Is There Such Thing As Planner Peace?

Every time I think I have found it, I lose it just as quickly. Last you heard about my planner I was madly in love and head over heels for my Travelers Notebook system. Well a few months into using it I found a group of people who utilized a method called Bullet Journaling in their Travelers Notebook. Well I just had to know all there was to know because the pictures they were posting… There are no words! It was literally the most beautiful writing and decorating and planning I had ever seen.

So I checked out where it originated from on a man name Ryder Carroll who has a blog that gives you a step by step guide on how to start your own bullet journal. It is the most minimalistic and simplistic thing I had ever seen. And then I saw how members of the bullet journal community had customized their journals to their own personal preferences and I was blown away by the sheer adaptability of Carroll’s system.

Fueled by inspiration from sources like Tiny Ray of Sunshine and Boho Berry, I decided to give bullet journaling a try in my Travelers Notebook and it was just the system I had been looking for with one tiny, itty bitty flaw. Inserts for Travelers Notebooks are made with about 60-80 pages because the whole point of the travelers notebook is to have all of your notebooks in one cover and it is less bulky to carry six 60 page notebooks than six 240 page notebooks. Well, the purpose of the bullet journal system is to have one notebook to rule them all! Fantastic, right. The premise is that you can have all of your notes, plans, and ideas in one notebook and just organize it using an indexing system. Sounds crazy, but it actually works.

After debating on whether I should just merge the two systems (as many people have done) or stick to just bullet journaling I decided to give JUST bullet journaling a try. I bought an Orchid Dot Grid Moleskine and got straight to it and it just felt so natural that when it ran out of pages I decided that I would go get another Moleskine (squared, this time for budget purposes). As much as I loved my Travelers Notebook, my Moleskine just felt more right to me.

An example of my monthly and weekly planning pages

Some of the ways I use my notebook for work, but next year I will be using it for a lot more.

Some great pages for daily planning and journaling.

Now here comes the dilemma with bullet journaling (I told you, I’m really starting to think there is no planner peace). After living with bullet journaling, and having quite a bit of success with it, for almost six months, I came to the end of the school year (I’m an elementary school teacher) and realized that if I used my bullet journal for work purposes as I had been wanting to do, I would run into the problem that I would constantly be rewriting certain collections out whenever I had to start a new journal because student information would have to all be transferred!

I immediately thought to myself, “This never would have happened if I had stuck with the travelers notebook system!” And then I had an idea. What if I bought a custom Travelers Notebook that fit a5 notebooks (8×5 inches) and had a slimmer Moleskine cahier with all of the work collections that I was dreading having to transfer from bujo (bullet journal) to bujo and placed it in a Travelers Notebook with my day to day BuJo? Well I looked into whether or not all of those collections would fit in one and they totally do!

So starting next August I will be using this beautiful hand painted Travelers Notebook that I bought from MamaCakesMakings with one cahier and a regular sized Moleskine notebook.

 

Hopefully this will bring me planner peace, but seeing as how I have felt this way before about a planner system, I am doubtful that there will ever be complete peace. Luckily, the Travelers Notebook and Bullet Journal systems are so flexible that I will most likely find a way to solve the problems that arise.

Happy Planning!