A Simple, Minimalist Bullet Journal Setup for 2025

So you're ready to set up a new Bullet Journal for a new year. That's awesome. You're in the right place for a simple, effective, easy-to-follow Bullet Journal setup video. My name is Matt, and I've been using the Bullet Journal since 2016 as a way to be focused and productive on the work that matters the most to me. With over 1 million channel views, my Bullet Journal videos have helped thousands of people get the most out of their notebooks without turning it into a scrapbooking project or using a dozen different types of pens and tape. In this video, I'll show you how to set up and start using your Bullet Journal in a matter of minutes, not hours. And I promise you won't have to measure, count, color, or tape anything unless you want to. You'll learn how to use the daily log effectively and build up to achieving big goals in the new year. The Bullet Journal is one of the most important tools in my productivity kit, and I want you to get the most out of this life-changing practice too. This Bullet Journal setup method is simple. It's minimalist. It helps you get started faster so that you can get into a rhythm and routine and start to see how the Bullet Journal method method itself can be a driving force behind your productivity, focus, and intention for what you want to get done in the new year. And I use that word intention intentionally because I want you to go to the really early pages of your Bullet Journal, look at a page that says intention at the top. This is a key part of the Bullet Journal method and practice, is understanding what are you intending to do. Ryder Carroll, founder of the Bullet Journal method, talks about this a lot. Why are you doing the things that you're doing? What is the intention that you have, the driving focus and motivation, the vision behind your work? So the first thing that I want you to do on your Bullet Journal is to write down your intentions. Write down maybe a couple of big goals, the why behind what you're doing, and even those goals that you have going into the new year. This is important because you're going to be able to reference back to this during daily, weekly, monthly reflections and reviews. You can look at it, and I talk about this in a different video. One of the things that I want you to think about is, as you're reviewing, does the work that you've done or not done align with the intention, the why, the vision that you have for your life? Now, it's important to note that that's a big question. And if you don't have the mental or emotional space to think about your intentions and your why right now, that's okay. But I do want to encourage you to come back to it. It's really important. I don't want you to leave this page blank. The way that I teach bullet journal setup is a little bit different than most people, because I don't go like chronologically in order of pages. Now we did talk about setting the intention because I think that is important to have in the back of your mind, either consciously or subconsciously while you're working through the days, weeks, and months to follow. But I don't spend much time talking about the index or the future log. I'll talk about those in just a couple of minutes. But the thing that you really need to get in the habit of is writing down the things that you intend to do, what you plan to do for the day, what you also end up doing for the day or don't do, and then crossing those off or migrating them to the next day. That is the Bullet Journal method in its essence. You don't need to spend a lot of time on a monthly layout. You don't need to make this like 7x4 grid for a month. You don't need to have these fancy habit or mood trackers. If you want to do all of those things, you can. I can't describe to you the number of people that I've talked to about setting up or getting into a rhythm with a Bullet Journal. They're like, well, I don't have like an hour a day to go through it. That is insane. I don't have like 6 hours to do a layout. I don't either. I have 4 kids. I run a business. I try and stay fit. I like to see my wife. I like to read. I'm— I love using the Bullet Journal. I'm spending maybe 10 to 15 minutes a day on it, which is the same 10 to 15 minutes a day that I would spend on any other type of like digital tool in terms of like task or project management. It's not about spending a lot of time on layouts and trackers unless you want to. It's about planning what you intend to do, writing those things down, crossing them off, or migrating them to the next day or the next week and asking yourself upon reflection, Why did I not do the thing that I wrote down today was important to do? That's a whole other conversation that I cover in my next video about annual reviews and goal setting for the year to come. So the real secret to a quick start guide in the Bullet Journal is jump to the first blank page that you can find that doesn't say intention index or future log on it and write down, this is today. Say it's Thursday, December 26th, or it's Wednesday, January 1st, whatever day it is. Write that day down and the things that you intend to do today. You can also write down appointments that you might have, notes. If you flip back a couple of pages to like one of the early, like, not really actual pages, but right across from the intention page on the bullet journal, you'll see the key for different signifiers, kind of the legend of like the symbols that you can use to indicate what different things are in a bullet journal. I do things a little bit differently, but again, like from a quick start perspective, this is a great key to use because you don't have to overthink it. You don't have to think about it at all. Just use what's on the key to indicate the different types of tasks, notes, events that you have in this particular day. The reason that I recommend starting with the daily log is to build the muscle of like doing the thing and being in practice with your Bullet Journal. And then what I want you to do is expand outwards. So once we've gotten a few, a few days, like spend probably 3, 4, 5 days, even an entire week just doing the daily log. And then the next thing that you'll do, and this is another thing that I teach, it's kind of like a, a slightly expanded version of a daily log because now I know that at most my daily log space that it takes up on a page in the Bullet Journal is at most half a page. So each week what I do is I go ahead and, and I pre-plan. And when I say pre-plan, it's like literally writing down just