Bullet Journal set up for 2021

I’ve been bullet journaling since around 2014 and have to admit I’ve got it down pat - at least to how I like to bujo. I’ve shared a bullet journal series before sharing my usual weekly and monthly spreads, and even sharing my top recommendations for stationery.

This year however I’ve upgraded from the Leuchtterm 1917 journal to a fancy Archer and Olive journal. Nothing against the Leuchtterm, I do love them but the Archer and Olive have thicker pages and this year I wanted to get a bit more creative and experiment with more mixed media than the Leuchtterm would allow without bleeding or warping.

The Archer and Olive journal did take a wee while to get all the way over to little ol’ New Zealand but it gave me perfect time to sit down and plan out exactly what I wanted to include in my 2021 set up. Here’s what I chose to include!

Year at a glance

For the past few years I haven’t really done anything fancy for my year at a glance spread. I’ve often just put a calendar grid for all twelve months on a single page to reference throughout the year. I don’t add any events or details in, which is something I felt like I was missing. Often events, or appointments for future months come up and I end up forgetting them before I get to make that months calendar spread. So this year I changed things up a bit.

Borrowing an idea from AmandaRachLee from her 2021 set up I decided to do a little Dutch door style layout so all 12 months could be on the same spread but they still have enough room to add in future events and appointments.

2021 books

I really enjoy tracking my books in my bullet journal even though I track them on Goodreads and I don’t actually look back to past years book trackers. So frankly I don’t know why I do it but I enjoy it so why not.

I wasn’t the biggest fan of my book spread last year so this year my goal was to upgrade the design. I’m really happy with how this one turned out. I’m hoping to read 55 books this year, we’ll see how that goes!

Goals

Goals and planning are some of my favourite things so of course I needed a full spread for my 2021 goals. This year I’m working with a phrase of the year and also splitting my year into quarterly focuses. I also have 12 resolution type goals that I’d like to get done this year.

While it seems a lot it’s all very achievable if I keep on track.

Things I achieved this year

This is something I loved back in 2019 but frankly I didn’t put a single thing on my list last year until I came to review it at the end of December. So while I didn’t use it at all last year I still wanted to continue it for 2021 as hopefully we’ll have a bit more of a normal year.

Social tracker

One of my goals this year is to be more visible and in turn increase my mailing list and social media following. A social media tracker is really cool to look back at the end of the year and see the increasing numbers. Actually keeping track of which months your following increased the most allows you to correlate to what you were doing at the time which allows you to see what types of content your audience prefers.

Highlights

I had a highlights page back in I want to say 2017 but I either forgot to print out Polaroids or didn't have anything really to highlight that month. But after seeing Amanda do one in her 2021 setup I decided to bring it back. I’m not planning on specifically printing out Polaroids this year but instead printing out photos just on my home printer and sticking them in. Of anything, not just big events or gatherings, maybe just a nice lunchtime snap or my favourite Instagram of the month - whatever takes my fancy.

Content tracker

Ah ha - a new spread. I’ve never done this before but as one of my goals of the year is to be more visible I wanted to post more on social media and the blog. This content tracker allows me to keep track of when and where I’ve posted and keep an eye out if anything lags behind and needs updating. It’s different to my content calendar as it’s not as detailed, just let’s me know how often I posted last month rather than exactly what I posted.

I don’t know exactly how useful it will be or whether I keep it up to date but we’ll see how it goes! If it works out how I hope it will I’ll be using it for the foreseeable future.

- Sophie

Pin for later!

If you found this useful be sure to share it to Pinterest to come back later, and so others can find it too! Use the Pinterest save button by hovering over the image below.