Jack of Many Trades

My Setup

Originally posted: 2015-10-03

[caption id="attachment_7532" align="alignright" width="169"]October 1-15 October 1-15[/caption]

Everybody loves an excuse to talk about their planner, right? So this is my current baby, a bright orange, dot-grid Leuchtturm1917 in a pocket size. I know people have written tons of analysis about this notebook vs that one, but I chose the Leuchtturm1917 because when I went to Powell's, that was the brand that had a dot-gridded pocket size notebook in stock.

In the past I've been a serious devotee of the graph-paper notebook, going back to my freshman year of college when I started using lab notebooks for everything. I started using it because my handwriting is tiny and gridded lines were thinner than college ruled lines. I quickly became addicted to being able to draw straight lines in both directions and adjust as needed.

I've recently been converted to dot-grid because it does all the things I like graph paper to do with some additional benefits. When I'm not writing in a straight line for whatever reason, the dots seem to fade out of my attention span much more easily than a grid does.

One of the best things I took from the Bullet Journal concept was the monthly outline. I hate writing in a traditional, blocky calendar, especially in a format this small. The day-per-line works great for me, though it ends up being split over two pages because the month is long and my pages are short. Below the dates you'll see a few checkboxes sneaking in for things I have to do regularly during the month.

On the next two page spread, I have my monthly bill pay checklist, sorted by due date, and my to-do list for the month. I know some people are big fans of weekly layouts, but I don't generally have more than two or three things scheduled for any given day, and my notebook is small enough that a weekly layout would be ridiculously cramped anyway.

Those are the only things I do every month right now. Everything else is a sprawling mass of notes, bullet points, check boxes and one-off collection lists. It's beautiful and I love it so.