#103 - "Freedom Within the Structure: How I Use My Bullet Journal in Business"

SUMMARY

In this episode, I share how I uses the Bullet Journal Method to run my creative business with more clarity, focus, and freedom. I explains how daily logs, weekly spreads, and project collections help me stay grounded, intentional, and flexible—without pressure or perfectionism. If you're curious about using your journal to support your business, this episode offers my honest perspective. 

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BEST QUOTE FROM THE EPISODE:

“This is not a system for doing more. In fact, it's quite the opposite.”

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CONNECT WITH SASKIA

Creative business coach, Certified Bullet Journal Trainer, and host of Pattern Shift. Explore my workshops, community, and coaching programs via the links above or visit my website www.ja-wol.com 

 You know me as a guide, mentor and teacher, but I've also set off on a new adventure, coaching. Coaching gets a bad rep sometimes, but when it's done right, it can be really transformational. As part of my coaching education, I'll soon need to do real coaching sessions. And it could be a really great opportunity for you to experience it at no or low cost. If you've ever been curious about working with me in this way, now's the time. Just send me an email: info@ja-wol.com

This summer, I'm hosting a playful and peaceful journaling challenge. I've called BuJo By The Sea. 

This is for you. You'll get six weeks of gentle prompts plus a cozy space to share and reflect with fellow creatives in the Ja, Wol Community – if you choose so– you can also get these prompts just in your email box. It starts July 19th, and you can sign up through jawol.myflodesk.com/bujobythesea 

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome & Bullet Journal Introduction
• 3:05 Types of Journaling Explained
• 6:30 My Digital & Paper System Synergy
• 9:45 The Daily Log: Heart of the Method
• 17:39 Weekly Spreads & Project Planning
• 25:04 Reflection Practice & Benefits
• 37:34 Bujo by the Sea Challenge

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

All right. So it's bright and early, I literally just woke up, I put on my workout gear and I am going to record an episode. So if you think what's that beautiful voice, it's the time of day. Nothing to do with me. Welcome everybody. Welcome back to Patent Shift, the podcast for fiber-loving business owners who are here to make a change and not just products or sell products.

Speaker 1: 0:33

My name is Saskia, and this is part two of a three-part miniseries on the bullet journal method. It's a tool that I discovered when I was feeling very overwhelmed with two small children and a small business. Everything was small, but it felt big, and I use it every single day. Now I'll tell you more about that in a second and to keep my business aligned intentional and human arts. I help you way, find your next step, organize your business to fit your life and launch ideas with joy and action. Let's untangle the yucky bits like branding, marketing and sales and build something sustainable, soulful and truly you. So grab your favorite brew tea, coffee or you know and let's shift the pattern one stitch at a time. And let's shift the pattern one stitch at a time. So in the last episode, I shared my personal bullet journal story how I found the practice and the methods when everything just felt so overwhelming, and how it helped me build self-trust, organize everything and live in the moment as well as plan for the future. Today, I want to zoom out a little bit and show you how I use my bullet journal and the method to actually run my business.

Speaker 1: 2:17

This is not a system for doing more. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Doing more, in fact, it's quite the opposite. It's a practice for choosing the right things to do in the right time for you, with a lot of clarity and focus, but also flexibility. So it's the perfect tool for me and, as a mentor, I would want everyone to use the bullet journal. As a coach, it's up to you, you decide and as a consultant, I would strongly recommend using the bullet journal. All right, here we go.

