#102 - "Paper, Pen, and Possibility: My Bullet Journal Journey"

SUMMARY

In this mostly unscripted episode, I share how Bullet Journaling helped me move from burnout to clarity. Before it became a tool in my business, it was a lifeline in my personal life. This is not a tutorial—it’s a story of how I found my footing again, and why I still use this method today. And I announce an exciting challenge I'm working on! 

FULL SHOW NOTES WITH TAKEAWAYS + LINKS

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BEST QUOTE FROM THE EPISODE

“The bullet journal method is about mindful productivity. It’s about reflecting, looking back so that you are able to move forward in a way that’s more…intentional.”

 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 Introduction to Summer Challenge
• 3:31 Introducing Bujo by the Sea
• 9:22 My Bullet Journal Journey
• 16:09 From Overwhelm to Intentional Living
• 25:47 How I Use Bullet Journaling Daily
• 34:04 Bullet Journaling for Business
• 39:06 Join the Summer Challenge

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello and welcome back to Pattern Shift. I'm a little bit excited because I just had an idea, and when I have an idea I get excited. It's almost the summer holidays for the kids here, I think. For them it cannot happen fast enough. For me, I don't know. I really love having them in and around the house, especially if they participate in keeping things running.

Speaker 1: 0:34

There's going to be a little bit of a shift again, a pattern shift, if you will, because this is what happens If the summer's coming or if it's around Christmas. I tend to take a break from podcasting because it really helps me to think about things and to process things and to get even more ideas and to do things and to basically relax, because it does take a lot of time and a lot of work to make a whole episode and I've been doing it by myself for a couple of I don't know a stretch of time and it's not as hard as it was. I can do it pretty quickly now, but it's still a lot of time. So I like to be more flexible in the summer and therefore I'm taking a break, but I have also come up with an idea so that we can keep hanging out.

Speaker 2: 1:36

Hey and welcome to Patternship, the podcast for fiber-loving business owners shaping a slower, more sustainable world. I'm Saskia, a creative business coach and support guide for makers, teachers, designers and indie shop owners in the needle and fiber 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 unique. So grab your favorite brew tea, coffee or, you know, brewiklarit and let's ship the pattern one stitch at a time.

Speaker 1: 2:17

Now this is the thing I want to do. A challenge, a summer challenge, and that sounds like, oh, buddy, I want to have a break from work and stuff. I don't want to do a challenge, a summer challenge, and that sounds like, oh, but I want to have a break from work and stuff. I don't want to do a challenge. Yes, you do, because this is a fun one and it is made especially for summer so that it is easy to do, doesn't take a lot of time, but will give you, like really cool results, hopefully, if you engage, if you do the thing. So I'm calling it Bujo by the Sea, which kind of brings me images of the south of France. I don't really want to go there, it's too hot for me. I don't really want to go there. It's too hot for me, I don't really like the heat. So let's bring it up to a Danish beach or I don't know, just Bujobai, to see. It sounds good, it sounds summery, it sounds relaxing, that's what I'm calling it. So what we're doing is it's going to start the 19th of July, so that's in a month, and it's going to be easy prompts daily, and we're going to do like a bullet journal style logging of the day, but just in a few minutes every day. So I'm going to teach you how to do that, how to use the actual bullets, and I'm going to give you prompts and it's going to be fun. So this week, this episode and the next episode will be about bullet journaling in general, specifically my thoughts about it and my experience with it, and then we're going to start the bullet journal, the Bujo by the Sea challenge, and it's going to be fun.

Speaker 1: 4:13

This challenge is something that you can do in one of two ways, in two of one way you can do. You can choose how to do it. You can either sign up so that you can get it in your mailbox every day, just through email, and if you would like some I don't know contacts, then you could mail me back and say something to me and I could mail you back. That is an option. But if you really want to have the actual connection and the talking about the things and the showing of the pages and all of those things, then why don't you join our community, even if it's just for the summertime, just for the challenge, for however long you like it? Basically, this challenge will bring you a lot and it will cost you like not a lot If you stay for the whole challenge. It's about $20. That's about it. If you want to keep in the loop and if you want to not forget about this, sign up for my newsletter so you'll hear about it in time.

Speaker 1: 5:32

All right, then, about bullet journaling, I'm sharing today how I discovered it, how I use it now and how it really supports me in the way that I run my life and my business. I think it was because I have the bullet journal next to me. I'm just going to grab it now. This is it. It is a little journal I think about, is a little journal I think about? Is this A5, b5, b6? I don't know. It's small-ish. It's smaller than an A5 journal. It's a sign. Anyway, this is dated April to June 2017.

