Are you a diarist? Or a keeper of a journal, or a note book? Do you record important events and ideas, perhaps doodles and sketches, designs?

Aside from a work diary of appointments, I can’t tell you how much I envy and admire anyone who can keep a coherent record of events or projects for more than two days at a time…

I have spent a lifetime as a keeper of everything in my head but, recently I’ve been thinking it would be very handy to have a written record of various things. To some extent, my blog serves this purpose but I often find myself wondering (or disputing with Mr RH) about unblogged things like exactly when I planted seeds/harvested cabbages last year and considering whole sequences of events to decide when someone must have visited or when we bought something. And even on my blog I tend to make great proclamations of crafting goals and inspirations and then either forget about them or struggle to find them again.

So I concluded that there was nothing else for it. I would just have to become a diarist. And, after much searching I chose an 18 month 2017/18 Moleskine Alice in Wonderland Diary, which I bought from Wordery.

It was a bit pricy but I am hoping that will be an incentive to actually use it. It is unusual enough not to be just another fallen-by-the-wayside-notebook. And, with the days on the left hand spread and a blank page on the right for overspill, it seems to me a good size and layout to contain useful information without either running out of space or having wasted space. It also has some stickers. I’m not persuaded that the actual stickers add anything to it but they do slide into a backpocket, which might come in useful for something one day.

Whilst waiting for the diary to arrive, I discovered Bullet Journaling. I watched the video and scanned through the ‘learn more’ sections and I thought ‘this is exactly what I need – a genius, easy to use system to keep properly organised with everything in one place’. It does not require a diary. In fact an ordinary notebook would work better. But I thought, ‘I’ll be able to adapt the general system easily enough’.

Then the diary arrived and I looked back at all the bullet journalling info and I thought, ‘OMG this is so complicated! I can’t even remember all those symbols and instructions from one minute to the next! I’ll never even be able to work out where to begin :(‘

So I began with a pen (a lamy safari), which I only mention because I wanted to give a recommendation to Andy’s Pens for their amazing service. I ordered a pen nib on Friday (3 August 2017) at 13.58 and I was more than surprised to receive an email at 14.01 saying it had been shipped. Three minutes from order to dispatch! Then it arrived the next day :)

And I decided just to start with a couple of the bullet journalling features, putting events under the days and ‘Tasks’ (a sort of weekly ‘to do’ list on the right). And I have to say that so far I am finding some satisfaction in ticking off the tasks and even feeling motivated to do more onerous tasks by the thought of ticking them off. I really should get out more! Then after a week, it seemed to be getting quite full and, at last, I got the point of having an Index so I made one in a section meant for ‘Timetables’. Perhaps as I go on I will incorporate more features and become super-organised…

But even now it is giving me a new perspective on time management. I never seem to stop but then I so often wonder where the time goes. Now I can look at ‘Weeding’ in my Index and I see ‘page 19’ and on page 19 -‘Weeded main veg area – 8+ hours’ and instead of feeling I have again failed to whip up a huge itinerary for my etsy shop, I think, ‘no wonder I don’t get much sewing done these days!’ I was, however, happy to tick that off as a weekly task and I did get the weeds before they seeded so, hopefully, that will make for more sewing time in the future. Perhaps I will even schedule some!

Do you have any tips for a good planning system?

Janine @ Rainbow Rare

I’m linking this post with New To Me 2017 at Celtic Thistle Stitches