Speaker 1: 2:57

So I want to talk to you about three different ways of using a journal before we go on, because it makes a lot of difference. So there's logging, which means writing down what happens as it happens or after it happened, so it's just shortly noting what the day or week has looked like, or month. And then there's journaling, which usually is all about going inward, looking within and reflecting and processing thoughts. And then there's planning, which is more focused on the future, and organizing within some sort of system or grid to know what to do and when to do it. The bullet journal for me, brings all of that together into one. Sometimes I wish it didn't, because I love journals, I love pens, I love all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1: 4:12

But the great thing about it is that it all gets combined into one and if you have your journal with you, you have everything with you. That doesn't mean that I don't have separate journals. I still have my morning pages in another journal, because that is so different. It is. Morning pages are when, first thing in the morning, you just write down everything that comes to mind, no rhyme or reason, just go. It doesn't have to be pretty, you just basically everything that got digested in the night comes on to paper. Now it's your mind toilet, okay, I don't know how many people think that is funny, but I do. Let me take a sip. I've got a dry throat, okay.

Speaker 1: 5:10

So having everything into one journal at least everything that I need for my business is really, really convenient. So I say when I say everything, I mean that I do plan in my bullet journal and I plan out the week. Mostly I plan per week and then I have my digital calendar. For me, the basis of that is my digital calendar is where I plan in the future, and every month I look into my digital planner. Actually, every new bullet journal I look into the future. I need a sound. If I had a fancy editor, they would put a really fancy sound here. So, yeah, then it's really a team. It's really teamwork with the digital calendar and my bullet journal.

Speaker 1: 6:15

Everything that I'm talking about here is how I do it and it's really really close to the original methods. There's only slight differences, but it's supposed to have slight differences because you can make it so that it works for you. So there's a bullet journal, there's a digital calendar and then there's my morning pages. I might also have a one line a day notebook and not use it very often, and I have a traveler's notebook that I sometimes use when traveling, but they're not part of my day-to-day. You know tool set kits. So let's talk about the bullet journal and how I use it.

Speaker 1: 7:03

I think what's important to talk about is this whole myth of the perfect system. I don't really believe there is a perfect system. If there was, everybody was using it, we wouldn't have any trouble planning our days, weeks, months, work, personal life Everything would run smoothly. It's bound to be challenging sometimes, and what I've been trying to do is to really be creative and find ways to make it my own. So bullet journaling so far has been close to very close to perfect. As I told you in the last episode, I have tried other things, but this is just such a simple and honest tool.

Speaker 1: 7:55

It's a notebook that basically stays on my desk. There's pens here, everything that I need is here. I don't travel much for work. I can just leave it on my desk for the whole day having the puppy and she's growing everyone. She's becoming so big she actually looks like a dog now. But that's not the topic, saskia, stay to the topic.

Speaker 1: 8:35

So what's been different is that I haven't been in my workroom or in my office or studio space or whatever you want to call it. I haven't been here much because I'm on call most of the day. I'm on call most of the day and I have been taking a tote with me up and down the stairs because we have a four level house with my journal in it, so it has actually been traveling quite a bit and so have my legs, and so that's a little different now. But usually I just and so that's a little different now but usually I just I had it on my desk and not necessarily first thing in the morning, but as soon as my workday starts I open my bullet journal and I look back to what I have logged the day before, what I wrote down, and I will look at it and reflect on it. And the reflection in the beginning is like you have to actually it's a verb, but after a while it's just so natural you kind of scan over what you wrote and you just know what the next step is.

Speaker 1: 9:44

This episode is not about teaching you how to bullet journal. It's about me explaining to you how I use it, and sometimes that needs a little bit of explanation of the system. So I'll do bits of explanation. And what you need to know in this moment is that a daily log is where you log what happens through the day or what's going to happen, and you focus on tasks, events, notes and feelings, and you've got different bullets for that, and bullets are like icons that you put in front of the thing you're going to write.

Speaker 1: 10:29

So a task is a dot. When you finish a task, you can cross out the dots. When you need to move it to another day, you turn it into an arrow. When it's not applicable anymore, you cross it out, and then there's an open circle for an event. There's um, um I don't know what that name is in English, I need to look this up. Uh, oh, yeah, I do An equal sign, I guess that's what it's called. Equal. Equal to two lines, like one on top of the other, and that is where you can note your feelings, and those could be how you feel mentally or physically or how you felt about something that just happened in the event you went to. So, let's say, I went to a yarn fair and you note it, with an open circle, a yarn fair location, and then you can log how you felt about it so amazing to see all my old friends and then you can add some actions reach out to this and this business for working together, and that's kind of how you build your day.

