Recently my favorite Youtube planner person, Catlin, made a shocking announcement. She is not going to be using a bullet journal anymore. Instead, she’s switching over to virtual planning.
This prompted me to think about my planning habits. It’s 2022, everything is expensive and everything else is digital. Maybe the time has come to switch to a fully digital planning system.
Nope, not going to happen. I’m not saying it’s never going to happen, mind you. But right now I get much-needed serotonin from my bullet journal and I’m not giving it up.
That being said, I do use Notion for roughly half of my planning. So I thought it might be interesting to break down what I use my bullet journal for, and what I use Notion for.
Bullet journal, micro, art, and memories
My bullet journal sits open next to me most of the time. That’s because my daily task list and schedule are listed there. Anything that I have planned for this month will be in the pages of my bullet journal. Here’s a quick rundown.
-Monthly goals
-Monthly budget
-Three-month business plan
-Projects and social media plans for the current month
-My current ‘to read’ list
-Monthly habit trackers
-Shopping list
These are things I check in with daily. Things I’d like to be able to check in with by flipping a page.
Another thing that will be found on my monthly pages is a memory tracker. Here I doodle and sketch pictures that memorialize the fun events that happened that month. If we went to see a good movie if a book came out if I got a new plant. If there was a holiday, of course.
This is part of my memory keeping. I want to be able to look back at my journals and remember how my month went. That’s harder when using an app.
It’s also harder to get creative on an app. I take great joy in drawing out borders and decorations in my bullet journal. It’s something I look forward to, every time I make a new page.
Honestly, I just finished setting up holiday pages in my bullet journal with stickers, and it was such a joyous activity. I know I can decorate with pictures on Notion, and I do. But it’s just not the same.
My bullet journal is for short-term planning, memory keeping, and art therapy.
Notion, macro, fluctuating, and repetitive tasks
All that being said, there are some things that a paper planner is just not useful for. Like long-term planning.
Anything that’s going to outlast my bullet journal probably isn’t going in there. So my annual plan goes into Notion. As does my OCN board. If you don’t know what that is, you’ve got to take this course by Lisa Jacobs. It’s helped me get so much more shit done, I can’t even tell you.
I also keep a project page for each of my books in Notion. Books take a long time to write, and much longer to edit. I don’t want to rewrite a ton of information each time I switch journals.
Then there are the things that change too often to be worth the time to write down. Things like my blog schedule, which I switch up all the time. Or my plant watering schedule which gets updated every three days. Chore charts are another big one for Notion, as they need to be updated all the damn time.
Anything in Notion is, essentially, there for too long of a time or too short of a time for it to comfortably fit in my bullet journal.
This system works well for me. Doing things this way I’m able to keep track of managing my family, day job, and writing career. I’m also able to catch memories of my life, so I can look back and cherish them. I can build for myself a wealth of learned wisdom. I can learn from my past while giving my future plenty of room to grow.
So what about you? Do you use just a bullet journal or just a virtual planner? Let us know in the comments.
It’s not too late to start planning for Preptober! You can get my Preptober planner now on my ko-fi shop.
Paper Beats World 
i have adhd and find it incredibly hard to use pen and paper bullet journal because it requires creating your own organization structure from scratch, which, as someone with really severe adhd, is something i have a lot of difficulties. instead, i use a notion template from a youtuber i follow (i actually forget which one lol) and it’s highly customizable in terms of what i can use it for, really gorgeous in terms of creative custimization, and super efficient for me. part of why i love it is that i don’t worry about having to scratch out the many, MANY mistakes i tend to make in pen and paper bullet journals and then feel crappy cause it looks bad and becomes super disorganized. instead, i can just easily backspce/delete things if i get them wrong, and for me that takes the pressure and anxiety of perfectionism off. idk, for me it just is an easier and less anxiety inducing process. that being said, i do keep a pen and paper art/collage scrapbook journal for artistic expression and memory expression. but to each their own!
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