Here are some ideas that can make your bullet journal even more practical and productive.
Time Savers
Use stencils or printables to help you set up spreads. Stencils provide you with an easy way to make circles, boxes, and straight lines. Printables are sheets with bullet journal spreads already set up. You can print them out over and over, and tape/glue into your journal. If you’re signed up to this email list, you will have received printables for monthly and weekly logs, but there are plenty more available for students of the Bullet Journal Basics course, including menu cards, mini calendars, and more.
Use graph paper for charts. Graph paper has a light grid in the background that can be easily used when you need a chart. You can choose to get a bullet journal with a graph paper background, or simply keep a pad of graph paper sticky notes on hand.
Keep your grid spacing cheat sheet on a separate page. Keep in a pocket so you can place it over or near the page you’re setting up. (Grid spacing cheat sheets are covered in the Bullet Journal Basics course.)
Be minimalist in your spreads. Just use the bullet journal pages that you really need. Aim to make them functional, not fancy. I’m a fan of this technique. I use the same simple weekly log every week.
Reusable spreads
Sticky notes are your friend. Use mini sticky notes that can be easily moved around. Once you are finished with them, toss the stickies out, and use the spread again with fresh stickies. (I recently wrote a blog post about using sticky notes on Between Carpools. If you missed it, check it out here.)
Turn your notebook into a whiteboard. I’ve never tried this, but I spotted this creative idea online. You can get self-sealing laminating sheets, put them down on your notebook, and suddenly, you have a little whiteboard that you can write on with dry erase markers. If you have a checklist that you use over and over, you can write the checklist once, cut a piece of laminating sheet and put it down along the side of your checklist. That way, you can draw your check marks with a dry erase maker, erase them when you’re done, and use the checklist again another day.
Make spreads easy to transfer. If there’s a spread that you know you’ll want to have in your next bullet journal, draw it out on a separate piece of paper and tape it down with some easy-to-remove washi tape. At the end of the year, or whenever you finish your notebook, all you have to do is peel up the tape and you can transfer the spread.
Keep your bullet journal in a traveler’s notebook or a looseleaf. Both of these options enable you to keep certain spreads that you want to have long term, and remove the spreads that you’re done with. (A traveler’s notebook, in case you are unfamiliar, is a notebook that contains several thin notebooks, each of which can be used for a different purpose.)
Utilize the back of your notebook
Store items in the pocket. Most bullet journals come with a pocket in the back, which can be used to store important papers, receipts, sticky notes, etc. (If you don’t have a pocket, tape down a thick piece of paper on three edges to the inside of the back cover. Now you have a pocket.)
Use a page in the back for testing. Keep a designated page in the back to test out pens, markers, and highlighters. This is a great way to make sure your pens don’t smudge.
(I also like to use the back pages for other projects so you can find them easily.)
Dutch Doors
Cut or fold the second page of a spread, making it into a smaller flap. This gives you more room and is especially useful for a weekly log.