Speaker 1: 11:48

So in the morning, when I start my work, I sit down, I look at the day before I check off what I have done, if I haven't done that already, because you do that through the day as well. I move whatever and we call that migrate in bullet journal language. I migrate whatever I haven't finished to the next day. But before I migrate it I ask myself a couple of questions to make sure that it still fits with my intention and if it still makes sense to actually migrate it. And these questions, which I'm not going into at the moment, are magic because they help you filter out all the BS and they help you turn. I don't actually ask them in my mind anymore because I just know now when I look at it.

Speaker 1: 12:38

It's really weird how that works, but they help you turn your what lots of people make, to-do lists, and they're so long and they're so pressuring and they're so like suffocating. And these never-ending to-do lists, if you use like a calendar version, you have to take it with you and the bullet journal method really helps you to look at that list and decide does that even align with what I need or want this moment of my life? That means if you it's a practice, you really have to practice it. But after a while you end up with just a few things to do every day because you learn what's realistic and you learn what can be done and it takes so much pressure and stress off your shoulders. It's been a huge change for me. Really, honestly, the pages just tell you you're taking on too much because you've been moving this task for three weeks now. It's time to really reflect on it and think about it. Does it make sense to keep doing this right now, or do you have to find an alternative? Or do it another month and then you also migrate it, but you migrate it to another month. Okay, I realized that this might.

Speaker 1: 14:05

If you don't know the bullet journal method. This might all be a little abstract, but I encourage you to just listen to this and take the vibe of it with you. What you could also do is have a look on bulletjournalcom, and there's some really good clips and explanations there. Of course, I do the workshop, so if you want to learn how to actually do it, you can go to patternshiftfm and find all the information there. If you just want a little more information, I would say read a little bit more on my website first and then go to bulletjournalcom. Please don't, if you want to know, don't go to Pinterest or TikTok or Instagram, because the bullet journal term has been watered down by watercolor.

Speaker 1: 15:56

I would say it's the beautiful art journals that are out there using the word bullet journal are sometimes crossovers, by the way. So sometimes they are bullet journals but they're not the core methods. It's really pretty to look at, but it's been scaring a lot of people off because they think it has to look pretty. It really, really, really doesn't. It really doesn't. Mine doesn't look pretty. The prettiest thing about my bullet journal is when I pick a pretty color ink. That's about it and that's not what it's intended for. It's intended to help you, not to get in the way, and of course I have to say we're all creatives here. If you want to do it creatively and have those really pretty pages with all the details and everything, go ahead Absolutely. But I'm talking about the method, the tool that helps you, and all you need is the ability to write, basically, and a paper and a pen. It doesn't have to be anything fancy. It can be really, really cheap. So that's what I love about it too. A lot of information is also available for free, so it's very open to everyone.

Speaker 1: 17:19

So my daily log is the core of everything. I will start the day and I will put down the date. I'll put next to date in the left-hand corner, and this varies a little bit, but at the moment I put the date in the left-hand corner month first, because that's easier to find when you're flipping through your pages. Then I put one dot in the middle of the page and it's the dot is like a big dot for action, and then under that I make a little space for my intention for the day. Make a little space for my intention for the day. So your intention is a very important part of the bullet journal method. Every new journal starts with writing down an intention for the duration of using that particular journal. So whatever is alive for you, whatever is important to you that will help you, as some sort of a compass, to make decisions Am I doing this or am I not doing this? Am I focusing on this? Am I pursuing this? All the ideas that I have, are they in alignment with my intention? So that's probably what I take most time on in bullet journaling thinking about that intention. But once you have one, you could still have it in the next bullet journal if it's still alive for you. So for me, my intention is all about. I try to bring it down in one word, but there's a whole story below it. There's a whole page written Symbiosis.

