How do you organize your life?
With to-do lists?
Using a planner?
Or do you just wing it?
A few years ago I learned about bullet journals and have since grown to depend on this flexible system of organization. It might be surprising to some that an artist could adore organization. I haven't always been this way. Tired of other people deciding the course of my life I did away with schedules as soon as I was out of school.
I desired wide open spaces and days without goals. The idea was that I would do the most important tasks needed for survival first thing. Then, spend the rest of the exploring my art. And other days I would turn this on its head and spend my mornings with a paint brush in one hand (and very often a joint in the other).
Those were fun days. I love to look back on my art journals from that time. But, I remember very vividly not being able to make ends meet and living in a general state of chaos.
Then came bullet journaling ....
The definition of a bullet journal varies from person to person. I tend to define a BuJo as a single notebook that contains to-do lists, brainstorming pages, and daily logs all mingling together. Students may very well have separate bullet journals for each subject. For a while I had a separate BuJo for writing, work, and personal life.
As I am traveling at the moment, I decided to condense everything down into a single notebook. There is a section for inspiration and photos at the beginning. Then there is a divider after which follows goals for each specific stop on my journal. Finally there are the daily logs where I write my to-do lists of both domestic and economic activities on a single page for each day.
Here are a few pages from the inspiration section. Starting with my fingering cart for my tenor recorder which I brought along.
I also have a page dedicated to content creation for hive. This is more of a brainstorming page where I jot down ideas whenever I have them. Then, when I am in the mood for picture taking or writing I simply flip to this page to be gather a bit of past inspiration.
The pages I use each day are the daily logs. Really, it is a place to write a to-do list for each day. I write out the pages ahead of time so I can jot down engagements or time sensitive plans on the day in question.
For the most part, however, I write out my necessary to-do's the day of and give myself plenty of flexibility with them. That is what I most love about this system. It is both a malleable structure that guides my creative work without stifling.