Dot Journaling (post 1)

Something new I want to start this year is Bullet Journaling. I had heard about it here and there but never really looked into it. Then one day I was shopping at Amazon and a Dot Journaling book popped up - so I guess I should say I'm going to start dot journaling!

I purchased the book/journal combo (love that this is a set so you can start right away!) and discovered that dot journaling is a combo of a to-do list, planner, and journal/diary -perfect! It's all in one place (although you can have several dot journals that would be too much work for me).

The book is great, I love that it explains dot journaling super simple and has lots of pictures and examples for this visual mama!

I read the book Friday and started creating my own dot journal today (Saturday). The first page is the index page -I admit it's kinda ugly BUT I did it, I wrote in my journal and started. I might invest in some washi tape and rewrite the word 'index' because I find that with the pen I used, my writing is not that nice.

I also found that the pen I used was awfully light but hey, I did it. I wrote in my clean brand new journal!

Next, I created the yearly spread. I opted to do three months to a page spread and started in June um, July since that's the month we are in. I accidentally left out June but that's okay -no biggie. 

Now it was time to make a monthly spread. I was supposed to put the month-at-a-glance page on another two-page spread but I decided to put it opposite the monthly page. If I find there is not enough space I can always do it a different way next month. So "technically" the monthly spread should be both pages. I think one side for the calendar type stuff and the other for notes or dot notes.

The month-at-a-glance is supposed to spread across both pages (thus the word -spread), Of course it's your journal and you make it work for you. I just thought it would be nice to have it all together but we'll see.

After creating the monthly stuff, next is the weekly spread. Now I know the week starts on a Sunday but I decided to put the weekend days together and have my week start on Monday. This will help me with getting into our homeschool week. It's a weird mental thing. Our homeschool week starts on Monday so my brain works better if my paper "brain" does too. Brain as in this dot journal will carry everything that I need to remember and do.

In the Dot Journaling book, the place where I have notes the author Rachel has a smaller notes area. Her's on the left side page has a small box for notes and another one for gratitude. On the right side of the journal where I have that empty space (I'm still trying to decide what would work for me), she has tasks there. For example, she put exercise, read, unplug, etc. and seven little boxes to mark off that she did those tasks each day. I might add tasks there or maybe put a verse or quote. I am not sure yet.

Lastly is daily spreads, this is where you can dot journal your to-do list, journal, or bullet point what you are doing. You write throughout the week then make another week-at-a-glance spread.

You can get as fancy or be as plain as you like. Right now I'm making my spreads with a pencil. I did goof a few times and was thankful I could erase. I love color so eventually I'll add more color but for now, I'm just using pencil.

In the back, I am going to add a book list and a food tracker. I will add those a little later.

I'm happy to say that drawing the boxes, lines, calendars, was not that hard and didn't take too much time. I rather enjoyed it and as I become better at this I believe I will be a bit faster at it too. The first time is can be intimidating so you take a bit longer.

Do you Dot Journal or Bullet Journal -I'm not sure if those terms are one in the same but they seem pretty similar to me. I'll have to look that up!

Let me know if you Dot Journal!


After writing this post I wrote a few things in my dot journal using the Sipa fine tip pens and didn't have any bleed-through issues.