Planner vs Bullet Journal

The school year is quickly approaching, and you know what that means? Time to get back in the grind of classes, schoolwork, and all that is that college life. Planners and bullet journals have long been pitted against each other as organizational and planning tools. If you’re anything like me, you’re indecisive as to if a planner or bullet journal is better and it’s hard to choose what system to use. That’s where I’m here to help! Hopefully this helps you decide what may be best for you to tackle your needs.

Planner

Ah, the planner. The traditional way of organization and planning. You’ve probably used one at some point. Planners are great because they are already all laid out for you. You just find your planner and once you buy it, the spreads are already laid out for you. There are so many planner manufacturers that it’s very likely you can find a design and layout that suits you. Sometimes this may take time, trial, and error.

The layout varies from planner to planner and brand to brand, but there’s three main types you can buy: monthly, weekly/monthly, and daily/monthly. Monthly planners just give you monthly spreads. Weekly planners typically put the whole week on one spread, with space for each day. Daily planners get even more specific, giving you one page for each day, typically with a time slot and a to do list space on each page. I used a daily planner last school year, the Day Designer by Blue Sky from Target, but got a weekly Blue Sky planner for the upcoming school year. I found that I wasn’t using the daily time slots as much as I thought and would rather be able to see every day of the week at once and just have space to be able to write assignments down.

Monthly spreads are nice for keeping track of little events and tidbits you have. I don’t tend to use them a lot but some people love them!

This is what a daily spread in my Day Designer by Blue Sky planner. Half of the page is dedicated to “to do” while half of it has space for you to write your schedule down. If you’re the type of person who likes to write your schedule down, then this is the planner for you. I also enjoyed the daily quotes (not pictured) on the top of every page.

My planner for the upcoming year is a weekly planner. It has the same monthly view but I see one week on every spread. I’m excited to try it out since I think it will work better for me. There’s also a notes section and weekly to do section at the bottom, which is nice. Though, I plan on using the day spots mostly for to dos anyways, the dedicated section may prove useful for longer term projects, papers, and assignments.

Bullet Journal

Bullet journals have been on the rise for the past few years now. Essentially, bullet journals are alternatives to planners. In a bullet journal, you design your own spreads. All you need to get started is a notebook, pen, and optional stationary. They’re a lot more flexible in what you can do with them. You create your layouts and spreads how you want them to look. You can be as creative as you want–lots of people have elaborate, intricate, aesthetic bullet journals, but the original creator did none of that.

Since you create your spreads yourself, you can put whatever you want in your bullet journal. You can have weekly layouts, monthly layouts, or whatever your heart desires. You can do everything you could with a planner. The only difference is that some people also use their bullet journals to track their habits, goals, and more. I also love to make lists in mine! The one drawback is that it takes time to set up. You have to really be dedicated to making the spreads and it definitely takes awhile.

This is one of my very early spreads! It shows just how adaptable the system is since I most definitely didn’t use it every day so I would just make headings as need be. I also added a little weekly overview, which I got from studyign on YouTube.

More recently I started using it for making lists for projects and other tasks I had to do. It made it so much easier to plan and break up projects than I could have ever done in a planner. I also made a list of everything my accounting professor said would be on the final and what the format would be!

I made a monthly spread early on too. You can put whatever you want into a bullet journal!

One of my most recent spreads is just a simple weekly to do list. In the summer I don’t necessarily have things that need to be completed daily, so it was nice to have the flexibility to just make a list for the entire week.

What Is My System?

As a college student, it’s important for me to have something that’s ready to use from the getgo. I write every assignment, project, and exam down right when I get my  syllabus. That’s why I ultimately decided to buy a planner. With my bullet journal, I like to make spreads as I go and according to my needs. Until I find a way that works for me there, I’m going to continue to use a weekly planner in conjunction with my bullet journal. My planner is great for tracking the mundane things, but I’ve grown to love planning out projects in my bullet journal. Maybe this year I’ll try more weekly spreads in my bullet journal, especially for non-school related tasks.

In the end it all comes down to what you need out of your planning system. I can’t tell you that, but I can tell you the differences and my experiences. I hope you found this helpful in your planning decisions.