Chronic Illness Bullet Journal For Pain-Free Productivity (Reviews & Flip Through)
Do you have chronic illness and feel like if you could just find the right planner, you could finally get your life together? By the end of this video you'll learn about the planning system that I call my unicorn and why it might just be your unicorn too.
Watch the video below or continue reading for the transcript.
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So I have a coaching membership where I help people with chronic and mental illness get stuff done without overworking themselves. It's like a planner, plus group life coaching and external accountability, and that's how I really love helping people move forward. But I understand that not everybody has access to that high level of coaching, so I wanted to talk today about how you can figure out what kind of planning system would work best for you (especially if you also have chronic illness and or mental illness like myself).
So let's start out by talking about what I like to call the 'planner graveyard.' 👻
I have been obsessed with planners since I was a child. I had my first paper planner in like first or second grade. It was like a padded plastic mini trapper keeper. Y'all remember those? And it had Snoopy on it. It was the best thing ever. And then I upgraded to like Franklin Covey because that's what my mom used.
In recent years however, I have been trying to find the system that works best for me. Among of the 'may they rest in peace' planners that I have used in the past that I'm going to be talking about today is the Panda Planner. I'm also going to be talking about like classic Bullet Journaling in a blank dot grid notebook. And I use Dingbats notebooks, and I'll be talking about them a little bit. And then I'm also going to be talking about Passion Planner. of which I have used two kinds: this giant weekly version, and this smaller daily version. So today I'm going to talk about all of these planners in the planner graveyard, give them a rating system, and then I'm going to share with you my unicorn. 🦄
So let's start out by talking about why chronic illness means that you have different, and/or more specific needs from your planning system, that often don't get necessarily taken into account by the people who make those systems.
So first off (and this one kind of breaks my heart and I feel bad about it because I love writing by hand) I pride myself in my handwriting, and I love using addictive pens, gel pens, and brush pens, and fountain pens, but long story short: using my hand to write HURTS. 😭
I get a lot of pain in my hand if I write by hand for any more than a minute, and that sucks. So any and all physical planners that I have to physically write in are very hard for me to use.
So I've always really struggled to transition to a fully digital system, but I have since done that. So stick around to the end of the video to hear about what I've transitioned to.
Meanwhile, another issue that I encountered, and this is also part of the like - the handwriting equals pain problem - is that to really have a planner that works for you you have to use it and maintain it consistently. And a physical planner is going to make that harder if you have chronic illness and chronic pain because writing by hand hurts. And then also it's a physical thing that you have to have with you all the time.
So like the Panda Planner - this is the...an older version. I think I had it in and used it in 2017, and I know they have newer versions now, but this one - this could fit in a medium sized purse. So I could take it with me.
The Dingbats notebook is larger in width, so it was harder to fit in a purse. And then this monster [Passion Planner yearly] (while I liked it because there was lots of space to write in, so it was more comfortable to rest my hand on and write in without having to cramp my handwriting) this isn't portable by any means of the word. So portability is important.
Now as we go through these old planners I have different criteria that I'm going to grade them on and talk to you about. So let's first talk about what those criteria are and why I feel like they're important in meeting my needs.
So the first one, and this is probably obvious because it's what the whole video is about, is: is it chronic pain / chronic illness / spoon friendly? The next one is: is it motivating? Is the planner and the system in the planner itself something that is inherently motivating to help me want to and actually use and maintain it consistently? And then there's: is it customizable? Because every person with chronic illness or mental illness has a very unique set of needs, and having to fit those into a planner that is already fully structured for you can be inhibiting - like you can't track the things that you need to track or it's forcing you to track things you don't care about (or that won't actually help you). So it needs to be customizable.
Especially if you have chronic illness you usually want to have a symptom tracker, and most planners don't come with a symptom tracker. They might come with like an empty little space that you could put a symptom tracker in (like the Passion Planner) but most don't actually include a symptom tracker.
Then there's quality. How high quality is the product itself? And lastly cost. Is it a cost-effective planning system? So let's go through each metric and compare these old planners that I've used.
So let's start by comparing them on the chronic illness friendly scale. First we have the Panda Planner. I gave the Panda Planner a rating of four out of five because it is 100% structured. I didn't have to customize it in any way to necessarily use it. That being said, it didn't meet all my needs. There wasn't an easy way for me to track my symptoms for instance, but I did really appreciate how I didn't have to put in any extra time and effort to use it beyond just writing in it by hand every day and making sure I use it every day. But I gave it a four because it wasn't customizable enough to meet my needs.
Now let's talk about the Bullet Journal. Is the Bullet Journal - the classic Ryder Carroll Bullet Journal system as he describes on his YouTube channel and his wonderful book, "The Bullet Journal Method" (I highly recommend the book by the way, it's an absolutely wonderful book and great perspective on how to create a planning system that works for you, regardless of the medium you use). But the problem with classic Bullet Journals that are on pen and paper is that it has to be a hundred percent made by you. You have to put in the time and the effort to make the spreads that you want to use, and you have to write everything in by hand. And if you need to migrate stuff, you have to write it by hand again. And for me personally, it was the migrating that really cost me a lot of spoons because having to write something again by hand the next day or the next month, when my tasks were continuing to build up upon themselves as I was getting more stuff just became overwhelming. I had to spend way too much time writing by hand to maintain a Bullet Journal. Time that I don't necessarily have to spend, or would prefer to be spending on other things - like, the actual work that the Bullet Journal is helping me organize for instance. While the Bullet Journal is 100% customizable by definition, it is not chronic illness friendly in the most part. Yes, you can do a fully customized symptom tracker, so that's great, but again you have to make it yourself. And make it again, and again, and AGAIN. 🙃
So now let's talk about how motivating each one of these are, and let's start with the Panda Planner. Panda Planner I actually give a score of five in motivation, because it really is designed around motivational life coaching in its format to help you really get your priorities set, accomplish them, and then reflect consistently so you are constantly growing as you use the planner.
Then there's the Bullet Journal. How motivating is the Bullet Journal? This one is a hard one. I gave it a three because it's kind of HOW you set it up. You're in control of how motivating it is, and the trap that I fell into was that I was only motivated to create a pretty or neat looking Bullet Journal, and it was all about the aesthetics, and the motivation was not the getting stuff done part - which is kind of the whole point if you ask me. So that's why I gave it a three.
And then similarly with the Passion Planner, I also gave it a three because it's how you use it that creates the motivation. If you follow the system that the Passion Planner inventor Angelia Trinidad talks about in the beginning of every Passion Planner, that's really helpful: her mind mapping and planning and scheduling. But that to me wasn't quite motivating enough for me. There wasn't an inherent motivation within the planner to use it, so that's why I gave it a three.
Now let's talk about customization - which I've been doing a little bit of before, so we'll go really quick through this. Panda Planner: one. Customizing this thing is not - it's difficult to customize. There's lots of extra pages in the back if you want to add stuff, but the the weekly pages are pretty much set up to carry you through a very specific process (which is as I said before: highly motivating) but there wasn't as much room for customization as I would like or need for my personal needs.
Bullet Journal - like I said before, it is by nature 100% customizable, so that's a 5. Duh. 😜
And then Passion Planner. I gave Passion Planner a 3 on the customizable scale because it falls really in between a Panda Planner and a Bullet Journal. It is structured, but not to the extent that it's not flexible, so that's why I gave it a three.
Now let's talk about quality, the actual materials, and we'll start with the Panda Planner. (And remember that my Panda Planner is from 2017. And I know they've come out with newer versions.) Mine is the kind of moleskin-like cover. It's a very sturdy notebook, which I appreciate. It's nice to hold. It's a convenient size to carry around. But personally, because I have a large hand (I'm 5' foot 11" and I have really large hands) a notebook that is this narrow is uncomfortable for me to write on. And it's thick paper. That being said, I did experience some ghosting through to the other side of the page - not too bad, but compared to my next notebook that I'm going to talk about (which I consider the Rolls-Royce of notebooks) I gave the Panda Planner (this version) a two, because it feels very much like a moleskin. And moleskin are great - I just - there's better paper and material.
So now: Bullet Journal. You can pick whatever notebook you want. You can do it in a spiral college ruled notebook for all I care. I fell in love with this company Dingbats. The paper is divine, like I cannot tell you how much I love the paper in these notebooks. And then lastly it's a wider notebook like I showed before. It's much wider than the Panda Planner or a traditional moleskine, and that made it so much easier for me to write on with my large hands. I love Dingbats notebooks.
(None of this is sponsored by the way. I'm a baby YouTuber. None of these people have ever heard of me, nor do they care, so this is all 100% my opinion. Don't worry about it.)
But yeah, if you are a pen and paper notebook lover like I am, and you have the capacity to write by hand, and you want a notebook, I highly recommend Dingbats.
