In this video Matt Ragland walks viewers through his December 2019 bullet journal setup, emphasizing that the month is centered on people, celebrations, and gift‑giving rather than pure productivity. He showcases his upgraded daily rapid‑logging spread, habit tracker, one‑line journal, and a minimalist monthly calendar, while highlighting the numerous collections he creates for Christmas gifts, an Asheville trip, and upcoming YouTube video ideas. Matt explains how he uses a companion Field Notes notebook (FN Maple) to thread notes across journals and demonstrates his indexing system for easy navigation. Throughout, he normalizes mistakes in journaling, urging viewers not to chase an Instagram‑perfect look and to view the journal as a personal tool for reducing anxiety and focusing on what matters. The video also promotes his ACE 2020 course—offered at a Black Friday/Cyber Monday discount—as a way to deepen bullet‑journal practice and achieve 2020 goals, and teases an upcoming "Bullet Journal Basics" YouTube series. He ends with a call to subscribe, ring the notification bell, and engage in the community.
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Hi everyone, my name is Matt, and welcome to another Bullet Journal productivity video. I'm really excited to share this month's layout with you. It's December, it's a very unique month. It's a month of celebration, and gifts, and lots of lists. At least it is for me, and I think for many of you. And so, I'm going to show you what I do to plan out December. I keep a lot of lists, I create a lot of collections for gifts, and parties, and meals. And all the different things that we have going on. And so December for me is not as much about productivity as it is about being focused on the people and the events that make this season so special. Before we get into the video though, I want to tell you real quick about a special offer that I have for you on Black Friday and going into Cyber Monday. You may remember a couple of weeks ago that I did a couple of webinars on how to ace 2020. Well, the feedback and the response to both of those webinars was really good. 1,000 people signed up, which I was blown away by. Thank you so much for, yeah, just affirming the information. People wanted to have more access to really get into the details of the training, and so I created a course called ACE 2020, and it's all about how to raise awareness of the time that you have and what's important to you. How to create clarity in your top tasks and projects, and how to execute and get things done over a long period of time so you can make progress on your biggest goals going into the new year. This is a perfect way to think about how you can use your Bullet Journal and how you can stay focused and remove distractions for the things that really matter to you. So if you're interested in this, I encourage you to go to ace2020.tips There's a link to that here and in the description below. And let me know if you have any questions about it. I'm not going to oversell you on it. I think it's really valuable, and a bunch of people have signed up for both that and another, another course that I talked about on my email list called 25 Hour Days. So if you're interested in how we can work a little bit more closely together and how you can, like, instead of sifting through all of the video, like 100+ videos that I have on this channel. These are very specific, short, actionable lessons that you can implement right away in order to make progress and do more of the things that matter to you. Thank you so much, and let's get into the layout right now. Now, if you recall from the November planning video, I did a mini migration from the big Leuchtturm Bullet Journal that I've been keeping for all of 2019 into this mini Baron Fig Vanguard as kind of an addendum and just like a companion notebook to wrap the year up with so I could start 2020 with a fresh notebook. So if you want to know more about why and how I did that, make sure you check out the video in the end screen and all this, all the places. So just focusing on this, let me give you a little recap. Let's do a little recapables for how November went and showing you the December layout. First of all, I did a really bad job the first half of the month with keeping track of my mood and the one-line journal, but I picked it back up going into the second half of the month. And I think this is some— well, not I think, I know that this is something that I want to point out to you. Is because a lot of times I've noticed that people get bummed out about like, oh, I wasn't able to do something for a little bit of time, and thus that means that I'm not good at it at all. Now that I think is the wrong way to think about it. What you can do is just start over and start again and just start working on your habit and your consistency and your discipline again when it comes to bullet journaling, and that will build momentum in other areas of your life. Moving on, going into November, you can see that I'm still doing the normal kind of the upgraded expanded daily layout for rapid logging. So I have the agenda items up here that I have for like specific times of the day, and then I have my daily to-do, and I get in 2 days on each single page, 4 days across for the spread, and then on the next page I'll do Friday and then split Saturday, Sunday right here. Another thing to note is that I am using a lot more of a field notes for just like the always around me companion notebook. And so you may see, and I'll reference, and I have a video coming out about this, that you might see in different parts of my bullet journal. See FN Maple for additional notes. And this is what I mean by this. So this is the Field Notes fall release for the Autumn Trilogy, and you can see that the name I gave this Field Notes notebook is FN Maple. So now I know that when I have a little like way to organize or thread thoughts and notes across different journals. So just right here, see FM Maple for additional notes. That's what that is. That's how it fits together. I'm continuing to use the same monthly layout that I've used for several months now, just this simple minimalist layout of every single day in the month with the corresponding day of the week next to it right here. You can see that I totally screwed it up and, uh, like skipped over a day down here. So that looks kind of messy. To be perfectly honest with you, I almost went through and like redid all of this, but I want to not just to like show you the mistakes, I guess definitely, definitely to show you the mistakes is that if you see something like this, if you do something like this, then don't feel like you have to like redo everything. If you want to, that's fine also, but don't think that like having a little screw-up like this is a reflection of you being a screw-up. And you may think that that sounds a little extreme, but I know there are people listening and watching this that think that, like, do kind of have, have that thought sometimes. You're like, gosh, can't