What is a role you play in your life? What are some steps you can take this week to fulfil your role?
Focus areas and ratings
Just writing it down on the side before the start of every week serves as a reminder that I need to contribute in some way to these areas. And by the end of the week, I’ll give myself a rating for each focus area to reflect on how well I contributed to them.
Daily highlights
From “Make Time” by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky, your daily highlight is the star activity of the day. It’s that one activity that you know if you did it you’ll go to bed feeling satisfied. At the end of the day, someone asks you, “What was the highlight of your day?” What do you want your answer to be? When you look back on your day, what activity or accomplishment do you want to savor?
Daily to-dos
Plan it by the minute! Every minute should be filled up. Because when there is spare time, our short-term mind starts taking over and we give in to the temptation to jump onto social media and start the whole cycle of aimless scrolling.
Be reasonable with the time you give yourself for each task but at the same time, don’t be too generous — work tends to fill the space we give ourselves.
Sometimes it just take some experimenting to know about how much time you need to complete a task, so don’t be too hard on yourself if you cannot complete it in the expected amount of time. Ask yourself why? And how can you complete it the next time? Trust me, with experimenting and reflection, you’ll get better at this.
Daily journal prompts
- What did you learn today/what mistakes did you make today?
- What have you given today?
- Did you make progress today?
- What is your energy level today?
- What is your focus level today?
These questions are written succinctly into:
- Learnt:
- Given:
- Progress:
- Energy: __ /5
- Focus: — /5
Putting it all together
Here is a template of my whole journal! Feel free to print it and have a head start in your bullet journaling habit. The beauty of a bullet journal is in writing and designing it in any way that you like. With this format, you can import the file to canva.com (It’s free but with some functions/elements/designs restricted. You just need to create an account and get started!) and make your own edits to suit your eye, mind and soul!
But with my template, there are some elements which are watermarked if you use a free account, but feel free to change them or you can try the free trial just to download it.
Nonetheless, you can always feel free to just use my template as a reference and make your own handwritten bullet journal from scratch.
P.S Now that I’ve created this template, I may just be printing it and binding it as a book from next year onwards 😆