Speaker 1: 6:36

That's when I started, or at least this is the bullet journal that I kept. It is very interesting. It's super messy. It definitely is not how I bullet journal these days, though, I did use all the bullets talking about the tasks and the events and actions and crossing it out and moving it across to the next week, things like that. I did do that, not super consistently. I have to say yeah, so that's what I'm doing today. It is very fun to see the big thing that I wrote inside of it is will this work?

Speaker 1: 7:24

And I put some shiny masking tape probably there over something that was messy and I decided, oh, I'll better make this look better, because at that time I believed that bullet journals were about beautiful handwriting and were about beautiful handwriting and embellishing and making little drawings of things and using your best handwriting and all of that. I definitely did not do that, but I gave it a go At some pages. I really tried to make it look good. It's so fun to see what I was working on at that time and who I was working with. It's ages, ages ago. I did some scribbles here, designing a logo. I don't know what that was for For my own yarn, perhaps I don't really know. Yeah, it's for my yarn labels. Oh, that's fun. That is fun. So, yeah, looking at this really brings me back to those days.

Speaker 1: 8:36

This says that my youngest daughter needed to go get glasses, which is ages ago. She now has contacts. I've kept my invoices in here, my actual. I had an extra phone for the shop with an extra number. Some dried flowers, pretty. I just I really made an effort to get some organization going because at the time, I had smaller children. I mean 2017, ages ago, although honestly, I'm turning 50 this year and to me everything after 2000 is like yesterday. So I definitely didn't fill this journal. I gave it up at some point.

Speaker 1: 9:35

But let me first talk to you about why I started doing this. I had two small children. I had a business. I was already running my yarn shop 2017. 12, 13, I think I must have already been in the bigger shop. I'm so bad with numbers. This is why I need a bullet journal to help me remember stuff like that. So I was overwhelmed by all the things I needed to remember the things for school, for the kids, for school for the kids, like the contact that not the contact lenses the glasses, the doctor's appointments, the parties, the play dates, and then everything for my shop, and then keeping the house together, which is never my strong feet, and also I'm very much. There's a really big part of me that doesn't want to do it, because I don't want to be a housewife. So taking care of my house means that I'm a housewife and very all of that now is clear to me, is part of my demand avoidance and all the ADHD stuff that I didn't know at that time I was struggling with. I did have some idea, but I didn't really take time to figure it out, although the bullet journal had a really big part in figuring out these things, because, as some of you might not know, bullet journaling is not what lots of people think.

Speaker 1: 12:12

The bullet journal method is about mindful productivity. It's about reflecting, looking back, so that you are able to move forward in a way that's more intentional. I needed an anchor. I needed something that helped me re-anchor. Is that a word? Is that a verb? I needed to be re-anchored every day.

Speaker 1: 12:39

When I woke up, chaos started again and I needed something that I could hold on to so that I knew what was next, and the bullet journal helped me with that. I learned from it, obviously through the internet, I think. Youtube quickly figured out the difference between the artistic way of bullet journaling and the actual methods. That was designed by writer Carol. He wrote a book. Let me find the year I've got the book here. The book came out in 2018. So I was bullet journaling even before the book came out, just going by what he was sharing on YouTube, and it was just exactly what I needed.

Speaker 1: 13:30

Not a long time after, I also discovered Marie Kondo, whose philosophy at the time kind of also really matched this whole conscious choice slowing down, paring down, just learning how to choose which has been my word of the year at that time. I think I've had that as a word of the year for at least six years and I still have a hard time choosing. Choosing is something that I suck at, and the bullet journal method Ryder and Marie really helped me with that. I needed to find a way through the chaos and the overwhelm and I was at my shop and I was teaching. I was teaching, I was designing, I was selling, I was doing all the things.

Speaker 1: 14:30

I really, really don't know nowadays how I had the energy to do that. It's I'm, I'm just still wiped out because of it. That's why I cannot understand how I did it then, like my natural amount of energy has just I don't know what happened. So when I found it, I ate it up. I just had to see every clip, every video that Ryder made and I loved it, but in true ADHD fashion style, fashion style. I thought it was hard to keep up, and now I know that was because I didn't fully understand it, yet Over time I got back into it.

