My ADHD Bullet Journal Set Up

Hello Dear Reader, 

I have been through a couple of years of trying different types of bullet journal set ups to find what works for me. I'm excited to share these with you and for the sake of brevity I will probably go into greater depth about each thing in later posts but I will also be linking you to the creators who inspired me on my journey so you can check them out and see what things might work for you. 

A quick side note, all of these are great spreads and I know many people benefit from them and if you think you might I encourage you to try them. The beauty of bullet journaling is that you can try things, and see what works best for you and make the changes you need as you go on. I am just sharing my experiences and thoughts

Traditional bullet journal practices that just don't work for my brain:

• Traditional calendars-

I would set these up and then literally never reference them again. I would go to my Google calendar app for any info related to calendars or future plans.

• Habit tracking spreads-

Like the calendar, I would set these up and then forget about them. In an effort to use both more I tried combining the pages so I would only have to check one extra page but that didn't really feel natural and it felt like a disruption to my workflow rather than an aid. So again, it didn't really get used.

• One or two page weekly spreads-

There was never enough room for my thoughts and tasks, I hated migrating tasks that were not done, I often felt like I wasn't getting anything done and it was discouraging and made my journal a source of stress.

• Dailies-

This is the traditional way of Bullet journaling as invented by Ryder Carroll. I honestly never tried it. By the time I found this information I was already frustrated with the weekly set up and it had all the issues of the weekly setup, minus the space issues.

What I do now instead:

I am planning based on the way I process time. This is a whole other topic, but the traditional Gregorian year, month, week, don't really register. Neurodivergent people, particularly ADHD struggle with time blindness, and trying to force myself to align with the standard tracking of time just made what should have been a very helpful tool in managing the chaos of my goals, and life, and brain into something stressful and unnatural. 

So I'm now planning my time based on seasons rather than months as this is how I think about the flow of time, and then I'm subdividing those seasons by my menstrual cycle because of the impact it has on my life it just makes sense to plan with it. Again this is a larger topic I will tackle at some point. 

My current setup is heavily inspired by Rachael Stephen (1) and utilizes a dutch door set up to let me have two different calendars, one for my cycle and one for my plans. And I have a space for larger tasks/goals that will need more time and smaller steps to complete.

I started using rolling weeklies with a faux dutch door, inspired by Elizabeth at Plant Based Bride (2) which solved my space and rewriting tasks issues nicely. It also gave me space to write down what I did, not just what I planned to do. This was a huge step for me as my memory isn't great and not being able to remember what I did made it feel like I wasn't doing anything.

The next adjustment I made was moving my habit tracking to each day. Making it so I only have to focus on one page in my planner a day means I actually use it and benefit from it. But writing out these trackers every day became difficult for me to manage. Both with my chronic illness and my brain. So we turn to the wisdom of passion planner users: stickers. (I used a passion planner for a year, well Tried to? I only actually used it for about 4 months it was an attempt to make planning easier but the preset-up planner was just something I had to rework and it didn't actually save much time.)

 I make and print my own for my habits, but I bought calendars from Elizabeth because again saving my repetitive writing means my executive dysfunction has less to complain about and I make fewer mistakes. (once I work out the kinks which is a whole process) 

I am eternally grateful to the brilliant people who I have learned from and been inspired by on this journey.

P.S.

I used a productivity tracker for a while and I found it very helpful in the same way that writing out what I actually do and not just what I need to do is. Particularly as a chronically ill person who needs to be reminded that getting a shower and getting dressed count as "tasks" that I have done. I was using the tracker style that Miss McKenna (3) uses. But after I switched to the rolling weeklies with the larger day formats I found it was much easier for me to track what I do there rather than set up a specific tracker for it, though it might benefit you.

Footnotes:

1 Rachael Stephen- https://www.youtube.com/c/RachaelStephen

2 Plant Based Bride "BuJo 101: The Rolling Weekly" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knbT8jnMnfs 

3 Miss McKenna's Life Leverage "Bullet Journal Productivity Tracker"  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4_KtygAEZA&t=1s