A Minimalist Bullet Journal Setup Guide

Hi everyone, my name is Matt, and welcome to another Bullet Journal productivity video. In this episode, I'm going to show you exactly how I'm setting up my Bullet Journal for 2021. It's a simple setup that I have found to be incredibly effective for goal setting, achievement, bringing awareness and focus to the work that matters most to me. Now, if this is the very first bullet journal you're setting up, then I highly recommend you check out the video that I posted a couple of weeks ago on a beginner bullet journal setup. You can find that by clicking right here, or there's a link in the description below as well. Here's my secret for setting up a year at a time in the bullet journal: I just don't do it. The bullet journal that I'm using at the beginning of 2021 is not a brand new bullet journal. I still have October, November, December in here. And normally I will start a brand new bullet journal at the beginning of a new year, but this one is special to me because I began this one when I started my own business full-time. So I'm going to continue with this one until it's full. I go about annual planning in my bullet journal a little bit differently than a lot of the YouTubers that I see who show the bullet journal method, and it The big thing for me is that I don't actually set up a year at a time. I find it to be a big time waste, and if 2020 has taught us anything, it's the importance of being able to pivot and kind of change how you're doing things based on the information and based on how your life is going. And this is also a very common mistake that I see for Bullet Journal beginners. And the beginning of a year is the most common time to start a Bullet Journal, and the mistake that I see is that you set up the entire year right at the beginning. And so you have, like, all this thing that is, like, now there's a big expectation of filling in every single day, and if you don't fill in every single day, then you feel kind of bad, and certainly if you miss a week, or God forbid, a month, then you're like, well, forget it, I'm not doing this at all. So, again, what I would do is start really simple. If you're a Bullet Journal beginner, start with the day, build on the days, get to the week, get to the month, and build momentum and confidence from there. Again, you definitely need to check out my 5 Tips for Bullet Journal Beginners video. It's linked in the description below. It will help you. The way that I set up my Bullet Journal for the year is that I will start by listing all of the goals, the habits, everything that I want to accomplish and achieve during the year. I'll go ahead and write at the beginning of the Bullet Journal for that year. The next thing that I'll do is I'll create my monthly layout for the month of January. On the next page, I will add in my monthly milestones based on the goals that I've set, and then in the next page, I'll start to set up my weekly layouts, which includes my objectives for the given week, my top tasks, and then I'll move along to the daily layout, which includes the agenda items or appointments that I might have at the top and any tasks or notes are just listed dot by dot after. The way that I set up my Bullet Journal a little bit ahead of time so that I can know what is happening now and what needs to be happening next based on the goals that I have and the events that I've committed to is I will set up 2, maybe 3 months at a time ahead. At the beginning of the new year, I will set up January, I'll set up February, and I might start setting up a little bit of my March layout. But no more than 3 months or 1 quarter at a time. What this allows me to do is still plan ahead a little bit and be able to write those events, those tasks, those milestones directly into my Bullet Journal without being too tied in or overcommitted to a rigid layout that has been pre-planned for me, even if I'm planning it for myself. When I'm planning out the 1 to 2 months ahead, because I've been using this layout for so long now, here are the objectives for the week, a half page for each day, and a quarter page for the weekends. I can format pretty quickly and easily how much space I need for a month. So here's the month, here's the monthly milestones, and then I get into— this will be the weekly objectives and then each day. So I'll fill all this in as we get to actual, like, February planning. But here's a good example. On, like, February 10th, I already have an event written in here. It's the last day of the Productivity Power-Up cohort that I'm starting. Sabbatical week coming up a couple weeks after that. And then this is— I already wrote in, I know that March is going to start on this page. Now you may be asking yourself, Matt, what about things that are happening in April and beyond for the rest of the year? What about the future?, and I totally get that. I am still using a future log. I use a very simple one. I put it at the back of my bullet journal instead of the front, and I will just write in like things that I already know are scheduled to happen. We all know how that can change, but things that are scheduled to happen, like we have a couple of trips planned for the summer, and I have commitments on what I want to be doing for work and what I want my launch schedule to look like for coaching and courses. So I will still put all of those into the future log so that when I start to lay out the next 2 or 3 months, then I can go ahead and add those into the monthly layout where it's appropriate. The main takeaway that I want you to focus on for this video is that you don't have to lay out an entire year in order to have planned your year in the Bullet Journal or to have an effective Bullet Journal setup. I am still keeping a very simple index where I list the page number and then a quick description of the page contents. One other thing that I do want to note is I do a lot of my project management for goals inside of Notion. The Bullet Journal for me is more about here's what I need to do today, here's what I need to do this week, these are the tasks, these are the appointments that I have for managing and editing and creating the goals and projects that I have on a day, on a like big picture basis, a lot of that lives in Notion. And I also have a video below that you can see for how my analog to digital back to analog workflow works. If you're brand new, don't even spend all the time that I'm telling you about all of these things. Just focus on the days, and then once you're comfortable with doing your daily log, move into the weekly spread. Once you're comfortable with a couple of weeks of weekly spreads and daily logs, move into a monthly layout. Alright, don't overwhelm and overload yourself early on. Start small, build consistency, build momentum so that you can make this a long-term, life-giving habit for yourself. I also want to tell you about a couple of ways that we can work together and I can help you not just build your Bullet Journal practice, because to me, Bullet Journaling is just the way that I'm productive and focused on the work that matters most to me. Running my business, getting YouTube videos out, recording podcasts, doing coaching, running courses. All of this happens not just in the Bullet Journal, but there are ways that I organize information, that I build habits for myself, that I make sure that I'm taking notes, researching, and creating, you know, great content. And so if you want me to help you organize your life and build a calm, clear, productive mindset going into 2021, I'd encourage you to check out my Productivity Accelerator. It starts on January 18th, and it's going to be 4 weeks of twice a week live coaching and lessons about the top productivity principles that I have found and coached people on over the past couple of years. Since this is the first time I'm running this specific version of the accelerator, I am offering special pricing for this first round, so make sure you click on the link in the description. It'll be right there at the top. You can learn more and you can also leave a comment if you have any questions or email me matt@mattragland.com. Now, if you feel like you already have the principles nailed and you want to go to the next level with your creative work and professional life, then I also run a group mastermind called the Creator Collective, and we've been running it for about 8 months now. I'm really excited to open it back up. If you want, like, yeah, the VIP level-up version, then check out the Creator Collective as well. We work with YouTubers and bloggers and creators and therapists and college professors and engineers and programmers, but we are all moving towards launching, building, and scaling a creative business that makes you live the life that you want to live. I hope this video was helpful just to see what I'm doing for my bullet journal layout at the beginning of 2021. At the beginning of any new year, I hope it gave you some ideas, or at least encouragement, on what you can do in terms of your own layout and Bullet Journal Method practice. The last thing to tell you about is my new podcast, Connect the Dots. Thank you so much for everyone who has subscribed, downloaded, rated, and reviewed. There's information all about collect— no, Connect the Dots in the description below. There's a new episode coming out on Monday. New episodes come out every Monday, and it's one of my big goals for 2021 to produce a weekly episode of Connect the Dots. So thank you so much for listening. Check it out if you haven't yet. Please subscribe to this channel if this is your first time here. If you've watched all the way to the end, then you should totally subscribe because it seems like you like it, right? Thank you so much for watching, everyone. There's going to be a new video next week. Happy New Year to everyone, and I'm excited to help you build the life that you want in 2021. With a Bullet Journal, with all these different productivity tips and tactics that we talk about. Have a great day, talk to you soon. Bye.