Journaling this way increases my mental clarity | Monthly Ritual

It's hard to be productive or present when you lack clarity. Journaling, for me, is the most powerful way that I found to increase my mental clarity regularly on an ongoing basis. For me, journaling, especially bullet journaling, is a skill, which means that it's something that I can get better at over time through practice. And a key part of that practice, a key part of my bullet journal practice, is the monthly ritual. I developed this ritual over the past 10 years in order to declutter my mind and start each month with clarity, direction, and purpose. It's just a quick way to help me focus. It also grounds me while providing the momentum I need to get things done throughout the month. Hi, I'm Writer Carroll, creator of The Bullet Journal Method, and today I'll be walking you through the 5 steps of completing your monthly ritual. And the best part is that we'll complete each step together as I share it. I've added several points in the video so you can pause and take as much time as you need to complete each step fully. We've also added the suggested amount of time, but it can take less or more time depending on what you need. This ritual is one of many that we run each month in BuJoYu, our membership site. So if you enjoy this process, would like some accountability in doing this each month, or you want to learn more, I'll put a link to that below for a free trial for you to check out. With that out of the way, let's begin. So here, this diagram represents all the different types of templates that we're currently using within The Bullet Journal Method. So the M stands for the monthly log, the D stands for daily logs, and the W stands for weekly logs. And this is kind of the cadence in how we bullet journal throughout a regular month. By the end of the month, we will start setting up a new monthly log. Okay, so with that in mind, the monthly ritual is here to help us get ready for the new month. And the way that we do that is that we begin, as with most things in Bullet Journal, by taking a big step back to think about the days, weeks, and months gone by. And we begin this process by updating our monthly timeline in our monthly log. So for those of you who are new here, this is one part of the monthly log. This is known as the timeline. Generally speaking, the right side of this at this point would be full of all the things that you've done. That would be your last month's action plan. So the first thing we're going to do, including myself, is going to take a little bit of time to update the timeline for the month gone by. And the reason that we're doing this is to help us kind of create cliff notes to help us memorize or remember, rather, what happened last month. I don't know about you, but I can hardly remember what I ate three days ago, let alone what happened a month ago. So that's the first part of this process. We're just going to take a moment and fill out one thing that was most notable about that day. Where are those things coming from? Usually from your daily logs. Now, as some of you know, this is also something that you're doing each week as well. So why are we doing it twice? Because life comes up. Things happen. And I know for myself, like, I'm missing a week here. I'm missing week three, but I'm not missing week four. So this gives me an opportunity to just slow down and fill in the blanks, if you will. So let's start with that. Now that we have our timeline filled up, hopefully that will jog your memory. And that's a big part of what we're trying to do through this part of the exercise, is to jog our memory to help us bring to mind all the things that happened over the month gone by. And chances are, some of those things are still really alive for you. Good things, challenging things, complicated things. And one thing that I find to be really helpful in this is to do what I call a written reflection. And a written reflection is really just that. It's to reflect on the month gone by or something that happened within the last month that you kind of want to expand on now. This is sort of the cadence that we go through. We create our own cliff notes to help us remember what happened. And then we move on to writing about or expanding on anything that we want to think about more deeply within the process. That can take anywhere between half an hour to an hour, depending on how much you want to write. And once those two things are done, we just move on and actually start setting up our new monthly log. You already saw the timeline from the last month. Now it's time to set up our timeline for the new month. If you have the official bullet journal notebook, then you have the sticker sheet that comes as well. That's really what it's for. That can make this process very fast. So I'm going to do that as well. So with our timeline set up, then we move on to creating our monthly action plan. I like to separate these into two different columns for all the actions that I need to take that are personal, and then all the actions that I need to take this month that are professional. So where are we creating this action plan from? Well, we're taking it from everywhere else in our entire month. So everything that's come up beforehand goes into our action plan that hasn't been completed yet. So things that still need to be done. But we don't want to just port over everything. A very critical part of the monthly ritual is it gives us