Bullet Journal Hack: How to Find Stuff in Your Bullet Journal
While spending a relaxing Sunday organizing my office and preparing for the week ahead, I decided to come up with a better plan for finding important pages in my bullet journal.
I always forget about the Index and spend a ridiculous amount of time searching for particular pages. If you're not familiar with bullet journaling, it's an analog system designed by Ryder Carroll. Do you usually use the Index or have you found a workaround for finding stuff?
Bullet Journal Hack: An Easy Way to Find Important Pages
I love my bullet journal. It has become a part of my daily life and a tool I couldn’t live without. However, even though I list pages in my Index when I actually need to find something in the bullet journal end up scrolling through the hundreds of pages to find a particular piece of information. I know I waste a ridiculous amount of time, so I need to figure out something better. I'm a very visual person, so an easy and colorful reference system seems like a good hack for me.
1. Choose What’s Important and Create Categories
I have pages that I refer to again and again and other pages that once they are done, I never look at them. Important pages for me, for example, are my social media stats, blog post ideas, patterns and projects I've designed, What’s important to me, will be completely different than what is important to you.
To figure out what pages I wanted to call out, I opened my bullet journal and began scrolling from the first page. I looked through every page and decided what pages were important. Then I started putting those important pages into categories. I didn’t list every page in my bujo as not all of them need to be referenced again and again. My important pages fell into six categories: Reference & How-tos, Social Media, Blog Ideas, Patterns, SweetPlanIt, and Doodles.
2. Decide on a System
How should I color code my pages? Washi tape, sticker dots, page flags, markers, or even highlighters. There are so many options. I tried several of these in my last year's bullet journal to figure out which tool I liked best. I tried highlighters, but they didn’t show up enough on along the edge. I have a lot of pages I want to call out, so the page flags sticking out all along the edge seems a little too messy for me. Then I tried sticker dots. While I liked the look of this option, I only have 4 dot colors and I need 6 colors for the categories I’ve created. My last test was using washi tape. Bingo! I like the look of the tape, I have a ton of it in patterns I love, and it really shows up along the edge.
3. Create a Key
For easy reference, I created a little flip out key in the back of my bullet journal. I have seen many flip out keys/legends for referencing symbols on a bullet journal page, but nothing for the entire page.
My bullet journal hack for easy reference
Using a piece of card stock, I cut the paper a little smaller than a bullet journal page. Then I used a piece of washi tape to tape it face down to the inside of the back cover of my journal. I flipped the page out and put a piece of washi tape next to the each category title.
Finally, I went through my bullet journal and wrapped a small piece of washi tape around each page that I wanted to call out by category. Keeping the Key open, I lined up the washi tape on the pages with each piece of washi in my key.
Easy reference for my important pages! I put my six category washi tapes in a small basket along with a pair of scissors. Going forward, if I have a new page that fits one of my categories, I'll put the coordinating washi tape on it.
Is this hack something you would try? Do you have and idea that has worked better for you? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!
Happy planning!
