The Monthly Review: How to Perfect Your Bullet Journaling Routine

The bullet journal system is made to be customized. While Ryder’s original system is AWESOME, every bullet journalist tweaks something at one point or another. That’s the beauty of the bullet journal: if something doesn’t work for you, you have the complete freedom to change it. You don’t get that with a planner where you’re stuck with the layout that comes with it.

The monthly bullet journal review is the approach I’ve adopted in order to help my bullet journal evolve and grow in a way that will optimize my bullet journaling experience. It allows me to keep track of what worked this month and what didn’t, and use that information to adapt my bullet journal as needed. This idea has been used by many bullet journalists, and in this post, I’ll be showing you how I set up and use my monthly review page.

I usually set up my monthly review page a few days before the end of the month so I can start brainstorming ahead of time and jot down ideas as I think of them. The first thing I do when setting up is to write out the header. I like to keep it pretty simple and just write out [Month] Review. Sometimes, I’ll also write a theme for the new month—for example, in January, it was simplify.

The next step is to divide my page into four sections and label them—keep, ditch, change, and try.

After that, I go through all of my pages from the previous month and reflect on what worked and what didn’t. Based on that reflection, I fill out each of the four sections in my review page with the things I want to keep doing, the things I want to stop doing, the things I want to tweak, and the things I want to try out. I ask myself: