Bullet Journaling, A Series: #3 A Few Easy Trackers to Create in Your Bullet Journal, Part 1

Click to listen! Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Hello Hello! How are you all?

I’m so happy to be doing this post today, it’s the third one in the series and I’m having so much fun writing the posts. I had to move this along a few days because I needed to finish a few things in my bullet journal, but I’m really happy with what I came up with and the updates I made!

If you are interested in reading all about bullet journaling, if it’s for you, what you need, how to start and you need more inspiration, you can read my first post here and my second post here. I think that these posts are also a great way to keep me on the ball with my bullet journal because although I’ve been updating it every week and adding spreads, I’ve only done them in pencil and haven’t gone over them in pen (oops!). I had a lovely bullet journaling session yesterday and I’m so glad I found the time to do some more.

Obviously, my bullet journal is solely bookish. And in my bookish bullet journal, I track everything from my calendar, author requests, blog tours, I keep track of my reading for every day of the year, I write my TBRs, blog ideas, quotes, but one of my favourite spreads to do in my bullet journal is a tracker spread! You can have a tracker for just about anything in your own bullet journal, it doesn’t have to be about books. I have a tracker in my first ever bullet journal for my mood, my health, films and TV shows I want to watch, series I want to read, you can track your sport and exercise, your weight, your children’s growth or schoolwork, you can track anything if you actually make the spread.

So, since life is very complicated at the moment and we can’t do what we usually do, we are stuck indoors and don’t have much joy in our lives, I thought that a post about reading trackers could be great to inspire you all to actually make some spreads like mine, but also read more! You’re going to understand that I’m a bit of an organisation freak, I probably don’t look like one, but inside, the cogs are whizzing around day and night.

I was a bit sceptical when doing my bullet journal last year and didn’t really know what to track. I have some ongoing trackers in my previous bujo for series I want to read, TV shows, etc, but I didn’t want to clog this bujo up this year with endless pages of books or shows I wanted to get to, so instead, I decided to concentrate on this year. This is going to be a post in two parts because I’m a crazy person who has way too many spreads in her bujo, this is part one, I hope you enjoy! Keep reading to see my different spreads.

Trackers in My Bullet Journal

Yearly Goals and Goodreads Reading Challenge Trackers

This is the first page of trackers in my bullet journal, you may have already seen it in last month’s post, I just wanted to add it here again because I think it’s one of the most important trackers to have in a bullet journal. Whether your bullet journal is for your hobbies, your personal life, your professional life, or anything else, a yearly goal page is a really great thing to have to keep you on track, keep pushing you to achieve your goal and strive for success. I realised that I had accomplished another goal this year, to participate in 2 readathons (that aren’t the Hype-A-Thon Readathon that I co-host with Noly).

You’ll see this a lot in my bullet journal: I always colour something in with the colour of the month in which I accomplished a goal, read a book, finished a deadline etc. As you can see on the Goodreads Reading Challenge page, the books I read in January are in pink, February in purple, March in brown and April in blue! I really like how the same colours follow on every spread so I can see my evolution each month and workout my best months in terms of productivity at the end of the year.

My Books Read in 2020 Tracker

This is my favourite tracker to create each year and I always change it up a little. This year I decided on a double-page that looks like a library with a window seat and I just love how this turned out. I’m not a very good artist by any means, but I can do straight lines aha! You can see here the names of the books that I read this year so far, coloured in according to the month I read them, I’m so excited to see the whole bookcase coloured in at the end of the year!

There are so many other ways to track your yearly reading, it doesn’t have to be a really complicated and long spread to do like this one (it took hours if you were wondering); you can simply write a list with each title, author, month; or you can save a few pages at the start or end of the bujo and stick in a photo of the cover of each book you read, it really is up to you!

2020 in Review Tracker

This may look similar to some of you, I watched a lot of Chloe’s (Books With Chloe) bullet journal videos last year and this spread really stuck in my head for some reason, I thought it was such a good idea, so I took some inspiration from it and made it my own with some doodles and a splash of colour here and there. You can probably tell that I didn’t think I would listen to audiobooks when I started this spread in December, hence the weird add on of “/AB” on every line aha! I promise next year I’ll make it work better!