a second to take a step back and think about what we want to do in the month ahead. So what we're going to start to do is go back through all of our previous collections and start to migrate open actions that pass a certain test. And I call that the migration filter. So I use an acronym here to help me ask a certain amount of questions that help me filter out the things that get to be migrated and move forward. And there are four questions. One, is this action in my control? So again, this is all only for the open actions inside of your last month. Am I able to act at this time? So am I able? Think time, location, resources. Then is it required? Is this action required? You might be asking, well, what's required? That's a good question to be asking. And this is a good time to be asking that question. Is this thing required? And then last but not least is a little bit of a one, which is enlivening, but I'll get into that in a second. Does this feel enlivening to me or to someone that I love? So those are the four questions that all the open actions get run through. And this is also an actual linear line of questioning. So we have the action, whatever's open, whatever didn't get done this month. And then we start asking, is it in our control? Are we able to do it? Is it required? Is it enlivening? If it passes this test, then it gets migrated. And if not, it becomes left behind. Then we cross it off, which is a big one. The big thing that we're trying to do is curate all the things in our list. We're not trying to hoard all of our responsibilities. We're trying to do less and less things. So all open actions, all things get pulled through this filter, starting with the written reflection. Chances are something has come up when you wrote out your life, your reflection, long form. I have to do this thing. I should stop doing this thing. I'll move something around. And this is a great time to turn your insight into action. So I learned this thing from the written reflection. Is it in my control? Am I able to do it? Is it required? Is it enlivening? So that's the first part. Those things get put into your monthly action plan. And then people always ask, well, where does my future log come into this? Well, this is exactly where a future log comes into this. This is a good time to revisit your future log and start pulling things in that are irrelevant. Again, care plays a role here as well. So something future comes in. Now is the time to assess, is this in my control? Am I able to do this now? Because circumstances are always changing. So you're using your future log to start to populate your monthly logs action plan. And then of course, all the other collections from within the last month, your last month's monthly log, daily logs, and weekly logs. Certainly there are going to be some things that remain undone. I've been doing this for a very long time, and I don't think I've ever gone through an entire month where all of my actions are complete. So the next step here is that we're going to flip back to the beginning and then go through and check all open actions and see what gets to be migrated. This is also a great opportunity to simply take a moment and appreciate the progress that you've made. Sometimes a month can be super busy like this has been for me, and I may not realize how much progress I've actually made because there's so much left to do. Maybe I feel like I haven't done, made a lot of progress or done a lot of things. And this is a good time just to check in with that. The next step in the migration is to set a monthly focus. So now that we have all of our actions there, that can seem really overwhelming. So the next part is we really want to figure out what needs to get done this month. What is really absolutely critical? What is required for this month? So in this case, I just use the priority signifier or the focus signifier rather to highlight some specific actions that I want to make sure that I attend to. These are the things that really will come first. Once I've become aware of all the stuff that I'm asking myself to do and I start to realize what really matters this month, the last part of this is to set an intention. One for my personal life and one for my professional life. This will help me really be much more intentional moving forward through this month. If I set the intention to be more mindful about what I eat, then every time I eat I can be more mindful there. And hopefully there's some actions here that support whatever my intention is. The intention just doesn't come out of anywhere. It comes out of really understanding what we need to do in the month ahead. What our conditions are, our circumstances are. So for me in this month ahead in real life, not here in this example, my intention is it's to be much more mindful about rest. That's something I haven't gotten a lot of this month. So next month it's to be more restful, to be less productive. I know that sounds counterintuitive but in this case that's really what's important for me because I can work all day long and that isn't always the solution. So the next part is to be proactively healthy and then another one would be delegation. When you realize you have way too many things going on in your professional life, for example, maybe your intention is to be diligent about finding space or be vulnerable and ask for help. These kind of things. So the intention is there to help create an umbrella for how you want to be