Speaker 1: 19:14

I think it's really important that my family life and my work work together in a way that is really helping me, and it's also in alignment with my neurodivergence and my health things that are going on. So I want to be in a constant state of bringing things together creatively in a way that works for me. What's been interesting is that getting the puppy made me realize that it's not going to be just for now, for a short while. Everything's going to be different from now on, so I have to be really intentional about how to kind of literally rebuild my days. One of the things I have been doing is taking that tote with me from the kitchen to the living room, to my office space and all those movements throughout the day, whereas before I would just go down for lunch and go back up to the office again. So that's your intention and it could be anything.

Speaker 1: 20:26

So then in the day-to-day I also look at my daily intentions, and those are more of a personal cheerleading. I would say to me, like how have I been feeling generally? What do I need to pay attention to? So it could be something like focus on drinking water or enjoy the small moments or allow yourself rest, or those kinds of things. Last week I had slow and steady wins the race. I just need a little bit of an extra support throughout the day and I think about what that is in the shape of a sentence, and then I write it down.

Speaker 1: 21:09

After that, I'll write down all the events that I know that are going to happen. I look to my weekly spread for that and I also check my digital calendar, because when I'm making appointments with family and friends, they all go in the digital calendar. At any point that can change. So every day I reference my digital calendar. Then I will look at what happened the day before and I'll move all the tasks, the actions that I didn't do, to the day of today unless I decide, using the filters, the questions that it's not supposed to be today. And then I flip back to my week and I look at the things that I can add to the day, and that's how I start. So I have a little bit of a startup section, a dashboard, if you will, and then, when the day progresses, I'll add notes, feelings, thoughts which are notes, notes, feelings, thoughts which are notes. I'll just log the day as it goes and sometimes at the end of the day when I have the energy to do it, I will go through it and I will check everything off that needs checking off. But usually I'll bring that to the next day when I start again and do that whole cycle again. So that's for my daily logs, the backbone of everything.

Speaker 1: 22:44

Oh, I forgot one important thing. I put down the big dot at the top of the page because there's only one priority, your priority. The word says it, it's just one thing. So a priority list of seven things is not a priority list. So I put the most important thing to the top and if I feel like I'm really busy with different projects, I might write down a priority for each project. But that helps me to focus on the most important thing. What's the thing that brings my business forward today is a question that I ask myself if I don't have a very clear priority. So what will bring my business forward today? I'm talking about business life mixed, but I have to say my bullet journal, the focus is a little bit more on business, because that needs a little bit more planning.

Speaker 1: 23:52

Okay, so stepping into the next part, my weekly overviews, my weekly spreads part. My weekly overviews, my weekly spreads. So every Monday morning is the start of a new week and also the start of a new day Monday. So every Monday morning I make a weekly spread, and on the left-hand side, a spread means two pages when you open your journal, two pages next to each other. On the left-hand side I will reflect on the week before. I will just write a page. If I have time and patience, I'll just write about it, and if I don't have time or patience, I'll use the bullets and the notes to shortly note down all the things that have happened. And if you write down in short sentences and words and using the bullets, we call that rapid logging. That's the language in bullet journaling for the way you write things down quickly. So sometimes I do it in rapid logging style, but usually I'll reflect with longer, long-form journaling and I'll keep it to one page.

Speaker 1: 25:13

Then, on the right-hand side this is where I do things a little bit differently. This is where I do things a little bit differently. I split that up into six horizontal parts for the days of the week and the sixth one is split down the middle between Saturday and Sunday, because I don't have much in the weekend and I don't want much in the weekend. So the days are like banners. The five parts that are left are actually also split down the middle and I have the events on the left hand side so I can quickly see what's going on this week and what appointments I have tasks on the right hand side so I can quickly see these are all the things I want to do this week.

