So, confession time: I'm an organization freak. I am the kind of person that likes to block out times on my gcal for everything in my day when I start getting really busy, to the point where my roommate mentioned that looking at my calendar gave her anxiety. I like to make to-do lists for everything and I like checking them off and feeling ridiculously accomplished. When I had a paper planner in high school (because they gave us planners), I would run out of space to write all the things I wanted to do (apparently I was a very busy high-schooler).

I also am a hoarder when it comes to pens and notebooks. I'm pretty sure my grandparent's home in China houses the majority of my notebook collection - all these cheap, pretty, Chinese notebooks in which I wrote maybe two or three pages and then promptly abandoned for another pretty notebook. I used these notebooks for everything: writing stories, journaling, making lists, doodling...

Over the summer I became ridiculously addicted to these "plan with me" videos on youtube. These are girls who have these ridiculously expensive planners and who decorate them with stickers to the extent that the planners are really actually scrapbooks. While things like that are not my cup of tea - the main aim of having a planner for me remains being organized - the videos themselves were somehow really entertaining to me.

Now mind you, ever since I began MIT I switched to digital planning. I have a huge reliance on Google calendar, but I never really liked how Google Tasks was set up (basically, it's ugly). I remembered how obsessed with my paper planner I was back in high school, and I became a little bit obsessed with trying to find a paper planner for the coming school year.

During my search for a cheap, pretty planner, I came across the concept of a "Bullet Journal" on Tumblr. It's a system designed by this guy named Ryder Carroll, and essentially it's a giant running to do list that you make every day. It's very customizable, because it's basically all DIY - you can use any notebook you have on hand and make it a system that works for you. And, since it's in an unstructured notebook, you can insert anything you want other than to do lists - journaling, doodles - and you will never run out of space.

I mean, until you use up the notebook.

Have I mentioned I have a thing for to do lists? And journaling? And doodling?

It was a match made in heaven.

The one issue that came up with the original bullet journaling system is that there isn't really any space for future planning. If you're making to-do lists every day for the day, it's kind of hard to see what you're going to do in a few week's time. Ryder Carroll has a way to combat that, but it's in a list format (of course) and it's only for the month.

To fix that issue, I decided to make weekly spreads instead of daily spreads - that way, I could at least plan out an entire week at once. For spans over a week, I continue to utilize my Google Calendar. I preferred it anyway, for writing out my class schedule, so I wouldn't have to write the repetitive events in my bullet journal / DIY planner every week.

Without further ado, here are the spreads I have since I started this whole bullet journaling adventure:

The notebook I used is actually a sketchbook I bought eons ago (remember I mentioned I hoard stationary?) and I drew a couple sketches of my family (mostly Hera) just so it can make me happy when I open the book

I started trying out this bullet journal thing over the summer and ended up doing more doodling/journaling which I really liked!

This was when I was still trying out future planning with only a paper planner

again, future planning with a DIY paper planner. this got abandoned fairly quickly.

I drew in a calendar for the month and with things I wanted to do but I never went back to reference it, which is how I realized this particular part of the system wasn't going to work for me

and the listing commences! This is my first spread, the week before school started

School starts! I had a couple stickers that I added in and also some washi tape. This was when I started also fake-scrapbooking and adding in ticket stubs and things like that

This is an example of me being able to use parts of the planner for, well, not planning. I took notes for my Designing Interactions class and also decided to start (late) the Lister's Gotta List challenge that I found!

My first Lister's Gotta List spread - I doodled out all the lists but I gave up doing this as I got busier

Still trying out this spread layout, but I became curious to try out a few different ones. The most exciting part of this week was going to the Boston Museum of Science's Pixar Exhibit for a class project!

More notes and Lister's Gotta List

I tried out a different type of weekly layout spread! I liked how the horizontal layout gave me more space to doodle, even though technically area-wise its the same amount of space

Moooore Lister's gotta List. You can tell I got really lazy.

I did another horizontal spread layout! This was the week where I really started adding in more doodles and writing in how I felt during the day, etc.

I emailed a bunch of places where I dropped my resume at during the MIT Career Fair and then was like, what do I do with all my pamphlets? Obviously, cut them up and tape them artfully in my bullet journal. I also added notes about the companies and their contact information.

This is this week's layout! I'm trying out a new layout where I have more space for the weekend so I can add in more memorabilia and stuff - I'm going to DC this weekend so I'm probably going to tape in my plane tickets, among other things. The notepad paper has all the specific homework I have for French.

I also decided to start trying out this habit tracker thing, mostly so I could stop writing "Feed Arlong" on every day of the week. It was getting kind of tedious.

So far, this whole bullet journal venture has been really fun! It doesn't take a lot of time to set up weekly, and drawing in or writing in how I feel or things that happened during the day really helps me wind down at night. It's been really good for destressing, and I get to fuel my hoarding into something kind of productive. I don't know if it's making me particularly more organized, but I do know it's already really fun to look back on and see what happened in the past month! Eventually, I'm hoping this will become a really cool log of my senior year.

Well, part of my senior year. I've already used up around 1/3 of my sketchbook and we're not even 1/3 of the way through the semester. I already have plans for what I'm getting to replace this, when it's used up!

How do you feel about paper planning versus digital planning? Do you journal, or doodle? How do you like to keep memories? Let me know!