Changed my mind on monthly layouts after seeing a 6 month comparison

I used to do these huge, colorful monthly spreads with washi tape and was obsessed with making them look like art. But I pulled out my old notebook from last year and flipped back to January. The layout was packed with decoration and barely any actual tasks written down. By June, I had switched to a super basic list style with just the dates on the left side. The difference was wild. January's spread had 3 tasks actually crossed off. June had 27. What convinced me was seeing how much more I used the journal when I stopped fussing over how it looked. Now I just do a simple calendar block and a task list for each month. Has anyone else gone from fancy to plain and seen their productivity jump like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

adam7512mo ago

Good point. Less visual noise means more mental room for getting stuff done.

the_margaret21d ago

My buddy Dave had this whole bullet journal phase where he spent more time drawing borders and color coding his grocery list than actually doing anything. He used three different highlighters just to organize his to-do list for Tuesday. After about two weeks he gave up and started using the back of old receipts. Now his system is a crumpled envelope full of sticky notes with half the words smudged off. Works fine for him though.

henry6042mo ago

Went through almost the same thing with my workout logs... started off with these artsy weekly spreads and now I just jot down reps and sets on a scrap of paper.