for the month ahead. I like to set two, one for my personal life and one for my professional life. So one thing that you might notice at this point when you're migrating things are that there are a lot of related actions or maybe even thoughts. Now that you've done your reflection and you've gone through everything you're like, oh wait, these actions are all related to one another or these thoughts are all related to each other. This is a great time for us to do some housekeeping inside of our own notebook and to funnel all those things into what I call a custom collection, which as you guessed it is a collection that aggregates, collects related information whether it be actions or ideas, insights, that kind of thing. And even with this, everything that we're migrating into this custom collection also should be carefully considered as well because even when you start realizing these are related, some of these things might already be out of date by the time that they reach the end of the month, right? So you're planning a vacation or you've started writing a new article, YouTube, maybe house project. You've been taking all these notes, now's the time to take the notes that are still relevant, most useful, and to put them into a custom collection. It's a great time to create custom collections. Speaking of custom collections, chances are if you've been bullet journaling for a while, you'll be cultivating various custom collections at any point in your practice, right? Maybe you'll have a fertility tracker or you have a kanmari tracker or you have a short story collection or something, right? Maybe an exercise workout tracker is also a super common. So this is the time to not only think about what we're doing, the actions that we're taking, but how we're doing it as well. So during the migration process, we're also making sure that the actual tools that we're using are as effective as possible. So for our old custom collections during this time, we can slow down and ask ourselves, is it helping? If it is, how is it helping? Is there a way to improve it? Yes? Great. Then is there a chance here to create a new version of that custom collection or figure out how to tweak it a little bit right now? Great. Then you can migrate that. Most of what you see in the bullet journal is the result of a lot of trial and error. Most things that I tried didn't work. I always share the things that survived over the longest period of time for me, the things that proved themselves useful. At the beginning of this process, I would just try something out quickly and then it didn't work and then I'd just throw it away. Or I'd get really upset with myself for getting something wrong again. With the bullet journal method, I really encourage you to be playful and experimental with your custom collections. Everything here is an experiment, right? To see what works and what doesn't. Even if something doesn't work, we want to get curious about it. So rather than just throwing it away and missing a real opportunity, we want to take a second and slow down and think about why didn't this work? From a really compassionate place as well, like what about this specifically wasn't working? Because getting clear on what doesn't work for us can help us quickly develop something that does. Like this was too complicated, this was too granular, this was too time intensive. Okay, so if you know that, then the next time you create something has to be less granular, less complicated, less time intensive, right? So is this helping? No. Why? Because it's too time intensive. Can you improve upon it? Yeah. Maybe I track less habits, for example. Great. So now's a great opportunity to fire up a whole new custom collection based on what you learned. That's a big part of this, right? Putting insight to action over and over and over again, not only with what we're doing, but how we're doing it. And if you're tracking something that's adding no value and you can't learn anything from it, then this is a great time to stop tracking those things or stop working on that, right? You've taken at least 30 days now to test something out to see if it's helping you, and if it's not, get curious about it and then feel free and allow yourself to leave it behind. That's a big part of this. We just want to keep on removing what is not necessary to reveal what matters and have more time with that. And that's it. Now you've just completed the monthly ritual and you're fully prepared for the month ahead. You have organized, updated, and synthesized the month going by. You have a new timeline ready to populate with noteworthy events from your life for the month ahead. And you have a prioritized monthly action plan that will give you direction and keep you focused throughout the month. But the best part is this. You now have a way of arriving in each new month of your life clear on what you want and how you will create it. You now have both a plan and a system to support you in aligning your actions with your intention. And this is how the monthly ritual can be a powerful tool in helping you write a better life. If you enjoyed this tutorial or want to learn more about other tools to help you write a better life, check out the Bullet Journal Basics and Beyond course, which covers everything you need to know how to get started bullet journaling or take your existing practice to the next level. Thank you for taking the time. See you in the next one. Happy bullet journaling.