Week 42: Planning (The Bullet Journal Method Book Club)

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Hello Sunshine!

After reading and analyzing this section to distill it into this post, it occurred to me that going on a trip with Ryder must be packed with so much fun. Actually, thinking of it now, I can say that’s true with the lovely afternoon we spent in New York, he showed me so many wonderful sights. Back to this part, I think he did a great job breaking down how to plan. He dove into each part of the planning process and all of the components. I’d recommend bookmarking this for constant reference if you tend to get overwhelmed with planning because he really does hold your hand through this process.

Resources:

Planning

Pages 250 - 254

Welcome to week 42 of The Bullet Journal Method Book Club!

“Whether planning a trip to Hawaii, a website relaunch, or a presentation, you’ll ensure the best use of your time and resources if you pause to define what the parameters and variables are before figuring out how to structure a plan of action. In order to design a meaningful Collection, you need to define the “ingredients” you have to work with. Depending on what you’re working on, these ingredients take the form of values like sessions, weight, distance, etc. Your Collection will be designed to clearly store and order these values.” Continuing the “Hawaii Vacation” Collection:

  • Brainstorm the pieces of information/ingredients you need in your Collection. Brainstorm by asking yourself small questions such as “Where do I want to go? What do I want to do? When do I want to go? And what’s my budget?”

  • These questions reveal the categories: Destination, Activities, Time, and Budget. 

  • List these categories right after your brainstorm spread. Include content under these categories as shown in page 252.

  • You can create Subcollections for each.

  • Next is research.

Research:

“The more aware we are of what to expect, the less we’ll end up fumbling about when we get there. This may seem obvious, but a lot of people begin their big project with a dramatic gesture or proclamation with no idea what they’re up against. As we’ve discussed, overwhelm can quickly drain us of our motivation and excitement. We can mitigate this by educating ourselves ahead of time.” Be careful not to get caught up in too much research, because that can lead to “analysis paralysis” with too many options.

Time boxing (pg 178) can help by giving you a start and end time.

Discussion:

  • What is your process for creating plans?

  • What did you think about how planning is broken down in this section?

  • What did you find most helpful?

Action List:

  • Continue working on your “Hawaii Vacation” (or place of your choosing) Collection by brainstorming the various pieces of information/ingredients that you need to organize this Collection. Brainstorm by asking yourself small questions such as those mentioned above.

  • Add the categories to your Collection and fill them in as you add each category.

  • Research to ease you into the project.

  • Time box each part of the research, such as “two 30-minute research sessions per island.”

  • Create your “Destinations” Subcollection and list out all of the islands you’re interested in visiting. Each following page will be dedicated to one island, which will contain activities for that island.

  • When thinking about what activities to do, focus on WHAT would best support your mission statement, as in the reason for the trip. We’ll think about HOW in a moment.

Your thoughts:

Share your thoughts about this week’s topic in the comments below. Feel free to respond to this week’s discussion points.

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