Told by a seasoned bullet journaler that less is more, but my brain disagrees

My coworker Jen has been bullet journaling for 7 years and she gave me this advice: keep it simple, just a task list and a calendar. She said all the fancy trackers and spreads would burn me out. I tried her way for 2 weeks and honestly I felt lost. I need the habit tracker to see if I'm drinking enough water and the mood tracker to spot patterns. But then I added a sleep log and a meal planner and now my weekly spread takes 45 minutes to set up. Jen says I'm overcomplicating it which defeats the purpose of the system. Has anyone else found a middle ground between minimal and detailed layouts that actually works?

2 comments

2 Comments

sandra_anderson215d ago

My friend Laura went through this exact same thing last year. She started with like 10 trackers in her bullet journal and it took her an hour every Sunday to set up the week. She was so stressed about filling in all the boxes that she stopped enjoying the whole thing. Then she tried the minimal approach her cousin recommended and after two weeks she said she felt like she was forgetting everything important in her life. What finally worked for her was picking just three trackers and rotating them each month instead of trying to do everything at once. She keeps a simple weekly layout with a tiny habit tracker for water and sleep on the side, and then one "focus tracker" that changes each month like mood or meals. She says it's still detailed enough to feel useful but only takes her 10 minutes to set up now. Maybe try that rotation idea and see if it clicks for you?

alice33615d ago

Has she ever thought about WHY she wanted to track all that stuff in the first place? Like, I noticed when I started bullet journaling I was just copying those super detailed spreads I saw on Instagram, but half the things didn't even matter to me. I think people get caught up in the pretty layouts and forget the whole point is to be useful for YOUR life, not to look good online. Maybe it's not about the number of trackers but about knowing what you actually care about checking in on versus what you just feel like you SHOULD track.