Finished your bullet journal? Looking to migrate from one to the other? How do you go about bullet journal migration and when?
Come forth and be educated on the matter!
How To Move to a New Notebook
One of the principal points of concern for any future log - especially those found in a bullet journal - is whether or not to migrate all of the beginning-of-year pages. These kinds of pages will (hopefully) be different for everyone as you are all privy and host to a varying set of goals and lifestyles.
For some journalists, this will include things like life goals diagrams, wellness and gratitude exercises, reading trackers, water and food trackers, as well as savings trackers, and weekly schedules.
Of course, everyone's bullet journal ideas and monthly log will be different (by the very nature of the cause), but it is the opinion of many bullet journalists that it is important to move these things over to the following journal.
Sure, one of the key aims of bullet journaling is to develop and grow as a person, so, in some senses, it might seem antithetical to drag those old goals and exercises along with you. However, without such things not only will you have to keep referring back to them in the old journal, but you will be lost without such an anchor on which to refer from time to time, to show how far you have truly come.
A new monthly log and daily log will come with a new bullet journal, sure enough, but where would you be without your past? The past, after all, dictates the future. Those who control the past, control the future - those who control the present, control the past, in the words of Rage Against The Machine.
Besides, while copying over your old bullet journals to your new bullet journals, this will be an apt time for the keen bullet journalist to reorganize and evaluate those old concerns to see just how relevant they still are.
When To Start Your Bullet Journal Migration
One of the other principal questions with regard to the migration process is when exactly to start it. Though this aspect of future planning might seem self-explanatory, there are actually a couple of common options for those who are less willing to honor their own feelings on the subject.
- The first option is usually the most self-explanatory and involves you starting a new journal whenever you finish the old one regardless of when that happens or what point of your journaling journey you have reached.
- The second option is a little more interesting and instead involves invoking you to set a time limit upon yourself. This is usually either a year or half a year depending on your preference. The idea, then, is that after a certain time, you will be ready to move on to a different chapter of your life and leave the old one behind.
- Though this might seem incredibly wasteful at first - after all, you might only have got halfway through a journal before leaving it in the dust - you can still use these old journals for random notes or doodles (or anything else you see fit). The central idea, though, is to separate these journals from each other as much as possible as a way to visually progress as an individual with your open tasks to show for it.
- Indeed, for some people, a bullet journal will barely last 6 months anyhow - the point, after all, is to use it all the time to keep afloat. Unless you have an ocean of incomplete tasks on the next page or so, then you should really be getting through these free resources like no tomorrow.
Reviewing the Current Setup
Before you engage in daily migration and rapid logging, you will want to measure where you are currently at.
Try using the journal and dividing a page of it into two columns. Fill the first column with all the old bullet journal spreads. Now, you can go through all of these spreads and exercises and put a tick next to those that you thought were effective and a cross next to those that were not so effective.
The former, more effective exercises can come along with you to your next bullet journal. The latter, less effective spreads, however, can stay behind as relics of a time gone by when that was either necessary or failed to touch the sides.
Some, for example, find that after using a bullet journal alongside Google docs they prefer to use the latter for, say, keeping track of finances and the like.
Planning for the Next Journal
Now, with that in mind, you can progress onto your next journal safe in the knowledge that you are not bringing any unwanted baggage along for the ride, only keeping the most effective spreads with you.
Using the second column next to the first, you can fill in and rewrite those old pages for a new journal, as well as include new ideas that you are wanting to try out in your new journal. Some, for instance, might want to keep their bullet journal key, index, and future log as a point of priority, whereas this might not have worked so effectively for others.
At the beginning of a new bullet journal, you might also map out the plan for the next few months in accordance with the length of time you intend the journal to span. Keeping in mind such things can be very helpful to those with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and its various subsets.
Final Words
So, there you have it! Hopefully, you are now feeling ready to change sides!
FAQs Bullet Journal Migration
WHAT DOES MIGRATION MEAN IN A BULLET JOURNAL?
In keeping a bullet journal, the keen and budding bullet journalist must prepare for the eventuality that someday a bullet journal will end. In such instances, the journalist will likely want to 'migrate' some or all of the old information from the previous bullet journal into the next. So, in the context of the bullet journal, migration means moving some or all of this old material forth into the new bullet journal. This is an art form all its own and there have been plenty of online resources defecated out in the pursuit of perfecting such an art.
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MIGRATED AND SCHEDULED BULLET JOURNALS?
In the context of bullet journaling, there is a plethora of different jargon and such. One such area of jargon is related to the dichotomy between a 'migrated' task and a 'scheduled' task. Essentially, the former is a task that remains incomplete by the time its time has expired but that still remains important enough to be moved to the following span of time. The latter, on the other hand, is a task intended to be completed at a set time and that will be moved and written down on its specific date.
WHAT IS THE ALASTAIR METHOD?
The Alastair method is a methodology in the context of bullet journaling that takes the monthly workload as its principal unit of measurement. Evidently, such a method will mostly be dedicated to monthly workload planning, but it can also be used for weekly and yearly segments. Essentially, the idea is to create a list of tasks or events that can be attributed to each week, month, or year as the case may be, ordering them any which way you like (though with priority often given to the most important).