the day of the week, the day of the month, and like half-page sections of the Bullet Journal. So that allows me to pre-plan out using just 3 pages because I go like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday all get half a page, and then Saturday, Sunday get a quarter page. You don't have to do this, but I find that it helps me plan out my week a little bit easier because one of the things that I do, and again, I'll talk about this more in the goal setting video, is I use a weekly planning method that I created called the GAP, and it stands for Goals, Actions, and Protection. So basically I look at a week ahead and say, what is one of the primary goals that I have for this week? And if you want to get really meta about it, then one of the things that I do every week is plan and produce a YouTube video. At least that is the goal. Now, there's a lot of things that go into publishing a YouTube video, and that's why I say like the goal is to publish a YouTube video. The actions that I have to do are things like film the video, film the B-roll, edit the video, create the, you know, title, thumbnail, all the things that go into it. The goal is to publish a video. The actions are all the things that I have to do in order to publish the video. And then the P stands for protection, which is me planning, protecting time during the week. Say like, okay, Monday afternoon from 1 to 3 PM, that's when I am filming. Monday night from 10 to 11 PM, that's when I am editing. So when I lay out my week and each daily log gets a half a page, then I can go ahead and like make a note or add a task to Monday, to Wednesday, to Thursday, whichever day it might be. To say, this is when you're going to film, this is when you're going to work on title and thumbnail, this is when you're going to edit. So that allows me to pre-plan those things and get them done ahead of time so that when I'm filling up my week day to day as I go on, those tasks, those actions are already protected. But I want you to take a step back because when I say this, I know from coaching, teaching, working with a lot of people on their own like weekly planning, goal setting, daily logs, that even just what I told you the last couple of minutes can feel like it's a little overwhelming. And so again, I want you to come back, like if this is your first time using the Bullet Journal or you're just kind of trying to get in or back into the rhythm of it, go ahead and just do the daily log. What is the thing that you need to get done today? What is something that aligns with the intention that you have, with the why that you have, or even just something that you need to get done? Go ahead and practice with the daily log for at least a week. And then I want you to use that as a springboard, as momentum. Use that momentum to expand what you're capable of from just today into like, what am I capable of this week? Practice with the GAP method, which again, we'll talk— I have a video for that I'll link, but I have a new updated one coming very soon. You can expand into the week. And then once you've done that, you can start to stack multiple weeks. This thing. Will probably— this other goal that I have will probably take more than a week to do. Might take 3, 4 weeks. It might take 1, 2, 3 months. That's what we'll talk about in the goal setting video. But the practice is getting down to like the day-to-day nuts and bolts of like, what do I need to do today that's going to help align me with the intention, with the goals that I have for the new year? Now, I do want to tell you about the monthly layout because it is something that I do, but it's also something that I see a lot of people spend a lot of time on. I would think of it as wasting a lot of time on because I'm not trying to like recreate a monthly calendar grid on my monthly layout. I use a very simple 2-column day of the month, day of the week that corresponds to that day of the month. That's it. And then I also use that monthly layout like row list big events like, hey, It's New Year's on January 1st. Live cohort of the course starts on the 13th. But it's things like that. I'm not going to write appointments down. These are more like big events. I did notice, and I don't know if I've just missed this for the last couple of years in bullet journals, but Bullet Journal does give you like a sticker set. And this is, this is pretty cool. I just like writing them down quickly, but it is like a little, like, a little, uh, sticker of days of the month and days of the week. So you do have to kind of trim the day of the week sticker to make it, uh, align to correspond with the days of the month. But you could also do this. I think it's a nice little touch from the Bullet Journal team and is something that if you don't feel good about writing really tiny— I, I did use the Bullet Journal pen, which is nice. It has a very fine point, more of like a 0.5, I think. And maybe, maybe smaller. I don't know. I'm not, I'm not a pin guy, but it is really, really easy to use. You just, you know, it's a sticker, so you just put the sticker there. And the other thing that I like using that other page on the monthly layout for, so I use a 2-page monthly layout. Again, the left side page, the main one is for key events. And then on the right side, you can either do some really simple habit tracking there. So it's like, did I work out today? Make an X or a dot or a check or whatever. And the other thing that I like to do is like a highlight. Of the day for like journaling, for a real like one-sentence journal entry. And I just published a video about 5 different journaling methods that you can do to stay more focused, to achieve more clarity, and like really it helps improve my mental health. I feel much calmer when I journal. So check out that video. It came out right before this one. I'll link to it in the description below. But highlight or one-sentence-a-day journaling is something that I do in my monthly layout here. I'll also have like a page or two that is just wide open for like random non-urgent tasks or notes for that particular month. Now the majority of my tasks get added in the daily and weekly logs, but if it's just something like, hey, I need to make sure that I do this thing at some time during like the next couple of weeks or sometime during the month, then I'll just drop that into the one or two pages that I use for just like task management or task catching. You might be wondering why I took so long to get to talking about the index and the future log, which are like some of the very