What I am currently using on a daily basis as my Bullet Journal is an A5 Stalogy notebook.
I have been using the same notebook, and basically the same set-up in said notebook, since September.
Typically, for each month, I do some beginning of month reflection and idea chasing, a monthly spread with a vague to-do list and a list of any events I need to pay attention to. This is mostly appointments, and/or needing to schedule appointments, but also includes the Moon cycle, birthdays, holidays, and other important to me/our family days.
At the end of the month, I will usually include a monthly review page.
On a weekly basis, I typically have a weekly spread, with all appointments and events listed on the day of the event, as well as a weekly to-do list. Every week I set aside an Anchor Card of the Week for a quick Tarot/Oracle Card pull to inspire/inform the week. Then daily pages begin.
I also include notes pages, random thoughts, ideas, plans for various projects, updates, and whatever else catches my fancy.
At the end of the week, I have a Week In Review page, and usually a Braindump page.
This has been working amazingly well.
Except when it doesn’t.
For the monthly to-do list, I called it a vague list as I rarely ever look back at it until, maybe, the next month when I am creating a to-do list for the new month.
Sometimes I try to correlate the monthly to-do list and the weekly to-do lists, but it hasn’t happened in a while.
Even if I write an appointment down three, four, five places, on the day of (even though when I start a new daily spread I do try to look and make sure there are no appointments or anything), I may forget about it—which because I tell my amazing husband these things, he typically reminds me the night before or the morning of an appointment so I make it to where I am supposed to be on time. This is a problem.
I have discovered that I need that monthly calendar feature to write things down — we do have many appointments that we make at least a year in advance—so being able to write those down somewhere where they will not be forgotten is a necessary thing I didn’t realize how much I needed, even though I feel as if I have expressed this before at some point.
What I would love to have ideally is a monthly spread, followed by a weekly spread, followed by the days of that week, followed by the next week of the month, then those days…and so on…I have a deep dislike for all the months in one section, all the weeks in one section, and then all the dailies in another section.
If you know of a planner like this, with Tomoe River paper or something similar, please let me know in the comments.
The closest I have come to my goal of having a planner like that is the Go Getter Girl Co six month five-in-one spiral-bound planner. I admit that I love this planner, but I need more from my daily pages than this offers at the moment. And this is ok. I still have one undated GGG planner and two dated planners I always intended to re-date, so if I think I can work with the daily pages and have my needs fulfilled.
I am planning to play with a few different planners and notebooks over the next few months to see what works best for me.
I also have a few more specific ideas for 2024 for an over-arching planner/inspiration notebook. I am already re-thinking my Maker project notebook. I am pondering starting and keeping a Tarot/Oracle journal. As new notebooks and planners are integrated into my system, or migrated out, I will keep you in the loop.
Tabitha Low 