While I love the structure and simplicity of Bullet Journal, there’s no denying that the basic system is weak on planning. Unfortunately that’s something I have to do a lot of, both in my day job and at home. For example if I’m attending a convention I need to make sure to book my train or plane tickets well in advance, when they’re cheapest – but that may not be today or even next month or the month after that.

The other issue is that if I put absolutely everything into one journal, each notebook is going to fill up pretty quickly, which means a lot of copying of long-term items from one to the next. Whilst I understand that the purpose of copying items is to help you decide what’s important to you and what can be discarded, this doesn’t really apply to things that are on hold because they simply can’t be done right now.

One solution would be to use a binder that allows you to switch sections in and out, such as a Filofax or a refillable notebook such as an X17 or Midori. Either way, you’re looking at hauling around a substantial-sized journal – imagine pulling out that monster in the supermarket, just to tick off an item on your shopping list! And if you lost it, all your plans would be lost too…

The alternative that I’ve come up with is to have not one but three journals. Yes, this does break the Bullet Journal model of having one place for everything, but it solves a lot of other problems. Also, as you’ll see, most of the time you’re only using one journal anyway.

The first “journal” is the least-often used, but the most long-term. I use it for all my domestic projects (e.g. room makeovers) and also to log reminders for the things I do year after year at a particular time (like making preserves in autumn). It rarely if ever leaves the house, because its sole purpose is planning.

For this I use a Filofax (a personal-sized Malden), because it’s easy to add pages here and there as I need them. Funnily enough I originally bought it to be my take-anywhere “story bible” for my novels but found the pages too small for the job, which is why I switched to A5 paper for that project.

I have a pre-printed foldout year planner marked with birthdays and major household events (using some cute Filofax stickers I bought years ago and never used!), then dividers for months and “zones” (major areas of the house) where I add loose pages as needed. It’s very much a work-in-progress, but I aim for it to become an invaluable reference as the years go by.

The second journal is for medium-term and more personal stuff. For this I use a Midori Traveller’s Notebook, which I’d been lusting after for ages. I’d looked into them when I was choosing a story bible notebook last year, but as with the Filofax I was put off by the narrow, non-standard paper size. However for a personal journal there’s no real need to be constrained by format, so I went a bit crazy and bought the MTN and inserts, plus a bunch of pretty stickers and post-its, from The Journal Shop