Speaker 1: 25:59

So when a week starts I'll go back to my collections. So collections are pages where you collect one topic, items or a project or things like that. So you collect the tasks you need to do in a collection before you spread them out over your months, weeks and days. I refer back to that. I decide what needs to be done this week and I kind of guesstimate at what day it would be best to do this week, and then I put it in that day Doesn't mean that it gets done exactly that day, because every day I reflect back to the week and I look at all the tasks and I'm like, okay, today I really actually can do this, but this I'll have to do it tomorrow. The week is almost like a really short task list of the week and I take the tasks and put them in my days as they roll along, and this also really looks like a calendar more than anything else, and I need that. I need my appointments to be visual and everywhere, and I need to write them down multiple times, otherwise I will definitely forget. So that's super, super helpful for me just to have that repetition of writing events down in the month and then in the week and then the day. It's been a day and night difference for me because I just simply will not remember otherwise.

Speaker 1: 27:47

Going back to the collections, this is more about project planning. So long-term projects like my podcast newsletter or my community, my course building, working on learning how to do coaching, all those types of things I'll have a collection separate for that and that is a spread as well two pages next to each other, and what I'll do is on the left-hand side I will have a block, a square, a rectangle, and I'll put the specific goals for that project there and my specific intentions for the project. So for Yavol, marketing and Sales, my goals are simplify the website, a more defined ecosystem of products and services on my website and streamline my program and I've put down. Ambassador and community lead. Organic outreach Ooh, big words, big words. Saskia, that was a good day. So, as you can see, these are not very fancy goals in terms of they're not smart goals, which is interesting because I do teach about smart goals, but I also teach that you need to use what works for you. So what aART goal will have numbers in it, like website, simplified by August 2025, or something like that.

Speaker 1: 29:26

For me, I've learned that if I make it too strict, I would just go doesn't really work for me. So I want to hold them lightly and I want to hold them as a direction that I'm going in. I'll see what happens on the way and usually I'll get really motivated and do some things really fast and other things will take me longer, but it's a general direction I want to go in. And then my intention is supporting myself, my needs, between brackets, by supporting others, their needs, and slow and ethical marketing. So those are my intentions, and intentions also are very close to your core values for your business and your life.

Speaker 1: 30:13

Then, below that, so that's really clear, because that has like a line around it, so that's like the dashboard of my collection, my project, and then below that, I'll just brain dump a bunch of tasks that come to mind, this I need to do to be able to get to those goals. And then on the other page, the right page, I'll just write down notes, so I have this whole thing together, of course. Then you say what if you run out of space? Well, just open a new, you just flip the page and keep writing. And sometimes you have to start a new page halfway through your notebook because you filled up everything else. But that's great because you have an index. And then you just put the date, the number of the page in your index and you can find it and the title is the first thing you see. So the Yavol Marketing and Sales Collection could go throughout my bullet journal and I'll go to the index and find the pages where I can find the information. So that's how I do project planning.

Speaker 1: 31:25

And then, of course, every month I look at my collections and see which of the tasks need moving to this month and which ones can stay and be done later. And then when I do my week I look back to the month, and then when I do my day I look back to the week. If that makes sense, I also have a page for my pets where I keep their vaccinations and their anti-worms and fleas and other bugs and things like that, and I have a bunch of collections. I have physical health, mental health. Then I have the Business Circle program, business Circle membership. I've got the Yavo community membership. The podcast yeah, that's the main project that I want to share with you. I can have some secrets, can't I?

Speaker 1: 32:23

So then it leaves the part of reflection, and reviewing the reflection is a continuous practice throughout the method. It's something that you do on a weekly, daily and monthly basis and it doesn't need much time. As I said, sometimes it's just you look at a task and you already know what to do with it, but sometimes you're stuck and then you just need to do some more work to figure out what to do or how to do things, and you can use long do or how to do things, and you can use long form journaling to do that, like I do at the beginning of every week, looking back at the week. If you do morning pages, that's really helpful and you can take what you get from that into your bullet journal as well. Every month I do the reflection as well.

