I often get the Sunday scaries during the school year. Sometimes, I even get summertime Sunday scaries just because my system-body and mind-have become accustomed to expecting what the coming week will hold. One strategy that always helps whatever level of scaries I am dealing with is the organization and planning of my upcoming week. I have planned my weeks for a long time now on Sundays. It has become a Sunday morning tradition where I will look to the week ahead as a fresh start, a way to get ahead, or just a way to find some time to relax. This post contains a quick Youtube tutorial that shows you 3 different examples on how to plan your week. You will also find some more weekly layout examples in this blog post and detailed directions on how to use any notebook or journal to plan your best week.

At first glance, the Passion Planner system is one that does not look like it could adapt to different types of planning and journaling. It comes with a printed layout, and using the weekly planner I have, the times are already filled in. However, after looking at some creative posts on social media, finding some awesome stickers, and using markers in new ways, I have been appreciative of how easily the Passion Planner can adapt to my needs. I just recently stopped tracking all things baby. We have a full blown TABY (toddler-baby) and her schedule is far easier to predict at this point. I have entered a season in life where I am declaring boundaries on work, and then looking at how I am taking care of myself physically, mentally, and emotionally. This post outlines how I am focusing on using my Passion Planner to become a health journal. My health journal will include a daily focus, routines, steps, exercise goals, water intake, self-love statements, and more. This post will also give lots of inspiration for creating your own health journal.

When I think of productivity, I think of schedules, goals, and the day-to-day grind. I think of planners. I think of lists that get to be checked off. I love a good list. Productivity may be one of the main reasons I will often turn to a journal or notebook, and bullet journaling has created an outlet where planning can become beautiful. Whether you choose a more formal setup of a planner like a Passion Planner or if you prefer a blank page, sometimes figuring out what system works best for you can make the difference between feeling in control and calm or full of chaos and overwhelm. This post contains ideas for daily, weekly, and monthly layouts for scheduling, and it also has a focused list of journaling prompts to help you figure out what really needs to go into your planning setup. Remember: Your journal can operate as a planner. No need to reinvent systems. You can create your own systems based on your style.

After having our first little one this past year, I hit a learning curve with all of the things a new mom has to keep track of and record. Being a person who loves planning, I was obsessed with learning about schedules, wake windows, bottle timings, night wakings, and more. I found out immediately that schedules and sleep were linked. This caused me to become hyper-focused on how to get our little one on a schedule because sleep was the key to functioning again. I ran to a well-known app that worked perfectly for the first 8 months. An app on my phone was great because I could track feedings, pumping, diaper changes, and sleep patterns all in one spot. I also had a report that would come to my inbox weekly when we were updating our pediatrician on how things were going. Apps are amazing things, really.

Then, our little one started daycare, and it wasn’t feasible or practical to have the daycare use our tracking system, and it was too tedious to try to keep entering in the day’s information all at once. I was exhausted after work, and I didn’t want to feel like I had one more chore to do at the end of the day. I was also finally moving to a place where I was more “go with the flow” and didn’t feel the need to track every minute of our little one’s day. I have always been an analog person. I love the feel of paper when it comes to both journaling and reading books. I get why other people enjoy the other mediums, but when I was faced with how I keep track of our little girl’s schedule in a new way, I immediately ran back to paper. This post outlines how you can use any bullet journaling or planning system to keep track of your young one’s day. I go into detail about what I track, how I track those items and some setups that might work for you

August always feels far away, and then all of the sudden it is here. It has to be one the fastest moving months throughout the year. Back-to-school advertisements and sales are everywhere. All of the teachers I know (including myself) are struggling with how the fall will look for students, teachers, and families as we return to teaching during a pandemic. How quickly will burnout set in? Will everything be okay? The new dynamic of being a mom will also be on my plate as I enter the upcoming school year. Managing family schedules, daycare, and finding time to fit in what really matters is going to be an added challenge. I have loved bullet journaling for the past 4 years, but I have also used a Passion Planner occasionally when I need to get myself back on track in terms of organization and goals. This post outlines how I plan to use BOTH a Passion Planner and a bullet journal to keep myself on track in terms of goals and tasks, but also dreams, family time, and trying to fit in a certain amount of self-care to avoid burnout.

One of the things that I love the most about bullet journaling and the bullet journaling system is that you can combine your want-tos in life with your have-tos. I’m talking about your work stuff, your appointments, and your to-do lists with your dreams, your passion projects, and your ideas. You can use your one notebook as a planner and the same notebook as a journal for your thoughts. You can do your morning pages right next to your grocery list. You can mindmap a project, and then on the next page draw a doodle or two. You get what I am saying.

With me returning from maternity leave in April, I hesitated to go back to what I normally did which was plan one month at a time. One of the biggest things I hear from people when they look at bullet journaling from afar is “I don’t have time for that.” If you are a person who is trying to balance life and also balance how you feel AND your dreams…I don’t know how you are managing without some help. Notebooks are a big help if you have the right systems in place that work. So, knowing that I wouldn’t have time to plan on a monthly basis, I extended my journaling method to a 3-month or quarterly basis setup. Basically, this one notebook is going to get me through the 1.) first three months back from maternity leave 2.) the end of the school year 3.) quarter two for my blog.