even, can't even write down days right. I do that. And, uh, you know, a lot of people do that. So don't feel like— again, we've talked about this a lot— don't feel like your bullet journal has to be this like super wonderful, you know, like Instagram-worthy kind of thing. It's full of screw-ups and ideas and different things and like Post-it notes. And there's, there's all kinds of things in a bullet journal. And it's a, it's something for you. It's not something for anyone else. Okay, I know that kind of felt like me on a soapbox. Up there. But I think— I, I don't know, I just felt like that was important to say, that, uh, yeah, your bullet journal is for you, not for anyone else. All right, getting back into it, you can see that I have the standard habit tracker up here: move, read, journal, mood for AM and PM each day, and then that one-line journal entry. Other than that, I'm doing that standard same thing that I talked about in November that I've been doing for a few months now, of kind of the upgraded the upgraded daily logging, rapid logging system that I've been putting together. So I'm basically like counting out the days that I'll have. And so I have the weekly preview here, and then I'm doing that, and then I'm just writing down like M and T and just kind of counting out the pages that I need to have going into Christmas week. And I've stopped planning here like in terms of the normal rapid logging because I do not have a defined schedule for these 2 weeks for the most part, and so most of what I'm going to do is list activities and to-do items. I might— again, you can see it down here— reference FN Maple or whatever field notes I might grab next for more details. And then just adding in my Christmas gift list, getting into the different collections that I have for the holiday season. And speaking of those, so I have like, you know, this really simple index right at the beginning. I handwrote in all of the page numbers here, so that's where you'll see like December on page 22, page 36 Christmas and New Year right here, and then— No Siri. Christmas list also referenced here. So skipping ahead just a couple of pages, I don't think anyone that I buy gifts for watches this channel, so no big deal on sharing this with everyone, But I just have my Christmas list here, uh, the thing that it is and who it's for, mostly for, uh, immediate family, a couple of friends in there also. And then I also have, uh, we're going to Asheville for the week of Christmas, so food, places to eat, friends to connect with, activities, packing. You know, I'm not going to put in necessarily like everything that I'm going to pack, but just things that are outside of the ordinary, like make sure that the rooftop box, the pack and play, gifts, the things outside of the ordinary items. So that's an example of a couple of lists and collections. I'm probably going to add on to this Asheville week list and make it more of a collection as more details emerge for things that we need to know. The other thing is the YouTube videos collection or list. So again, just right here on page 50, and so I can easily skip ahead to that. And I reference this also in the intro, but— or actually, I'm about to talk about a little bit more, but this Bullet Journal Basics series that we're going to be starting on in a week or so. And I have about 10 videos planned right now, so let me show you what I have in mind. The opening pages and index, ones for collections and threading, trackers, tools and accessories, storage and reference, As you are looking at this, go ahead and hit pause if you want, and let me know if there are any other, like, kind of bullet journal basics questions or videos that you would like to see. Let me know in the comments. I'd be happy to make those for you and give you my thoughts and feedback and, uh, just kind of experience for putting all this together. Again, we, we talked about it when I was on the soapbox talking about, yeah, just mistakes in Bullet Journaling. Don't feel like your Bullet Journal practice has to be Instagram-worthy to be worthwhile for you. It is worthwhile to you if you are able to focus on the things that you need, if you're able to relieve some anxiety around all the stuff swirling around in your life, as I often do. And so that, that to me is the real purpose of the Bullet Journal. This is my December layout. Again, very normal for for a lot of things in terms of the different layouts and things that I'll do on a daily basis, but then also adding in a lot more lists and collections for trips that we're taking, uh, gifts to buy people, and then of course the videos that I'm going to be focusing on in the, uh, weeks to come. One of the things that I hope you remember about December and about these layouts and different ways is that For me, December is less about productivity and more about people. And so the list that I'm making and the collections that I'm putting together, I always have those people in mind. How this gift will impact someone. Maybe it can help them, like, you know, have more fun or learn something or connect more with people in their own lives, helping with an event or hosting a dinner. Then the people that are going to be a part of those, like, all that's really important to me. So that's why In December, I make a lot more lists. I create a lot more collections because it is really important to me how the work that I do and the things that I put together are impacting people that I care about. Don't forget, if you are looking for a way to support the channel and have a great way to use your bullet journal and be able to plan out and execute the goals that you have for 2020, make sure you check out the ACE 2020 course that I've put together. There's special Black Friday and into Cyber Monday pricing, but the best deal that you're going to get is over Black Friday weekend, and then the price goes up for Cyber Monday, and the price goes up to full price middle, middle of next week. So if you're interested, go to ace2020.tips, and if you have any questions about it, just ask in the comments below, or you can email me and I'd be happy to talk with you about it. Thanks so much for watching. Thanks for all your support. The new program or series that I have coming out on YouTube over the next couple of months is Bullet Journal Basics, one of the series that I'm most excited about that I've ever done. So I know that a lot of you are going to appreciate it and love it. We're going to be, yeah, just kind of getting back to the basics with the Bullet Journal going into 2020, because I know that with what you're learning, what, what you're learning from me and what we're learning from each other can help you make 2020 be your best year. Here ever. So stay tuned, subscribe if you haven't yet, ring the bell. I don't know if I've ever said ring the bell, but ring the bell if you want to get those notifications. And yeah, just stay tuned. We're going to have a lot of fun together, and I'm really glad that you're a part of it. All right, thanks, bye!
