March Plan with Me | One Page Bullet Journal Setup

First, I know what you're thinking. I got a haircut and a mustache. Hey everyone, welcome. My name is Matt Ragland. If you're watching this for the first time, you think, well, this guy probably always has a mustache. I do not always have a mustache. This is the first video I've ever had a mustache, and it may be the last video that I have a mustache, but I wanted to have a time capsule of that time that I did a video when I had a mustache. If you're still here, then I'm going to be showing you my bullet journal layout for March 2024. This is a simple, straightforward layout with a couple of of little tweaks, moving some things around so they're a little bit easier to fit in the things that matter to me, to track what matters to me in my life, and to highlight the things that I really enjoyed that particular day or are looking forward to. Enough mustache talk, let's go ahead and look at the monthly spread. I use a very minimalist monthly layout for my Bullet Journal. Now, if you like doing things that are very fancy and use a lot of colors and art and doodles, I think that is amazing, but I don't really have time for that right now. And that is why I use a very simple layout of the day of the month in a column and then the corresponding day of the week. And then here in this monthly layout, I also have like the rest of the row, that daily row. So like, for example, the 1st of March is a Friday. I put in like any big events that I have going on that day, or maybe for a few days, like for example, this first month, this, the first weekend of the month, I'm on a golf trip with my friends. And so you can see that I like put golf trip on Friday and then Saturday, Sunday, that little arrow with like a slash at the end. So I know that that's when the trip is over. I'm not using this for like specific like things that I have to do during the month. This is more like big events, birthdays. Shout out to Sarah, my baby sister and mom, for your birthdays during March. Also, my Oh, my aunt Karen, I have to write that in as well, and my cousin Josie. Okay, there's more birthdays that I have to put in. I have not forgotten you. But you can see that I still have some things that I need to fill in for the month, but this monthly layout is more for, like, big things that I have to remember more than, like, little things that I need to do that particular day. One of the changes that I'm making to the layout this month is I want to track the hard habits that I'm working on. I have another video coming out, and don't let it confuse you because I recorded it before this one, but this one had to come out at the beginning of the month. So there's another video coming out after this where I talk more about this concept of getting at the last 10% of leveling up. And when I did this, I realized that the habits that I was tracking that were still important to me, habits like exercising and reading and journaling, they were fun to track, but they were no longer challenging for me. Now, do I do every single one of them every day? No. But like just saying, hey, I want to exercise. I've been exercising for like 20 years, just saying like, hey, do I basically— do I have an exercise habit? Yeah, I got that locked down. I've been, you know, reading since I could read a lot. And so like, I don't need to really track. I'm like reading, reading a lot anymore. The things that I decided to track were more of the habits and things that were hard for me, or I had like some mental block or limiting belief around. Things like my mindset. Am I meditating? Am I like being intentional with my thoughts? Another one is money. Financially, am I looking at my bank balance, my savings rate, my investments, how I automate my money? Those are things that I want to be more consistent with. And you'll also see here that I have booze written down. Am I drinking less? Even though I was never drinking a lot, am I drinking less? Am I lowering that? Am I like being mindful about my thoughts, my intentions, my goals, my tasks? And then am I keeping an eye on my finances? Those are more of the hard habits that I'm focusing on this month because I've realized through journaling and reflection and also conversations with other important people in my life, like my wife, my business, business partner, my dad, my friends, these are the things that have been a little bit more difficult for me. And they're the ones that I need to turn more of my attention to. The only other new thing that I have here. Besides, if you look at some of my other layouts, all of these habits used to be on the next page. I've moved them all over to be on the last 4 columns of the layout page. I also have like a day rating, and that is just going to be really simple, like a plus, equal, or minus, like plus day, equal, fine, okay day, and then like a negative, like minus day. So really simple, like, tracking system. And then I'll count that up at the end of the month and just say, like, if plus is plus 1 and, like, minus is negative 1 and then even is 0, what's kind of my score for, for the month? That'll be interesting to track as well. But really, really simple, like, basically plus 1, negative 1. That's what I'm tracking for this month in the layout. On the other page, this is something that I picked up from a book that I enjoy that came out a few years ago that I'm starting to practice again. It's called Make Time, and one of the things in Make Time is that they encourage you to have a daily highlight. Now, when Jake and John talk about it in the book, they're talking like, hey, what's something that you can look forward to? So this is more of a preview of something that you say like, hey, this is what I want to highlight, either something that I want to get done or something that I'm looking forward to. Like, for example, I am looking forward to the golf trip and spending time with my friends. But it could also— I also look at and say, uh, maybe at the end of the day, what was the highlight? So it's like being proactive, what will be the thing that I'm looking forward to, or what was the thing. Either way will work. But I kind of use this as a one-line journal entry, just something that I enjoyed for the particular day. What was the highlight? Another thing that I wanted to tell you about that I've had access to for a little while, and I know some of you are in there with me, is the Bullet Journal community. I bet you didn't know, like, even watching this channel, there's a good chance you didn't know that Bullet Journal has a community that you can join of fellow Bullet Journal enthusiasts like myself. People who are sharing their layouts, sharing their stories, their collections, their habits, everything that, like, we talk about on this channel, have talked about for a number of years. You can go join the Bullet Journal community and be a part of that group and a part of people who You know, really think this way about being intentional and being mindful and doing work that matters. And when I say work, I often do mean like career-oriented work, but there's so many different types of people doing so many different types of work and living different lifestyles in the Bullet Journal community. So it's really cool to like see this like big cross-section of folks and how they're, how they're all using this specific tool, the Bullet Journal, together. And it's hosted on Mighty Networks. It's a really cool, like, community platform that you can use to set up your own community as well. But what I want you to check out, and there's going to be a link to it in the description below, go check out the Bullet Journal community and also, like, Bullet Journal Basics. There's a course that's a part of the community as well that I've been through that also helped me understand better ways, more, like, direct, intentional, like, mindful ways to Bullet Journal. I think the biggest takeaway for me was being more mindful in my review of the things that I was doing and just continuing to ask myself like, hey, why do I keep writing this thing down? But it's all in one place. It's all like a part of— all, all on Mighty. But it is the Bullet Journal community that you want to be a part of. So go check that out in the description below. There's a link to everything. Let me know in the comments what you're looking forward to in March. What is your highlight? What are your highlights? The things that you're excited about doing. And I also want you to let you know that I send out 2 email newsletters per week. There is To-Do's Day that goes out on Tuesdays, and then there is the Weekend Wrap that goes out on Saturday morning. So if you want a little bit extra Matt Ragland in your life, a little extra Matt Ragland mustache in your life— I don't know about that— but you can sign up in the links in the description below. And also make sure that you check out the Bullet Journal Community and the Bullet Journal Basics course. And this is direct from Ryder. This is like really good stuff, so I encourage you to check it out. Hope to see you in the newsletter as well. If you get the newsletter this weekend, hit reply and just let me know you recently signed up and I'll talk to you in the comments. I'll talk to you in email, talk to you in all different kinds of places. Thank you for watching and I'll see you next time. Bye.