My Perfect BuJo Weekly and Daily Layout with Dutch Doors

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My Perfect BuJo Weekly and Daily Layout with Dutch Doors

Doodles on top of Weekly BuJo Pages

After many months of playing with my planner layouts, in my bullet journal, I've finally found one that works!

Finding My Perfect Planner Layout

I hated flipping back and forth to see my weekly plan. (I even tried going without a weekly spread and relying only on daily pages.) But, I need to have the weekly to help me organize my daily tasks -- and to NOT miss an appointment. I need to be able to look at all my weekly appointments at once, so they don't sneak up on me on my daily pages.

The layouts I had used before involved using skinny washi tape to quickly separate sections for the daily pages. As my book filled up, the extra thickness of the washi in the same place on multiple pages began to build up and make it harder to write (there were lumps). This new layout avoids that, and it still looks nice. I can do it all with ink -- and I can do it even faster! Sometimes I use a little washi at the top to decorate, but I usually just doodle at the top.

Enter the Dutch Door

I tripped across a "dutch door" approach (and subsequently looked at several "dutch door" plans) but all the ones I found required cutting (*gasp*) the pages in my journal and literally throwing out about half of those pages. That didn't make any sense to me. Not only is that a total pain; it would it require me to carry scissors with me -- and I often do my set-up for the next week when I'm NOT at home or at my desk.

In addition, doing that week after week means my notebooks would be skinny on one side, thick on the other, making my notebooks lopsided -- and offending my delicate aesthetic sensibilities. ;)

My Version of the Dutch Door: Vertical Folding

After a bit of head-scratching, I came up with this: It allows me to use the dutch door method, to see my week at a glance, to use half a page for each day, and to use folding rather than cutting. Once the week is over, I'll unfold those same pages and flatten them out so my book stays uniform when closed and there aren't lumps resulting from cut pages on subsequent pages when I try to write. It's also easy to review prior, completed weeks.

 

Step-By-Step in Pictures

Bonus for Minimalists

This layout requires only three things - my ruler, my Coleto 5-color pen, and a MildLiner. If I want washi, that's a fourth. Most of the time, I don't use Washi. I like keeping the "required tools" at a minimum.

I've gone from a page-per-day to a half-page with this layout. I'm happy with that decision since it helps me to constrain the number of tasks I assign myself each day. Having a whole page for a day meant that I often "assigned" myself too many tasks and even when I accomplished quite a bit, I still felt like I wasn't as productive as I should be.

Coordinating Week and Day Pages

Now, I use a "things to do this week" column on the weeks page to catch all those things that need to be done, but aren't a priority or don't require handling on a certain day. This prevents me from having to move them from page to page when they don't get done on the day I thought about it and wrote it down. It also means that I can focus on the day's priorities - usually 3-5 tasks and get those done.

I've also moved some of the things I used to put on the dailies to a daily tracker on the weekly spread, which means I actually have to write less to track! I like efficiency. I prefer to spend more time USING my journal more than I spend it setting it up.

I hope this helps you guys who are also looking for a better way to handle Day & Week layouts for your Bullet Journal.

I hope this helps you guys who are also looking for a better way to handle Day & Week layouts for your Bullet Journal.

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