Speaker 1: 33:18

How did the month go.

Speaker 1: 33:20

How was I feeling?

Speaker 1: 33:21

What was going on with my health?

Speaker 1: 33:24

Did I have enough time to hang out with friends?

Speaker 1: 33:28

Did I actually do the things I was supposed to do? Why am I ignoring this seemingly simple task? Why am I not doing it? Because that's key. You start to see patterns coming up Like why am I so bad at doing this? And it seems so simple and so easy to do. And then you really sit with it and then you could actually take action on it. So if you know that you feel uncomfortable about something or you feel like you lack knowledge or you need accountability, then you can actually do something about it and learn more, or ask a friend to check in with you if you've actually done it, or ask for help if you need it, instead of just mindlessly pulling it along in a heavy, heavy bag on a string and no, you don't want that.

Speaker 1: 34:30

So the reflection serves that purpose of looking at all the things you're doing and have been doing, and how do they align with your purpose. Are you still going in the direction that you want to be going in? So I think I've explained why the bullet journal works so well for me. What's the most important thing for you to know is that it really is a practice. A lot of these steps come so naturally to me now that they take absolutely no effort, but it's been something that I've been building on for years now. I've studied to become a professional bullet journalist, I guess, and I'm a certified trainer by the Bullet Journal Company and one of the first in the world and first in the Netherlands, I'm proud to say. If you need help, I can teach you. Just go to patternshiftfm to get more information.

Speaker 1: 35:29

It's a practice, but it also starts out really simple and the beauty about it is that it doesn't start out. It's not the kind of thing where you need to study to grasp something that's really complex. No, you actually start by logging every day and once you get that, you take the next step and then you take the next step and then you gradually just grow into it and it takes hardly any effort at all if you do it that way. But if you want yourself to have this perfect system going from day one, that can be a little disappointing If you don't want to take a workshop or you can't afford to do a workshop. The Bullet Journal Method book is great. Go to the website. It has a lot of information and try to build on it. Don't try to make it perfect all at once. It will never be, because it changes and my daily logs look different than what they did before. So just I wanted to share that with you and to actually make it easier for you to get started with this.

Speaker 1: 36:46

I thought of something fun. This episode is part of a bigger project and I'll tell you a little bit about it now, but next week's episode is going to be more in detail about it. It's called Bujo by the Sea and it's a six week free summer journaling challenge and it's designed to help you build clarity and confidence, one bullet at a time. So what you'll do is start to do daily logs and put your toe in the water Bujo by the Sea. Put your toe in the water Blue Journal by the sea. Put your toe in the water and feel what the water's like and just have a little bit of a sense of is this for me or is it not for me? I promise you you'll get something from it.

Speaker 1: 37:31

I've got something planned that's really fun and has a theme to it and has structure to it. We love structure, don't we? We love the chaos within the structure, I love the freedom within the structure, and bullet journaling is just that. So I'll invite you to join Bujo by the Sea. You can already sign up.

Speaker 1: 37:55

It's a challenge it's just going to be for the summer, and you can either do it by joining the community for the duration of the challenge for a really low price, but then you'll have other people doing it with you and connect with other people and you can share things. Or you can sign up for the mailing list and you'll just get your prompts on a daily basis in your mailbox and you'll find the link to signing up in the show notes and on patternshiftfm, or go directly to yawelmyflowdeskcom. Slash bujo by the C. Thanks for listening to Patternshift. If today's episode sparked something for you, I'd love to hear about it. Or, better yet, help you take the next step. You'll find links to my programs, community and more support for your creative business at patternshiftfm. Until next time, keep creating with care and trust your own pace, and don't forget to eat and stitch your fibers.