How I plan to organize

To be honest, I tried the bullet journal method before. It didn’t work out that well.

I got overwhelmed pretty quickly and it didn’t help that, in my enthousiasm, I searched for bullet journal groups on facebook and saw more aesthetics than function, more women prone to decorating the thing and making needless lists of everything, instead of using it for what it was meant to be used for.

I stopped using it. I stopped looking it up and stopped giving a fuck altogether about planning.

I noticed, after my adhd diagnose, that my life was drifting to nowhere. I was a ship without a course (to use a metaphor). I wanted to get back on track and master my depression and to start to get things done that I want to get done.

I started to track my time thanks to the suggestion of a CBT book I was reading and I made that single things a habit. I noticed that I did things in my day time! Not useful things in that sense, but I did things. I did things that cost time.

Now as a second things, I started to add little notifiers that I needed to take my rilatin, otherwise I would forget and make note that I had to take the trash out, otherwise I would forget that too. These are small things I added, but that help me to stay on top of the things that need to be done. Last time I forgot to take out the trash and it piled up. Not a pretty sight.

Now, I want to keep adding things to my bullet journal one at a time, not all at once, so I won’t give up and make the bujo a habit, not a system. It can help me tremendously, but I need to use it, in a way that works for me, not for someone else, so I don’t need to look at someone else, I only need to look at me.

If you struggle with your bujo habit, start small, like I did. Start to track your time. Not in a pretty manner, not in a chronodex or any other system just: 13.30 Reading. Nothing more nothing less and eventually you will start to notice where your time goes and where you can make adjustments and start to change things for the better.

The system was created by someone with ADHD, so I must be able to make it work too, but thanks to me being autistic, it isn’t that easy and I get overwhelmed by adding to much at once easily, so that is why I wanted to start small and add more and more, so I don’t become overwhelmed.

I did this, because I looked at other calendars and systems and saw nothing that matched me, nothing that spoke to me. One calendar asked me to ask me what I was grateful for every single day. Grateful is an emotion, not easily to identify if you have difficulty expressing and distinguishing your own emotions, so I couldn’t use that system, although it had other things that are usefull, but it was pre-printed.

The advantage of the bujo is that you begin with a blank notebook, ruled, squared, dotted… however you like, and you start with the system how you like and add or substract what isn’t working. Nothing is set in stone. And that is the beauty of it. I started trying to do it by the books, but it didn’t work and started to look at others and became overwhelmed, until I learned that I only need to look at my needs and what I need to do, and need to take things one a time, and now I think I have found a system that works for me. I will give updates on this in the future. (I will make not of it in my bujo.)