Plan With Me: My March Set Up in my Bullet Journal + Video
In today's post I’m going to show you how I've set up my bullet journal for March. March will be the first month that I'll be fully settled in the new house and that means that I can finally focus on my projects and planning. For that reason you'll see as well that I'm introducing some new spreads that will help me to focus more this month and be more productive.
Make sure you scroll down to the bottom of the post, because there's also a video, where I'm showing you exactly how I've created each spread.
Before I start with the monthly set up, I'd like to take a minute to express how much I love this notebook! It's the Scribbles That Matter notebook and the quality of the pages is amazing! I highly recommend it! You can find a thorough review here.
This month I decided to create all my pages following the same theme. I watch all these amazing videos on YouTube on bullet journaling and every month the designs look really nice. So I decided to give it a go and do the same. I contemplated for a while on the theme I wanted to go for. I wanted something easy and relevant but I didn't want to do another flower theme that is the most popular one for this season. So, after some thought I decided to go with clouds and little paper boats, and I'm really excited with the way it turned out.
So, the first page of the month I decided to keep it quite simple with a few clouds and a paper boat on one of them. It was hard to not use my cute penguin calendar, but I think it still turned out cute and nice. I also added the March calendar underneath to add balance to the picture.
For my monthly spread I chose again the grid layout, but I decided to keep the boxes separate. I found that when you create the grid with the boxes connected to each other, unavoidably there will be a column of boxes in-between the pages that made it very difficult to write in them. So, by keeping a space between the boxes you can get a much better layout. Each box is 6x6 except from the first column that is 5x6. And of course the theme continues here as well.
The next page is all about my goals for the month. I kept it very simple with only two categories - Personal and Business. I try to keep things simple and more focused this month, and with these two categories I can focus on all the things that I want.
The next page is my monthly focus. I found this in 'Your Best Year 2018' by Lisa Jacobs and I really really like that idea, so I decided to added it in my bullet journal as well. These are my monthly objectives summarised in 5 categories that include Financial, Spiritual, Mental, Physical and Relational.
These are the five pillars of a harmonic life, as taught in 'Harmonic Wealth: The Secret of attracting the life you want' by James Arthur Ray. And on this page you basically write what you want to improve during this month in each of those categories. It's just another way to help you focus more on specific areas of your life in order to move forward and make changes.
This next spread is again inspired by 'Your Best Year 2018'. I like how Lisa helps you to organise your thoughts and what you have to do during the month. On the left hand page is the areas of focus, where I will write everything I want to do during March. Then I'll take it a step further and I will be more analytical by writing all the steps I need to take in order for everything to be done. After that, I will take those steps and I will group them as the tasks that need to be completed in the 4 weeks of the month. That way, I know exactly what I need to do each week in order to have a successful month, so that I will finish all my projects and tick off all the things from my to-do list.
Next comes my finances page for March. I usually keep this spread in another notebook I have, but I find it tiresome to go back and forth to different notebooks all the time, so I decided to add it in my monthly set up, instead. This is a very basic spread for my income and my expenses. It's good to track your finances, and keep up with your money and how you spend it.
As always, I add a notes page in my monthly set up. The notes page is one of my most used and visited pages during the month. I like to write everything that comes to my head that I want to remember, ideas, and notes that don't have a place anywhere else in my bullet journal. Sometimes I even add post-it notes or I stick pieces of paper and photos. And by the end of the month it definitely doesn't look as nice and clean as this! But I don't mind 😉⠀
For the next spread I was inspired by Sarah Churchill on YouTube. This is my 'one line per day' spread which I basically try to write something every day. It is like a journal - it could be a thought, it could be something that happened during that day, a quote I liked or anything else I want to remember about that particular day. And even though it says that it's a line per day, I added two lines for each day of the month, because I like to have more space to write things down.
The next spread is again something that I saw in Sarah's video and I really wanted to give it a try for March. It's a self love log, where I write one thing I like about myself each day. After looking online, I saw more people mentioning this page as well, and I believe it started from Caitlin's Corner, so I thought I should mention her here as well.
I think a lot of people (including myself) find it difficult to come up with things to love yourself about. It's easier to be hard on ourselves and when it comes to showing some love, people mistake it for arrogance sometimes. So this spread will help me to be nice to myself and find 31 things that I love about me. Let's see what I'll come up with!
Moving on we come to my exercise log. Basically I like to note down when I exercise and what type of exercise I do, how long etc.
I did terribly last month and I have to get back to the way I used to exercise before. I can't seem to make it a habit to exercise at least 3-4 times a week, and this spread is my attempt to persuade myself to exercise more often. I admit that I don't feel very good when I look back at the February's exercise log page, so hopefully this month I'll try harder and make myself proud! If you have any advise on how you push yourself to exercise during the week, please let me know in the comments below.
And the last spread is the first weekly spread of the month. This is the third time I'm using this weekly spread layout and I really like it. This time though I incorporated the theme of the month with the paper boat and the clouds. Do you have any go to weekly spreads that you seem to use over and over? Comment below and let me know. (Spread inspired by @penpapersoul)
You can watch also the video here, to see exactly how I created each spread:
SUPPLIES I USED:
- Scribbles That Matter notebook
- Staedtler Pigment Liner 0.2 and 0.6
- Tombow Dual Brush Markers (451, 491 and N75)
- Stabilo Trio 2 in 1 in black
- Zebra Mildliners (Smoke Blue and Grey) You can purchase them from kawaiipenshop with free international shipping. Use the code christina77star to get a 10% discount.
And that is one more month planned in my bullet journal. Have you finished your setup for March? What theme did you choose for this month? Let me know in the comments below. Also, if you use the same theme like me, please send me a picture of it at christina77star@gmail.com