Speaker 1: 15:22

I have a bookshelf full of journals and I think the gap I took another journal that I didn't stop because I stopped completely. I see now I just wanted better paper, so I became snobby, I got a Rhodia book and I still love the way that feels, but I haven't bought one ever since Because then, after a while oh wait, let me focus on what I was saying I had a little bit of a drop between 2018 and 2022. Actually, I have been pretty consistent. I mean like six months a year. What happened then? Oh, I remember now what happened then.

Speaker 1: 16:10

You can tell this is not really scripted. What happened then? You can tell this is not really scripted. What happened is I fell into the rabbit hole of productivity and journaling and I found out about what was that? The one with the monkey. I don't have it on my shelf because it feels like I at this, now that I'm so connected to bullet journal, the method and everything, I feel like I had an affair with another type of journal, so I don't remember his name but I remember there was a monkey on the front, but it was all planned, it was all written out.

Speaker 1: 16:51

I had to fill in the gaps and that felt easy. But it also came with a lot of guilt whenever I didn't do a page or didn't have time to do it. This still happens. I don't think I no, I didn't journal yesterday, but I will always come back to it now because now I know how it works. Now I know how to pick it up again. It doesn't take me any effort. So if it's weekend, if I have some things going on, I don't necessarily need to do it every day, but I will go back to it after a few days or so because it just brings me so much and I kind of need it.

Speaker 1: 17:29

The only hiatus that I had was exploring different journals. I think I went into the Hibunichi Weeks thing for a bit, the Traveler's Journal, but I didn't like the way. I didn't have enough space to write. It felt constricted and I kind of built a hybrid of some methods, but that wasn't really working. So I just got back to bullet journaling and got the book and really got into it. Then, when I got the book, I actually got the audio book first and Ryder has a really nice voice to listen to. So I did that first, and then the book, and it took a while. I have to be honest about this. It took a while, but slowly all the things started to click. I'm like, oh, now I get it. This is like this builds on this, and then this builds on this and you reflect back so that you can go for, I get it.

Speaker 1: 18:36

And I have been pretty consistent since I was so enthusiastic that I actually produced my own bullet journals for Yavol, my brand, and they had the dots on the pages, which are not the bullets, by the way. I had two sizes, a5 and what's the other one, the big one, b something, and I worked together with a very local to me bookbinder, I guess. So I worked with this local to me bookbbinder, publisher type small business and they made paper for me that was specific, so that you can use it as a knitting designer to design knitting patterns, because usually the dots on the pages of a bullet journal are in squares, but mine were in rectangles, because when you design for knitting and you do it in squares, then your actual knitting will be warped, not warped like stretched or squished, Because a knitting stitch is not square, it's actually a rectangle. So with my bullet journal you could also design knitting patterns. On one side it had the dots and the other side was empty, so you could draw or do whatever you like. So that was fun.

Speaker 1: 20:06

I did that twice and then they weren't selling as much anymore, because it's a very niche audience, I have to say. And then I just started to use the Leuchtturm books that the Bullet Journal company makes themselves, because they're made for it. They have specific things inside it that are pre-printed, like the index and the key the key where the bullets are explained. It has a little booklet that shortly explains the method. It has stickers. It's just nice. I would feel bad if I used another journal for bullet journaling, because now I'm an official bullet journal trainer, I took a course and I got the certification and all of it. So there's no way I can use another notebook now, but I love them, so that's no issue. So, yeah, that's why I started. I was overwhelmed. I needed something to anchor me. I needed to have a moment in the day where I could know what was next. What do I have to do now, instead of just going around in circles and just the whole idea of working in your business mostly instead of on your business. When I started to bullet journal, that gradually started to change. It showed me what was important. It helped me to differentiate between things that were actually helping my business and things that were not and yeah, it was a huge, huge, huge thing for me.

Speaker 1: 21:59

I've always loved stationery. I've always loved paper and pens. When I used to go to the South of France or Brittany as a child, what I would love to do is to go to the bookshops and look at the different kinds of paper notebooks that they would have and buy pens and everything that would be so different from what we had at home. I guess times have changed. You can buy the same things everywhere now, but at that point there was the Clairefontaine notebooks and stuff and I just loved it. I've always loved it. So the fact that bullet journaling isn't digital and is something that is analog, that really fits with me Because, as when, ages ago, when I was a DJ, I used albums Albums, no, final, that's the word. I used vinyl as well, but I also love digital and they work like my digital calendar and my bullet journal. They work together so well.

Speaker 1: 23:16

It's just fits for me and I can have fun with fountain pens and different inks and sometimes I have a journal that's just black and white and all very organized and you would think I would. I was German if you look into it. Just making a joke, I'm just joking. I love German, it's okay. And so if you open up some of my journals, it's all very strict and black and white and it's just purely functional.

