Looked back and saw I filled 12 notebooks in 3 years | Bullet Journaling - Freelance Forum - The Community for Independent Professionals

Ben Fisher · 2026-04-12T18:55:07.338482+00:00

I was cleaning out a drawer and stacked up all my old bullet journals. I counted them and it was 12. That's one every three months. It surprised me because I never thought I'd stick with it this long. My first one was just a cheap grid notebook from the drug store. I was just trying to get my thoughts in order after a messy move. Now, flipping through them, it's like a map of my life. There are grocery lists next to big life plans, and trackers for everything from water to how many times I called my mom. It's weird to see how much changed, but the system stayed the same. Has anyone else been shocked by how many books they've filled?

kelly4706mo ago

Actually seems like a huge waste of paper to me... all that stuff could just go in a phone note. Ryan_hart38's idea of it being a record is nice, but it's just clutter in a drawer. The system didn't stay the same, it just got heavier.

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ryan_hart386mo ago

That's a crazy physical record of your life. Makes you wonder what the next 12 will look like.

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evan_campbell96mo ago

Holy cow, that's a lot of paper! I'm with @ryan_hart38, it's wild to have a whole stack like that. My notebooks are a total mess, like one page is a serious budget plan and the next is just "buy more chips" underlined three times. I'd be scared to look back at my old ones, they're probably full of bad ideas and forgotten grocery lists. Congrats on sticking with it, that's actually pretty cool.

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