You don’t need to do a spread like this, but I’m a very organised person and I like things divided up into categories, so this is why I liked adding this little extra tracker to really look at what types of books I read during the year. I think it’s working out fairly well so far.

Monthly Overview and Wall of Faves Tracker

Again, this is another spread that I was inspired to create after watching Chloe’s videos, but I decided to make it my own and change up the way I showed the favourite book of each month. Instead of writing it out, I decided to print out each cover on my Paperang, my little portable printer. I love my little printer so much, it doesn’t do colour, which is a shame and sometimes the pictures look a bit grainy, but I think it gives it a bit of a vintage look, so I’m not complaining. Because I’m a crazy person, I even stuck in each cover with washi tape to match the colour of the month!

Statistics Tracker

This is a spread that I was inspired to make because of Kayla’s (Books And Lala) bullet journal videos on YouTube. I really liked her idea but I totally changed up what I wrote down the side and the order. I haven’t drawn a line right across the page because I’m hoping to be able to make a tally at the end of June. I really like the little black accent at the front, I actually did this so my eyes didn’t end up going crossways when I was doing the lines, but I actually think it gives it an edge aha! I also realised that my brain failed me and I wrote July when I meant June, so I’ll go ahead and fix that next time I have a bullet journaling session.

I’ve never really looked at what books I read over a year but making this spread, I was really surprised. I haven’t had any 1 or 2 star reads this year, so that’s promising, I’ve read quite a lot of backlog books and also a fair few “new to me” authors. I’m hoping that by the end of the year with this tracker and the July to December tracker I’ll make in a few months, I’ll be able to see which genres I haven’t read much so I can try to broaden my horizons in 2021.

Top 20 Books of 2020 and 6 Classics in 2020 Trackers

This double page is probably the one that I absolutely need to work on the most! I decided to add this as a tracker, because with this spread, I am tracking goals to accomplish by the end of the year, namely, reading more classics and backlist books. I’ve already read 2 of my Top 20s this year so far, and I’ve read a few classics but I don’t think they’ll make the cut for this page unless I run out of time to read loads more aha!

I’ve seen so many people do Top 20 in 2020, I think the idea is to add one thing for each year, so next year will be Top 21 in 2021 and so on and so forth. As you can probably guess, this was the hardest list I’ve ever compiled in my life, but I’m quite determined to pull it off!

2020 Genre Tracker and 2020 5 Star Reads Tracker

I love how this double page turned out too. When I started my genre tracker, it was a bit sad and looked a bit too basic for my liking, but since then I’ve added some stickers and I think it looks fab! I also think it’s going to be a great page to look back on at the end of the year and I’m sure I’m going to be really surprised. I’ve read quite a range of genres already in January, February, and March. I’m looking forward to adding my April reads because I’ve also read a range of different genres this month! I hope I can fill in each line by the end of the year.

One thing that I’ve realised and that you will also probably realise if you make spreads like these in your own bullet journal is that a lot of the time, it’s a case of trial and error. When I first made these spreads in late December-early January, they seemed perfect and fit my needs, but already 4 months into the year, I now know that I’m actually reading other genres than what I’ve put on the list, so I know for next year that I’ll be able to add even more genres in my next tracker! You can’t beat yourself up about stuff like this, just go with the flow and everything will be fine.

My last tracker for this post is my 2020 5 star reads. I’ve seen so many people do this in the past, I knew I wanted to make my own and I actually love how it turned out. Again, you can see the different colour divides for each month, I think it will be a great way to look back at the end of the year and see how many 5 star books I read each month! This is also the list from which I will compile my top 10 of 2020 and also pick my favourite book of the year, eeeek!

So, those are all the trackers for part 1. If you thought that was a lot, you haven’t seen next month’s trackers! I know that I’m a bit over the top with my trackers, but they really help me stay organised, keep on top of my goals and achieve them and I love any excuse to get the bujo out for a little session!

If you see any spreads you like, feel free to use inspiration, but please don’t copy them totally, it took me a lot of time to make them my own and it would really be hurtful to see an exact copy of my own hard work!

That’s all for now, I hope you enjoyed this post and you will find inspiration from my trackers. See you soon, stay safe,

Ellie xx