How Bullet Journaling Can Keep Your Student Organized in Online School

August 30, 2023 byElizabeth Preston

4 min to read

Journaling can be a great way for students to set goals, track their progress, keep their assignments organized, and create a record of fun memories throughout the school year. But did you know that there are different types of journaling?

One popular and useful type of journaling is bullet journaling. Read on to learn more about different bullet journaling methods, how to get started, and some suggestions for personalizing bullet journaling to make it your own.

What is Bullet Journaling?

A bullet journal is an organizer journal that uses lists and calendars and can be highly personalized to the user. Bullet journaling—sometimes referred to as “BuJo”— often has a combination of a calendar system (daily, weekly, and monthly), lists of goals, trackers to record progress toward goals, lists of reminders (such as fun activities and upcoming deadlines), and a future log (a list of future events and commitments). A bullet journal can include diary entries, creative writing excerpts, and meditations as well. Also, bullet journals often have an index, which functions as a table of contents for the user.

What is the Goal of a Bullet Journal?

Bullet journaling is a notebook organization idea and a method for how to organize your life with a notebook. It is meant to keep track of goals, projects, and deadlines and enable users to break down tasks into smaller and manageable steps.

Bullet journaling is also meant to give the user flexibility so that they can create a personalized organizer journal that works best for them.

Who is Bullet Journaling Right For?

Bullet journaling is great for visual learners because tasks, goals, and deadlines are presented in a visual manner. It also lends itself to those who have verbal-linguistic, logical-mathematical, and visual-spatial learning styles.

Bullet journaling can be beneficial for students who have numerous goals and commitments, such as sports, internships, jobs, and volunteer activities. This type of organizer journal may also be beneficial for online students and self-motivated students.

Since there is so much freedom in bullet journaling, students can be as creative as they want. They may want to use stickers, different colors, and paints or they may want a cleaner, more linear look. One of the best aspects of bullet journaling is that students can customize their organizer journal to fit their needs and desires.

Students who are struggling with how to stay organized or how to stop procrastinating may also find bullet journalling beneficial and motivating.

Common Parts of Bullet Journals

As stated, bullet journals can be customized to a student’s needs and desires. In general, though, bullet journals have the following elements.

1. Note Migration.

This is the ability to move notes and tasks forward to new pages in a journal. The ability to migrate is particularly useful for keeping track of long-term goals and tasks that did not get completed in the day, week, or month for which it was originally scheduled.

2. Spreads

The main idea behind a spread is that a whole page (or two pages) is centered around one purpose, such as a specific topic or a monthly calendar.

3. Collections

A collection is either a page, or part of one, devoted to a specific topic or category. Students may find collections useful when they organize their schoolwork. For example, some simple notebook organization ideas students may consider is to create a collection of tasks for a research project or a collection devoted to a specific subject in school.

4. Goals with Trackers

Trackers can be in any form that works for the user—a colorful gauge of how close a person is to their goal, a list of multiple milestones to accomplish on the way to fulfilling the overall goal, or both.

5. Daily, Weekly, and Monthly Logs

These are lists of the daily tasks, events, and deadlines that must be remembered and addressed.

How to Get Started

In truth, all students need to get started on bullet journaling is a pen and a notebook. However, bullet journaling can get a lot more fun and creative with the following materials:

A journal that speaks to the student’s unique style—students may want to explore journals with dot grids, blank pages, lined pages, or a combination of all three
Colorful pens
Different highlighters
Stickers, such as school stickers, planner stickers, and washi tape
Pictures
Some bullet journal users make collages out of pictures with friends and family, create small paintings, or practice their calligraphy skills in their journals. The possibilities are endless for students to flex their creative muscles.

Bullet journaling can be as creative and artsy or clean and linear as a student wants and needs. It can act as a memory keeper to create a personalized, mini-yearbook of their online school year or serve as a goal and assignment planner for students with busy schedules. The key to this type of organizer journal is that it is tailored to the student, which is often what makes bullet journaling fun, effective, and motivating for students.