Speaker 1: 23:42

But sometimes I feel a little different and I'll draw a little birdie or I'll go wild with some washi tape, or I want to use all the different colors that I have in inks and fountain pens, and then I feel bad because I wanted to keep it nice and neat. So now it's all over the place and there's no theme to it. It should be a theme, should it? No, relax, it's all good, because the bullet journal and the system, the method, is a tool. It is not supposed to look amazing, it is supposed to help you. So there you go, and if it helps you to make it look beautiful and you don't feel any anxiety or stress or perfectionism around that, by all means make it beautiful. But when it does do all those negative things, then just focus on the method's. It's a tool. So, yeah, the the, it was the method. It worked.

Speaker 1: 24:40

It was also just Ryder, because he is, he's just really smart and I don't know. For a while I followed him on Instagram and I would have a word for the year and then he would have the same word for the year and he was building his business around his method and I was building my business around my thoughts and I just felt like this is my kind of person and I love to think deeply about things and it was just a really good connection. And then I just I think I actually became a member of the Bullet Journal community, which is also on the same platform as my community is on Mighty Networks, and, yeah, I just loved looking at what other people did and connecting with them and connecting with the Bullet Journal team, and every time that they had like a job open at Bullet Journaling, I could not sleep. I wanted to be on that team. I wanted to work with the Bullet Journal team. So much to work with the bullet journal team, so much no-transcript, I just wanted to apply to the jobs.

Speaker 1: 26:02

But then I had to stop myself because, however much I love the method and their team, their business, their everything, their thoughts, if I work for them, I cannot work for me. If you have your own business, you can always use more time me. If you have your own business, you can always use more time. And I always came back to the effort and time and energy I put into their business is not going to go into mine, but at one point they were starting a coaching course. I was like this is perfect. I can become a coach and a bullet journal teacher all in one. This is amazing. I can bring that to my business and teach everyone who wants to learn from me how to use bullet journaling for within their business and bring all the magic to what I'm offering myself.

Speaker 1: 27:05

I was in the beta group and so they started with calling it coaching, but eventually we figured out together because we kind of built this thing together, which was really, really fun and complicated but great. We figured out that it wasn't coaching. Actually we were going to be trainers. So we changed the name and that is the reason that I, once I finished that, started to think about. I also kind of want I really want to be a coach as well and have coaching tools in my toolkit as well as the bullet journal method. So that's how I started the coaching journey. By the way, I still have one or two spots for people to come in and do coaching with me, but not for long. So if you hear this and if you were on the fence. If you were shy, this probably is your last chance for a while. So let me know I had some people through the podcast sign up, so that's really exciting, especially exciting because I then get to talk to the people who listen to the podcast, which is you.

Speaker 1: 28:15

The mindful productivity that is the thing that speaks to me most. Productivity as a thing in itself feels like it has to do with the rat race and always having to be more, do more, harder, further, you know, and that really doesn't fit with me. Well, not because I'm lazy, but because I want to be intentional, because I want to stay healthy, I don't want to burn out again, so I have to make intentional choices and that mindful productivity the reflecting on what you have done so that you can decide on what to do in the future is really, really valuable and that really connected with me. So, looking at me as a person not so much my business, but how I use bullet journaling to align my day by looking in my journal and when my workday starts that could be different moments during the day. It's hard for me to be super consistent with things just because my neurodivergent brain struggles with it, but I also really crave it. So the bullet journal again anchors me in a way, because it might not be the same time every day, but before I actually start working my bullet journal is there and I will first look at my bullet journal to see what I was able to do the day before, what I can do today, how I was feeling before and what I can do today, how I can set an intention to make use of what I've learned from the day before or the week or the month before. So that really helps me to stay consistent in a way that fits my brain. See, brushing my teeth is not easy for me. That's where I am. You might not recognize this and that's fine. But what's good to know is that when your brain works more neurotypically, this might be easier or not. But what I'm trying to say is, if I manage to keep bullet journaling, to keep bullet journaling over years and years and years, with little gaps and everything, but I'm kind to myself, that's okay. And also it fits with the methods, because the next page is empty. You can wait a while before you come back to it. You just flip back to the page where the week before was and then you realize where you were and you pick it up again. So I'm well aware that this might all sound a little bit abstract to you if you don't really know what bullet journaling is. By the way, if you want to learn, I teach workshops, as you might have guessed, and you can find the information on patternshiftfm so I can actually teach you how to do it in more detail, because now I'm basically just talking about it and not teaching anything.

