Plan with Me | Minimalist Weekly and Monthly Layout for your Bullet Journal

In this instructional video, Matt Ragland walks viewers through his newly refined bullet‑journal system for March, showcasing a streamlined monthly spread and a concise weekly layout. He begins by reviewing his earlier February and January setups—simple day‑of‑month listings, habit trackers, and mood charts—explaining why he moved away from color‑heavy designs toward a minimal palette (orange, green, red) and simple symbols (✓, O, X). He adds a one‑line daily journal entry and aligns all elements on a single bullet row for visual clarity. For the weekly view, he consolidates tasks into three categories (work, vlog, home) and places a compact agenda on the right, allowing quick reference and flexibility to move tasks between sections as needed. Throughout, he emphasizes simplicity, alignment, and rapid readability. The video concludes with a preview of upcoming content: deeper journal reviews (structured vs. unstructured), discussions of paper weight and bullet spacing, and accessories like bags that complement journaling. He encourages likes, subscriptions, and highlights his broader channel focus on bullet‑journal productivity, mindfulness, and prioritizing meaningful activities.
Chapters
Hi everyone, my name is Matt, and welcome to another Bullet Journal productivity video. In this episode, I'm going to be showing you a new monthly and weekly layout for March. I don't do these plan with me videos every single month because there are several months in a row where I will stick with the same layout and structure, and I don't personally feel the need to just reiterate that to you as a way of creating a video for that week. I only want to do it when I have something new or updated to show you, which is the case this week. If you want to see other layouts that I've used in the past, make sure you check out the Plan With Me playlist that's going to be linked in the description and as an end card at, or end screen card video at the end of this one. But let's go ahead and jump into this month's layout. Let me first show you how I started doing this in February. I started about a little bit into the month, and this is something I, a couple of these I started doing back in January that I had a very simple— let me zoom in for you. I had a very simple monthly layout where I just added the day of the month and then the day of the week. So Tuesday the 1st, Wednesday the 2nd, and then I was doing habit tracking right here, just very simple. And this is journaling, moving, reading, and learning SQL. So that was something that I set for the quarter that I wanted to do. And then I had my mood tracking. I've done different types of mood tracking that you may have seen in past videos. Let me find— see, I kind of stopped doing it last year, and then I would do it by the month. But all of these colors, even that, made it a little tough for me to stay with because I was like, oh man, I got to make sure that I have my pens handy.. And that just wasn't always the case. So this made it a lot easier for me. But even the colors here I kind of stepped away from and it was just kind of set up as orange is okay, green is good, and then red would have been like not a great day. So skipping ahead to February where I got into this a little bit more and simplified it even more. Still the same thing: day of the week, day of the month, some kind of event, or if there was anything specific about that day, like we had friends in town, and then my mom came into town, and then I went to California. As you can see here, I also simplified my habits. I found out that when I did these 3, I had a much happier day. So just moving, reading, journaling, and these are— and just making simple X's on days that I did it. Then coming over here to the AM/PM mood, The— you can see I have a little key down here, so check mark for good, O for okay, and then X for nope. So you can see I had a pretty good month. I was right here sick for a few days. That corresponded with not exercising, but still did reading and journaling. The other thing that I added in was a one-line journal entry, so just one little thing about the day. If you want to see my last video about journaling, habits and ways to stick with it, make sure you click on the card. There's also going to be a video link on the end screen for that. And again, I lined everything up on the same, like, bullet row. So you can see right here, 1 came all the way across for all of these. So that made it really easy to keep everything literally aligned. So I'm going to be doing that again. Let's bring it over for March. So you can see a little bit more about how it looks at the beginning of a month. Pretty blank. You can put a little key down at the bottom as well. So move, read, journal, check mark good, O for okay, and X for nah, nah, not a good day, not a great day. Let me show you now what I'm doing on a week-to-week basis, kind of tightening things up a little bit. Again, just trying to get even simpler, even more straightforward. So you know that in the past I've done, and this is already a little bit of a change, so I don't— this is why I wanted to make a video for you. But having it outcomes and tasks, so my objective, how it aligned with the goal and the theme, I still think this works really well. I had pretty good clarity on what I needed to be doing, and you can see like some days— now granted, I have this day off, so I didn't put anything in here. What I started doing instead of putting my tasks on the right-hand side, and then my agenda on the left, as I've been doing for months. The thing that I started trying is that I just went ahead and had a general list of things that I needed to do for work, things that I was doing for you, and then things that I needed to do at home. So I have these to-do task lists for the week, and then on this page, I still have just a tighter weekly agenda, because normally I can fit everything that I'm doing from a timeline onto a single page. And then if I need to, if I have a task still, if I have a task that is specific to the day, even if I've listed it over here, then I will put it over on the right side to make sure that I'm seeing it in a couple of different places, just so I know like, hey, you really need to get to this today. So friends, that's what I'm doing for the month ahead, just the simple monthly layout. Month here, habits, mood, one-line journal review, a little key down here, and then doing this really simple weekly layout of work tasks, vlog, home, and then my agenda on the right side. This keeps everything really simple and clear and is something that I can look at really quickly to know what I need to get done. I wanted to go ahead and give you a little preview and heads up on different videos that I'm going to be shooting for you in the coming weeks. One is that I know a lot of you love the journal reviews that I do. Check out the Clear Habit Journal one that I did recently, and also the Self Journal, both of which I really like. But I have two more scheduled. One is for the different kind of, like, structured planners, like I've done for Self Journal and Clear Journal. But then I have a bunch of others that I've gotten now, both personally and some people have sent to me. So I'm going to enjoy showing these to you. This one is the Mind Journal, a mission to redefine men's health and happiness. I think a lot of women will like this as well too, but I'll show you a lot of these journals. So we're going to have a structured journal one or just entirely unstructured. So looking at paper weights and types and how, how big or small the bullet spacing is, that matters to me. I like a little bit bigger. Bullet spacing. And the other thing— sorry, that's kind of awkward— is I'm going to show you this bag, a couple of bags that I've received that I have really liked because I think they go hand in hand. The journals and the way that we carry them and the way that we carry and use things on a day-to-day basis. Just, I love, I love physical products and things. One of the reasons I love journals and pens and pencils and books and also the bags that I carry all of them in. So look forward to sharing both of those, or all 3 or 4 of those videos with you in the coming weeks. Make sure you give this a thumbs up and subscribe if you're new here. There are all kinds of videos about Bullet Journal productivity, mindfulness, focusing on what matters, and making sure that you're spending time on the things and people that mean the most to you in life. All right, thanks again, and I'll see you in the next video. Bye!
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