The Bullet Journal Guide for Beginners

Payal Thakur
Aug 8, 2018
3 min read

Before we start with what according to me is the basic necessities or must do in BuJo. Let’s find out what bullet journal are… so bullet journal idea was devised by Ryder Carrol. Down below is the video made by him and shows his vision of the bullet journal and basics.

So I hope you have general idea as to what bullet journal is so let’s get started on the basic necessities and must do’s for bullet journal if you are just started maintain one.

Supplies to Start BuJo

So to bullet journaling there is really no complicated or expensive supplies required, it all depends on your preferences. Basic supplies required are a notebook and pen that’s all. Now if you are anything like me … you like minimal but bit fancy approach then down below are list of supplies I use to do my BuJo (p.s. – I am relatively new to the whole bullet journaling but I always maintain a art journal sorts of so I am kind of use to organizing things or writing things to organise my messed up life)

Journal – I prefer dotted and square grid journal for BuJo but I am cool with plain journals too but lined journals usually gives me the school work vibes and I don’t prefer it, but as I said it all depends on your personal preferences what you are comfortable with most. Anything works fine until you are comfortable to organise in the given notebook or journal.
Pens – I used uni pen fine liner in .005, .04, .01, .02 & .08. These are my go to pens for BuJo and drawing they do not break on the tips and do not bleed through papers and works amazingly. I also use normal black waterproof gel pen for daily BuJo filling, uni white liner and uni gold liner pens for detailing, stadlers triplus coloured sometimes.
Pencil – I use stadlers mechanical pencil and Faber castel shading pencils.
Watercolors and coloring – I use Camlin watercolors and stadlers water color pencils for monthly spreads. I like the effect of water colors so sometimes I use watercolors for calligraphy which I find more interesting than brush pens but if you prefer brush pens I recommend tombow brush pens. They are bit expensive but worth it.
Ruler
Post its and crafting paper
Stickers I made on my own or doddles from pintrest

P.S. – you don’t really need these specific supplies, these are some I use for BuJo you can totally do just with journal and pen but if interested I recommend these supplies.

Planning

So, there is no specific time to start bullet journaling. If you want to start in middle of the year do it, it’s not necessary to start journaling from the 1 date of New Year.

Keys

To start the BuJo, first page should include the Key that you use in the bullet journaling you can make your own keys depending on your requirements or use the traditional keys. Keys are crucial part of the BuJo. Keys are the character that helps you to organise and not write down if the task is done, delayed, cancelled etc. Keys are must have thing in Bujo.

Index

So, Index as you saw above index is an alphabetical list of names, subjects, etc. with reference to the pages on which they are mentioned. But me as a journal keeper, I am bad at keeping index to refer I really don’t prefer index much but personal choice again. Instead of using index I use flags which in my opinion works best for me and takes you directly to the desired page.

Future logs

Now this is something which helped me a lot. My assignments, friend’s birthday etc. where easy to keep track of and even a good reminder of things I didn’t achieve previous month which obviously was important. So I highly recommend future logs.

Monthly Planner Spread

This is the best part, every month I keep different themes for months. I generally setup my bullet journal on last day of previous month or on first day of setup month. Me as a student, hardly get time to setup in middle of the week so I setup in advance and do all doddles after whole setup. (Convenience I guess!). some of the spread that I include in my monthly set up are given below: