As far as I’m concerned Bullet Journal is multiple things at once

• Stationery porn
• A way to format stuff on a page
• A system

This is a part of the stationery world I usually stay away from. Mostly because, while I think it is cool how talented some people are at creating these beautiful bullet journal setups, I also know how bad it makes some people feel and what I mostly care about is using things for what works for you.

Most of the pages I fill out in a notebook look terrible. There is a reason I usually never include images in my posts.

If you move beyond the stationery porn you’ll see two things a way to format things on the page and a system.

The system mostly consists of either indexes and collections. Collections are just a page with a bunch of items formatted using the formatting system. It has various symbols for a bunch of commonly used entries like tasks that are done, tasks that are not done yet, things you have moved somewhere else. events, notes etc.

Bullet journal can be used for anything really. Some use it for more of a tasks and event productivity system, others for more of a log of their life and a bunch of other things.

Here is the thing though. I think Bullet Journaling can be what ever you need it to be.

You don’t have to use the official formatting if that doesn’t work for you. And if a certain part of the system doesn’t work for you there isn’t anything keeping you from not doing that. For me it have always been the index.

At the moment I only have a kind of bullet journal to do habit tracking. In the past I have done all kinds of various bullet journal setups.