When life gets busy, our creative practices are often one of the first things we let go. This can be start of a spiral in which we slowly disengage with ourselves and lose sight of what matters to us, all for the sake of the hustle.
So how do we make space for creativity when we barely feel there’s enough space for us?
Whether you have many creative hobbies or want to be creative but don’t know where to start, I can’t help but recommend bullet journaling!
Here are a few reasons why:
First: What busy creative couldn’t use a flexible productivity system? A planner or digital calendar can get us confidently from A to B, but bullet journaling – with its grounded, pen-to-paper system – expands on the basics and helps you feel more connected with the what, why, and how.
Second: Bullet journals masquerade as productivity systems, so for those of us that struggle with the need to feel productive all the time, even if we’re doing something just for fun, these journals can be a gentle segue to a practice that feels creative, but practical.
Finally, and arguably more importantly: The bullet journal is perfect for capturing ideas and keeping them tangible and accessible. The system gently nudges you to revisit what you’ve captured at least once from a calm, mindful lens, and creates the time and space that ideas need to coalesce, to become important, and to be explored.
And if you’re just starting out looking for a hobby, or if you simply want to reconnect with your creativity, a bullet journal is an excellent beginning:
These journals invite embellishment, which sets you out on a simple, low-stakes exploration of your personal aesthetic.
Then they ask how you’d like to modify the system to suit your unique rhythm. That means you start to discover your preferences, your pace, and what supports your flow of life.
You then get to exercise your creativity by aligning the system to your unique needs.
Finally, with the system down and blank pages to fill, it invites you to explore yourself, your experiences, and the world around you. From that exploration, you pick out what moves you, and what matters most to you.
And you capture them forever in a wonderfully portable package that you can easily refer back to as the years unfold.
After nearly 10 years of bullet journaling, I can’t imagine not having one. (Admittedly I did move to a digital bullet journaling system for a while – but I’m back in my analog notebook!) They’ve kept me organized, productive, and generally on top of life’s chaos. They’ve also kept me feeling connected to my dreams while grounded in reality, making them pivotal to the reclamation of my own creativity.
What role does a bullet journal play in creative reclamation? It’s probably specific to the person, but for me:
- It freed up my mental load. No longer would I forget to-do’s and miss appointments. (Well, mostly!) The system was reliable, so I didn’t feel the need to keep those commitments rattling around in my head until they were done. I could jot down notes, ideas, or to-do’s that I had suddenly thought of, or that were brought to my attention, in the moment. I knew I would revisit them later in the day, so I could let those things go, too.
- It created space for creative flow. A lighter mental load and a system that worked cleared room for inspiration and ideas and grand plans to come together! The blank pages of a notebook really encourage you to dream and experiment.
- It was a home base for self-expression and ideation. Some of the projects I’ve tried, including this blog, were things that I had played around with years ago in my bullet journals. In there I would write reflections, draw mind maps, make observations about myself and the world around me, or simply dream on paper.
If you let yourself explore your creativity as part of your bullet journaling practice, then over time you’ll start to recognize yourself on its pages.
It’s not just about your day-to-day tasks, but your perspective on their role in your life.
You’ll do the usual stuff in there, like check off today’s big to-do’s or plan for the future, but the more you write, the more that your plans fold into the context of your greater vision. You gain a bird’s eye view of your life where you can observe what is working and what isn’t. Your priorities come into focus.
Your greater vision gets broken down into manageable pieces and practical steps. The bullet journal method is a system through which you can take those steps: literally, in the contents of the notebook, but also actively, in your life.
It is a space just for you.
If you’re brand new to bullet journaling, learn the essentials and get started here at The Busy Creative’s Guide to Bullet Journaling!