This post will walk you through how to set up a notebook 3 months at a time. Are you a business person? You will use 4 notebooks for the year (one for each quarter). Are you a person with long-term goals? Set up check-ins for every 3 months. Are you a person that is struggling to try to find balance in all areas of life? Use a 3-month notebook to get yourself on track.

I love all things paper. A new notebook, journal, or planner is enough to get me to feel motivated about my goals. Fresh pages that are blank are sometimes all you need on a rough day to feel like a fresh start is in order. However, maybe like me, you have also had a notebook or office supply obsession get out of hand over the years. While I love a fresh notebook or journal, I will be the first to admit that I am one of the first people to not finish a notebook or journal and move on to something new. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that because of the inspiration that a new notebook brings, but I also know many of us are on the hunt for notebook, planner, or journal peace where we find a system that works for us in all ways.

If you check out examples in the planner and journaling communities, you can see a variety of journal types, writing and typography, designs, layouts and spreads, and ideas for organization. New notebooks make us feel good. Half of the fun in this journaling journey is the trying out of new ideas and systems to see what will work for us. If you are like me, you know what definitely doesn’t work for you. This post proposes different styles, types, and considerations when trying to find a journal or planner peace. The goal of this post is not to present you with a correct option, but show you the options that I have encountered along the way so that you find what works best for you.

Any time there is a transition from being on a break from work back to the everyday routine, it is a struggle. However, this past transition from winter break to teaching in January seemed a little tougher than usual. My students seemed off, I seemed off, and I had to plan for a sub day in the middle of the week due to a school improvement conference I had to attend. The theme for the week was “off.” There are signs of burnout that creep in that sometimes have nothing to do with being on a break or not. Simply, teachers are asked to do all things at all times, and this causes mindset burnout-even if they are just coming off of a break. There are lots of symptoms, but I find that my day-to-day resiliency to handle all of my teacher tasks begins to suffer when I feel burnout settle into my mindset. it is the moment when making a to-do list even seems overwhelming.

For example, I was making the comment to my husband one night this past week:

“I feel like I could work for another 2-3 hours tonight, and I still would not be caught up. I’m never caught up.”

Some teachers that are part of the #mytimeismyown movement on social media, or are trying to prioritize their time outside of the walls of teaching, may have just cringed. But, we all have been there. I don’t want to work at home, but the demands of the job continue to demand time. I recently got 100 graphic novels awarded to my classroom through a grant. I would not have received those materials if I had not given up time outside of the usual to write the grant, present the grant, and then follow through on plans for the new materials. The real question here is how do we set limits? Because the truth is, teachers are trying as hard as they can.

You don’t know how tempted I was to put a pun about “20/20 vision” in the title of this post. I am so ready for the new year! I don’t mean in the sense that all of my lesson plans, copies, and grading are done, but more so in the way that I feel rejuvenated after winter break. I really tried not to work the entire time over the two weeks, and I feel the benefits in my creativity and in my writing motivation. I started to wake up yesterday with new ideas and the desire to fill notebooks up with thoughts, reflections, and more. This came in handy because I was procrastinating about migrating over into my new bullet journal for the new year. My local independent bookstore, This is a Bookstore and Bookbug, started carrying my favorite journals so now I have a constant supply to look at and plan for when I go get a chai latte and grade or pick up new books. The goal of this post is to show you how I use my bullet journal to plan for the new year with year-long goals and plans, and also how I set up my monthly plan for January. This post is similar to the other bullet journal “plan-with-me” posts on the blog, but it provides more information as I am moving into a new journal and it is the start of a new year.

September is one of those months that everyone has an opinion about. Either people love the start of a new academic year, or they miss the days of summer where things were a little bit slower and more carefree. I fall into both camps; it is a time to reminisce and a time to jump back into routine. September is about re-finding your rhythm. I love the inspiration from this month’s books, and also the idea of of holding onto the ideas of empathy, perspective, and adventure as I get ready to start year 10 teaching middle school.

Get ready with me for the new school year! I love my bullet journal for keeping my general life focused and for daily morning pages; however, I am going to try to also use a bullet journal for my teacher planning this year. I end up always writing my teacher plans, dreams, and schemes all over the place. This could be in countless random notebooks, my personal bullet journal, and on my little clipboards. My goal is to put all of these things in one location-including my meeting notes-so the end of the year reflection will be easier and I will stay more organized. I also want to take much of my teacher planning out of my personal bullet journal and use that more for life goals, personal reflections, and other writing projects. I recently posted my August Plan With Me for my personal bullet journal, and if you don’t know where to start, here are some amazing Teacher Bullet Journals to follow on my Bullet Journal Round-Up Post. It is important to note that my spreads in this post are not all the way filled in yet. Once our calendar/contract are finalized, I can add in some dates and marking period cut-offs to my schedules. Also, like in my classroom, I like to leave some things blank because I find that there is something about filling things in as you go that is part of the bullet journal process. I think it encourages reflection at the end of one marking period to stop and reflect, and then go on to plan the next six weeks. I will post these as they are updated throughout the year.

I stumbled upon bullet journaling one day on Pinterest when I was looking for a new planner. As a middle school teacher, I, like many others, am addicted to office supplies. I know what pens I like, I know what size sticky notes I prefer, and I know that the idea of a fresh new notebook makes me almost giddy. I even started making my own notebooks with my dad as a hobby because I love notebooks so much.