Migration Into a New Bullet Journal

It is official - I have filled my R2 bullet journal completely and have now moved into my other journals. Yep, that's right, I now have two journals at home that I am using. In this picture, the one on the left, my trusty R2-D2 journal is full of calendars, collections, and the first portion of the CMTE course that I am taking on business practices. Since I was almost finished with the pages in the R2 journal, I moved my calendar and important information pages into the bullet journal pictured below, a Passion Planner. I've never used one of these before, and I'm finding that it helps me keep track of the things that I want to keep track of! I think I may get another one of these once this one fills up. My new journal (upper picture, on the right) is reserved only for CMTE things right now, but who knows what it will morph into as I keep using it??

I enjoy using my journal to keep track of things that I need to do. I also enjoy watching what very creative people do with their own journals. I don't do any sort of decoration (other than selecting a color for each week) in my journal because it really doesn't help me to have lots of pretty flowers painted into my books. I do watch folks decorate their agendas in ways that just stagger my imagination and spur me into trying new things (outside of my journal), but my bullet journal is just a place to write things down.

My Passion Planner is one that I was given my sister. I'm sure that someone gave this to her because she doesn't use this type of planner. I usually get her regifts, and that is fine with me! I do like using pen and paper calendars (mainly because I do not want my phone to be the center of my life!), so I got this particular planner as a gift. It is undated (which I prefer), and I like most of the things included within the pages. I also like the embossed picture on the front cover - it is full of creative pictures.

Inside the book, there are weekly calendar spreads. As I've said, mine is undated, so I was able to start it as soon as it became necessary to do so rather than having to abandon a half-filled journal in favor of the new journal. Every week includes a place to set a focus (this week's focus is to move forward on my CMTE coursework) and then to do a brief review of how the week went. There is an inspirational quote every week - this week's quote is from Voltaire - and a focus step. This week's quote and focus step are both centered around gratitude and thanking those who have helped us over the years. Under the calendar portion, there are two to-do lists - personal and work. The rest of the page includes a "space of infinite possibility." Right now, I am using that space for brief thoughts (also called a brain dump) and for worship planning purposes. At the back of the journal, there are some blank pages where I've migrated my important collections. I have my budget, the list of restaurants that I've tried, my "Last Time I..." list, and my school calendar.

There are, of course, things that I don't like about this planner, but I am learning to work with them rather than work against them. There are month-at-a-glance pages, but they are in another part of the journal. I do lots of flipping back and forth between pages. I have heard that there is a dated version of this planner that has the month pages before the weeks in each month, but I am not interested in a dated planner, so this will do for now. I'm not really all that fond of the hourly indicators - it starts at 6am which is late for me and ends at 10:30pm which is REALLY late for me. This is just something that I choose to use in a limited manner. My timeline is more of a suggestion than a requirement. If there is something that has to happen at a specific time, I put it in the box - it doesn't always match up to the time indicators on the calendar.

So, what does this have to do with music therapy? My bullet journals are part of how I organize things so I have more time to do other things. If I get an idea, I write it down into my journal to review later. If I need to schedule an appointment, it goes into the journal. My goals are in my book. My thoughts are in my book. My session strategies are in a book (not this one, but the one that I use for work things - it stays at work - ooh, that's a way I can separate work from home time - my work and personal bullet journals are different books!). So, there isn't anything remotely music therapy about using a bullet journal except for whether or not the music therapist who uses it is helped out by this particular system.

I hope, if you actually read all the way to the end of this post, that you have some sort of organization/time management system that you use to help yourself get from place to place and session to session. I know that some of us use scheduling and project management software or apps. Others of us use post-it notes (I do use these - until I can put them into my journal). Others of us don't really have any sort of system identified. 

I hope that you have a system, and I'd love to know what it is - leave a description in the comments below! 

As always, thanks for reading. Have a good music therapy day!!