(Kimberly (she/her) took the express train down the fountain pen/stationery rabbit hole and doesn't want to be rescued. She can be found on Instagram @allthehobbies because there really are many, many hobbies!.)
Flash back to December 2023 (yes, ‘23 not ‘24) and I was nearing the end of my bullet journal notebook. I didn’t want to start January 2024 at the end (gotta start a new notebook, right?), but I also didn’t want to waste those last few pages so I decided to use them to brainstorm some goals for 2024.
Back in my corporate days, we’d talk about making SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-based) but I never really did anything like that for my personal life that didn’t involve exercise (I used to have fitness goals around running distances/times, workout streaks, triathlons and other races - see, I really did do “allthehobbies” 🙂). I thought, why not put some goals on paper and be more deliberate about working on them instead of beating myself up over not getting things done.
It started out pretty simply (and pretty messily, I might add), and I quickly realized there was a lot more I wanted to do in 2024.
I changed to writing individual goals on sticky notes (not pictured), which I could sort more easily. I looked through them and tried to put them into groups that made sense.
I found this 2024 year graphic in MS Word and printed it out on label paper. I then broke up my goals into different aspects of my life. (Items covered for privacy)
Since this was the first time doing this, my aim wasn’t to get everything accomplished but to focus on a variety of short and long-term projects throughout the year and make progress. I had goals/projects for household, personal growth, hobbies and “miscellaneous”. Some goals were more rigid like getting tax docs to CPA by the end of February (I’ve been late the past few years), and others were more vague like “clean pens more regularly” (let’s not talk about that one, lol).
Writing down goals is all fine and good, but I wanted to hold myself accountable and ensure that I was making progress, so I did monthly check-ins, or retrospectives. At the beginning of the following month, I would spend ~30 minutes going through all the goals and whether I had made any progress. Some items were more urgent than others (like getting all the tax documents to our CPA earlier than we usually do), while others were progress goals that would last all year or beyond (like swatching X% of my inks).
Rather than using another notebook for the retrospective, I decided to track my goals in my bullet journal notebook. I didn’t know how many pages I would need but I knew I wanted to keep the retrospectives together, so I started from the back of the book.
The left side is a typical to-do list in my bujo, while the right side is the retrospective, which is upside down. This way I could read/write in it from left to right and I could take as many pages as I wanted.
After doing 6 months of retrospectives, I discovered a few things:
Pros of the upside down/same notebook approach:
- It’s in the same notebook, so I could do my retrospective anywhere I had my bujo.
- You use up the notebook faster because you’re using it from both ends (I ended up using about 30 pages for retrospectives).
Cons:
- It’s upside down, so I was constantly rotating the notebook to look at my bujo, goals, or trackers to figure out my progress.
Neutral
- I was writing down the goals/subgoals every single month, which got a little annoying. It was also difficult to see progress without flipping to different months. This has nothing to do with writing from the back of the book, just something I had noticed as I was doing this.
Here’s the June progress of my writing projects in the back of my bujo.
I decided for the second half of the year that I would try a ring-bound system, which would allow me to (1) move pages around if needed and (2) not have to flip my bujo back and forth. I have a few A5 6-ring binders laying around, so I used my PLOTTER paper and changed up how I tracked the goals.
Same writing projects, but now I can see multiple month’s progress at a time.
Of course, I still didn’t leave quite enough space for everything but it was easier to see the month-to-month progress. The binder format made it easier to add additional pages or move things around.
It was important to me that the retrospective was not about berating myself for not making progress, but to see how I spent my time in the prior month and whether to make adjustments in the next month. This was about awareness and progress, and not perfection and checking off all the goals. So after going through each goal/section, I would finish each month’s retrospective with a short summary/review of the month. Maybe I had a lot of trips, or there was stuff going on with the kid’s school, etc. - they weren’t necessarily excuses, though sometimes they were - or I added new goals/areas, or made deliberate decisions that changed the priority (like not doing anything scuba-related in the winter), or maybe I made a lot of progress and checked off some items. Then, I would take a sticky note and jot down what things I wanted to focus on for the next month. That sticky note would be moved around in the bujo as the days/weeks went by so I could make sure I added to-do items that would further my progress.
While there were plenty of goals where I made absolutely no traction, like writing 3 extra TPA articles (I don’t think I even managed ONE extra), or refreshing my scuba certification, there were quite a few items where I actually made progress or even finished projects! I managed to close a couple of long standing accounts, finished transcribing The Little Prince (original 2024 goal was to go from 74% to 90%, but I finished it in August!), read 20 books for the year (I ended up finishing 50 books!) and more.
Due to a lot of personal stuff going on, I haven’t had the mindspace to do a full 2024 retrospective, or come up with realistic 2025 goals. But when I’m ready, I want to reflect on 2024, celebrate accomplishments, and revisit items that didn’t get much traction. I plan to “table” some of last year’s goals so I don’t forget about them (like getting a motorcycle license), push forward on other goals (like getting from 55% to 65% of transcribing Meditations), and figure out other goals that I want to work on (like finally moving off my laptop to a newer machine that has been staring at me for a couple years). I was worried that making these goals would diminish my love of this hobby but it has really made me more mindful about how I’m spending my time to get more things done and more enjoyment out of life. Looking forward to continued growth and progress in 2025.
Can’t wait to use one (or both) of these stickers from Sugar Turtle Studio when I’m ready to tackle 2025!
(Disclaimer: All products shown were purchased by me. Sugar Turtle Stickers are from their monthly Patreon subscription.)