first pages in the Bullet Journal. And the honest answer is because I don't really use them that much. The most that I have used the index in prior Bullet Journals is just to indicate the pages where I like have the monthly layout or maybe like a collection. That I've created for books or YouTube video ideas. That's pretty much all I use the index for. But one of the reasons I stopped using the index even to indicate like, hey, my books read collection for the year is on page 180. I started using these like beefy page marker tabs. And so for like really important or collection-oriented pages or sections of my bullet journal, I will put that big beefy Post-it tab there and write down Books, YouTube, vision, goals, so that I can flip to that section really quickly. And the future log, again, it's, I've just never really used it consistently. I know people that do, and if I would, and if I could use it consistently, what it's intended to be used for is like, hey, we're planning on taking a trip in June, or like writing down those birthdays ahead of time that will go into the monthly layout. I just go ahead and put those into the future log ahead of time.. But full disclosure, full transparency, I'm not somebody who uses the index or the future log a lot. If you want more information to it, I do have a video about it that you can check out, but like the better place is even going to be like the Bullet Journal official YouTube channel and that quick start guide that I referenced earlier. There are two main issues that people have with bullet journaling and kind of pen and paper productivity in general. The first one we talked about is like general overwhelm or thing like, do I really have to spend this much time like laying out, writing them down, tracking. And the answer we've already covered is no. The other one is this frustration of writing down the same thing over and over again when you're not doing it. And Ryder Carroll, creator of the Bullet Journal, he talked about this in an interview with Wired magazine where the reporter was asking him, hey, you know, it's kind of a pain to write the same thing down day after day if you don't get it done. And Ryder's like, yes, That's the point. It is a pain, and that pain should inspire you asking yourself the question of, why didn't I get this thing done today if I wrote it down and said, this is important to me, but I didn't get it done? This is why you need to have your intention and your why for doing the work that you're doing or realize that you're not doing. That's why it needs to be really clear. Because when you look at something and you're writing it down day after day and you're getting frustrated, like, I don't want to write this down again. Yeah, I kind of have to do it. But you need to be asking yourself like, well, why am I not doing this thing that I said and I wrote down as important? Is it really not as important as I thought it was? Do I need to have a conversation with the person who asked me to do this and say, hey, this, this isn't really a big deal? Or, and this is the scarier part, Am I afraid of doing the thing that I said was important? Am I afraid of rejection? I'm afraid of failure? Why am I not doing this thing? Especially if I look and say, like, I need to do this thing so that I can live the kind of life that I want, so I can achieve the goals that I've set for myself. This is why the frustration of writing something down day after day is actually a feature and not a bug. A couple other things about the Bullet Journal notebook itself, like the design and the layout and the structure of it that I want to point out to you because like I really, this started with the Bullet Journal Edition 2 a few years ago where they started to add these like gridline rulers and guides, not just like page by page, which helps you see like this is how I can divide the page itself into thirds or how I can divide it into halves, like for that 2-page like weekly layout, that like 2-section layout where you have Monday at the top half of the page and Tuesday at the bottom half of the page and so on and so forth. They started adding this along with this really like beautiful graphic of the Bullet Journal being the convergence of what you're doing and why you're doing it. The other thing that I like about the Bullet Journal itself is like the flat matte finish, which I really only like because one, I can kind of like brush stuff off it. I got 4 kids and so sometimes it gets spill. If I have like more of a cloth cover, then it creates a bit of a mess. And even more important than that, I love stickers. And so like, I like to cover each year's bullet journal with a bunch of stickers as I, as I travel or I do new things, or even just I find something cool that I want to slap a sticker on there for. This bullet journal itself that I'm using to kick off the new year is the Stealth Edition. I think it should have been called like the Blackout Edition because this thing is all black. Looks really cool. Even like the edges of the pages are black. And so it's a cool, unique thing. Now it only comes at like in the stealth set. It comes with this blacked out pen. Is excellent. Feels really good in the hand. It's not a, it's not a big heavy pen either. So really easy to carry in the pocket as well. This video pairs really well with the goal setting video that's going to be coming out soon. So make sure that you like and subscribe, comment below. And let me know what you liked about this video, what part of the Bullet Journal setup process that you're going to start with, or maybe one that you were getting stuck with before, maybe a common myth or misconception about Bullet Journaling that this video helps you overcome. And if you have any questions about anything that I talked about in this video, please comment and let me know, because one of the major ways that I come up with video ideas is seeing like, what are people asking about in the comments? And then I make a video to answer that for you. So if you want to see like something that I expand on that I just maybe briefly mentioned for a minute or so or less, go ahead and let me know in the comments and I will make a new video that explains that in much more detail. So Happy New Year, Merry Christmas, happy holidays. Thanks for watching this bullet journal setup video, and I can't wait to see you more and more in the new year and teach you how Bullet journaling and pen and paper productivity, analog action, is your way, is your path to clarity, focus, and the best year that you've ever had.