Speaker 1: 31:54

I usually have my bullet journal on my desk, but these days, with our new puppy, skip, I have to bring it with me downstairs, back upstairs again, depending on she's sleeping or not if I'm in the kitchen working instead of at my desk here. Actually, today I found my friend Thea and I I think it was her idea, but we were talking and we came up with a kind of a productivity hack to have a basket with stuff that I can take with me through the house. I have a four level house and I was used to working in this room, in my office room, I guess. For most of the day I would just go down to get lunch and that's it, but now with the puppy, I'm here and then I'm down again, and so I need to bring my stuff where I am. So now I have this basket with my bullet journal, the book that I'm reading for fun, a knitting project, my study book, book and laptop and actually water bottle. I've been doing it for a day now. Let's see if it sticks. Seems like a really good idea. We'll see.

Speaker 1: 33:13

This is actually a really nice comparison to bullet journaling. You really just have to try something. But really try it like really trying means stopping and going back to it and see what's different and reflecting and all of that. So, yeah, bullet journaling it's all about intentionality, reflecting, making the right choices, reflecting on your values, on your needs, taking time to do things, also taking action, not like overthinking forever all of those kinds of things, being conscious. I haven't been using it as much these days, but that was my word when I was talking about Yabble on social media. Everything was conscious. It's just I like to live that way. That's kind of like how I like to do things, and it really matches with the bullet journal method. So it matches with who I am as a person, how I work, and it's my sidekick and it works.

Speaker 1: 34:28

So, yeah, there's also lots of space for creativity. You can make it into whatever you need, and I really like that, even if you don't want to be like creative, creative with it. My daily spreads have a certain look to them, which I will, coincidentally, also use in the challenge. I will share that with you at one point and it just has grown to something that is tailored even more specifically to what I need as a person in my day-to-day, in my business, in everything. So yeah, when it comes to the business how bullet journaling supports the business, how bullet journaling supports Yavol as a business and Pattern Shift the podcast is I have specific collections. That's what, like groups of themed pages, are called collections for the podcast, for marketing, for the community, for my program, and I keep on those pages. I keep the action steps, my intentions, my goals. I have everything together and I can just flip to them and add new action steps, add new ideas, notes and take from that, from that container, from that collection, as I move through my months, my weeks and my days. So it's like a folder on your computer, but it's like I don't know. It's close to your heart. It moves with you.

Speaker 1: 36:16

Whenever you go to a new bullet journal, you ask yourself questions to figure out if you still need all these things or actions, if they are serving a purpose or not. And what is that purpose? It's just a really mindful, slow kind of process of determining whether or not you're on the right track. And if you're a solopreneur, if you work by yourself and you cannot sit and talk about these things over coffee, then it's really nice that you can do that with yourself and have a system and a list of questions to go through, like a list. It's just a few, so that you know that you're on the right track. Of course, it's also just a notebook where you just jot down ideas and thoughts and prepare for workshops or for podcasts. At the same time, I also use Notion a lot when it comes to podcasting.

Speaker 1: 37:26

When it comes to podcasting and that's the great thing you can pair it really well with other tools that work better for other things. I mean, I wouldn't record a podcast with my bullet journal. It doesn't have a microphone, so you definitely need to have different tools for different things, but the bullet journal covers a lot. It is such a big part of my life, my personal life and my business, and that matches so well with what I teach in the Business Circle program. The workshops are separate, but once you know how to bullet journal, you can make really good use of it in whenever you do a program or any other course.

Speaker 1: 38:12

Next week we'll talk some more about the bullet journal.

Speaker 1: 38:16

This was about my personal experience. If you want to join Bujo by the Sea, our challenge for the summer a really gentle practice of just a few minutes every day that helps you become more confident, that helps you to get a better idea of what you need and want in the future for yourself and your business or the business that you're building just sign up for it and use the link in the show notes. You can also go to patternshiftfm and find information there in the show notes. I'd love to have you and, again, you can join the challenge through email. If you want to connect with other people who are doing the challenge, then maybe join the community for the duration of the challenge and, if you like it, you can hang out and stay longer. If you want to know more about bullet journaling the full thing just go to patternshiftfm and find information about my workshops. If you've been curious about using your journal to support your life and business, this summer challenge might be the nudge you need Thanks for listening to PatentShift.

Speaker 2: 39:27

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 PatentShiftfm. Until next time, keep creating with care and trust your own pace, and don't forget to eat and stitch your fibers.