My June–December 2024 Bullet Journal
Every time I share my newest bullet journal setup, I say to myself: ‘Well, that’s it, I won’t be sharing any more of these!’ because I’m convinced that I’ve finally found my forever setup. The truth is, though, that a bullet journal works perfectly for me because its ever-evolving, easy-to-customise system works perfectly for my ever-evolving lifestyle. As my day-to-day changes, so too does the way my brain work. I love the bujo system.
This journal has been a long time coming. Around the mid-April mark, I started to get itchy feet and craved a fresh start but still had a good 50 pages left to use. I mostly felt this way because the notebook itself was getting grubby. Why I thought I’d be able to keep a cream linen book clean for nearly six months is beyond me! Plus, I was noticing little shifts in the way I tackled my days, and knew a fresh bullet journal would just help to complete the effect.
The latter half of 2024 looks pretty packed. From our big family trip back to Hong Kong and Malaysia (my parents’ home countries!), to my boyfriend and I’s anniversary, and countless family birthdays to the holiday season, I know I’m going to need to be pretty organised.
Here’s a peek into my journal for the latter half of 2024.
The notebook
Although I just ranted about my first 2024 journal, I returned to Notebook Therapy for another. This time I chose their ‘Tsuki Sweet Ballet’ design – a gorgeous rose pink linen book with gold ballet shoes at the front – in the same size as my previous one. The thick, white dot grid pages and double ribbon page markers are perfect for my everyday use at the moment. And it comes with a complimentary paperclip, as always!
My vision board cover page
I briefly fell out of love with cover pages this year, opting for a sticker and Cricut decal over anything too monumental. But, I chose to merge my vision board with the date denotations for this book. I’m hoping it keeps me inspired all the way to New Years’ Eve! To do this, I just created a Canva design to the dimensions of my notebook, added a decorative date design on top, and printed it out. (Unpictured, because I’d like to keep my vision board private.)
Index
An index has been absolutely key to my bullet journal system since day dot. This is an evolving contents page, allowing you to keep track of where your pages, collections and trackers are, since typically in a bullet journal you don’t have all of these at the front. I’m always throwing in new trackers – like my Couch to 5k one, from March to May – and it’s useful to be able to easily find them again without index stickers and tabs. I keep about three pages blank just for this purpose, but you could use more or less, depending on your anticipated journal usage.
Future log
I’m a big planner and love to have things in the diary, so a future log is important for me. I think this is one of the main things lots of us bullet journalists still require from the traditional planner days. I’ve mapped out the remaining months of 2024, as well as the first few of 2025, especially since that’s how my workplace annual leave calendar works.
2024 wishlist
My brief dalliance with ring agendas last year brought me one good thing: adopting an annual wishlist in lieu of hard and fast goals. I still feel like I’m in a bit of a waiting room period of life, but my 2024 wishlist means I get to check off lots of smaller fun things. I’ve divided it up into:
- Places
- Books
- Essays
- Recipes
- Projects
- Items (clothes, skincare, homeware).
Spending planner
Once again, my spending planner makes a comeback! I’ve shared a mini money and finance series on my blog this year, and I mentioned how useful I find this collection. Thankfully, it’s still always top of my mind and really helpful for my finances. Like my future log, I’ve captured the remaining months of 2024, plus the first few of 2025.
Gift ideas
My best ideas come to me when I’m supposed to be doing something else, which is why I love a gift ideas page. I don’t have the space to buy gifts far in advance, yet often I’ll come up with great present ideas months beforehand. I already noted that this half of the year is packed with birthdays, but there’s also Christmas, too. This page lets me simply capture the recipient, and the gift idea.
Workout and running tracker
Like I said, a bullet journal is completely customisable to every individual, which is why I’m adding in a workout and running tracker for this notebook. I’m pretty self-motivated with my personal fitness and self-improvement, so this isn’t to keep me accountable, but I’m interested in checking out the relationships between my workouts, fitness, energy levels and mood.
Reading log
Forever in my bookish era, this collection expands on the more aesthetic book trackers I’ve previously kept. Here, I can track the title and author, my star rating, whether or not it’s a NetGalley ARC, and if I’ve posted about the book on my beloved bookstagram.
Monthly dashboard
I simply can’t be without my monthly dashboards. And I use this label to cover the monthly cover page, month to view double-page spread, and month-end wrap-up.
While I thought I wanted to really simplify my bullet journal practice, I’ve realised that I sorely miss coming up with a creative theme each month. Armed with some sweet stickers – Daphne’s shop Coffee & Scribbles is my LOVE! – I’ll create a fun little theme. Then, my usual double-paged month to view. I like to plot in my appointments, etc. here with a new colour code, so I can quickly scan it and see how busy I am. In my last notebook, I remember thinking that I never want to be as busy as I was in February 2024! Beside this, I write a monthly to-do list.
Lastly, I close out each month with a Massie Block-esque Ins & Outs list, plus a few sentences to review the past four weeks or so. It’s become an almost meditative practice, leaving me feeling grateful for the fun memories but also feeling lovely and present.
Rolling dailies
Then, I go into my rolling dailies. I’m using the same bullet key as I’ve done since 2018, and I’m continuing to use these beautiful date stickers from benzstore. My long-form entries all live in a separate notebook these days, which works better for me at the moment. Visually, it looks incredible to flick through walls of words but, practically, it means I don’t need to sift through the mundane to-do lists to find magic memories.