And then lastly is the Passion Planner. These are absolutely lovely notebooks that are really durable. They are - the ones I have are soft covers. And they are beautiful notebooks. I love the designs on them. So they're like absolutely wonderful notebooks. Really good quality. But again, just compared to the Dingbats notebook, I can't - it's not as good, and I'm sorry.
Lastly, let's talk about cost. One of the reasons I actually stopped using the Panda Planner was - at the time this was the only option and this only covered about three months and it was 20 to 30 dollars U.S. I forget exactly what it was, but having a chronic illness and no consistent source of income, I couldn't afford to buy three or four of these a year, so that's why I stopped using it.
And then with the Bullet Journal, I like how this can last up to a year if not more depending on how much you use it. So I was able to get a lot more months in this planner than I did the, uh, Panda Planner.
And then with this Passion Planner: this one, this is a whole year in one notebook so, I really appreciated that. I only had to buy one and then I was good for a whole year.
And then this one, Passion Planner Daily: I think this is another three or four month situation, and I wanted to try it because the year-long Panda Planner didn't quite do it for me. I couldn't get everything I needed to into it so I wanted to try this. However I stopped maintaining it because it was just too much work. It wasn't chronic pain friendly for me. But cost-wise it's similar, because this is the daily planner not the weekly one. It's similar to the Panda Planner that you have to buy more than one a year if you want to keep using it, which is a little more spendy.
So I'm curious, have you tried any of these planners before? Comment below and tell me which ones you've tried, what you've liked about them, what you've disliked about them. I would absolutely love to know.
So what's my unicorn you may ask? Well let me tell you. It's a little app called Notion, and ever since I started using it about four months ago I have become obsessed. I run two businesses inside Notion (and I also run my personal life inside Notion) and it is the first digital planning system that has been robust enough in features, but also in customizability, that has allowed me to streamline my planning and action-taking process in a way that works for my brain and meets all of my needs.
So let's run through the criteria with Notion really quick.
Motivating. Notion is highly motivating for me to use because I am a nerd and I have created a very streamlined system for myself that makes it easy for me to use, and that's really helpful. And I've even built in some gamification into my planning system, which also makes it motivating. The only reason why I'm not giving it a 5 is because in comparison to the Panda Planner, which is really like a life coach in a planner, it doesn't quite have that same inherent motivation to it. I could add that into it if I wanted to, but right now that isn't necessarily what I need, so I'm not too worried about it.
Now we've got chronic pain / chronic illness / spoon friendly. Notion is very spoony friendly because I can use it on my desktop, on my laptop, on my phone - it's with me everywhere. The only thing that can be annoying is when I want to type something in depth on my phone. I still hate doing this [mimes typing with thumbs]. So that's why I gave it a 4 out of 5. It's imperfect, but until I can just think and the computer can record my thoughts, nothing's gonna be perfect.
Now let's talk customizable. Just like an original Bullet Journal, like a blank dot grid notebook, Notion is 100% customizable. And I realize that's one of the reasons that some people are like hesitant to start using it, because it can feel overwhelming and daunting, but in next week's video I'm going to teach you the basics to get you over that hurdle. Because it is a hurdle WORTH getting over, because Notion is wonderful.
Now we're on to cost. Notion's free version is so robust it is phenomenal. I use the free version in two different workspaces, and then the only reason I have a paid version in my third workspace is because I have a business partner and it costs money to have a shared workspace where both of you are administrators of that workspace - totally worth it though. We love using Notion together.
And lastly, let's talk about quality. Notion is so nerdy. I often say it's as if Evernote and Airtable had a baby that was better than both. Basically, the only thing so far that Notion can't do that I wish it could is creating forms so that way other people could fill out a form and that information would get spit into a database. Airtable does that, and I use Airtable for that in my business - I just wish Notion could do that. But I assume it will in the future. They're continually making it better every day. It's wonderful. And actually soon there's going to be an API, where if you're using a paid version you can connect Notion to other web apps like Todoist, or use Zapier to have if-this-then-that workflows, and yeah, it's nerdy.
So a few other reasons why I love Notion is I don't have to write by hand - that is wonderful - also what's really cool is I can relate information to each other. If I want to talk about a project in my business with my business partner that's over here in this workspace, but I'm over here in my private workspace, I can connect those two things, and it's magical. And it allows me to have this almost mind-map of all of my information, but instead of it being like an actual visual mind-map that holds EVERYTHING, it's a database where everything is interrelated, and I can quickly get to those relations because of links and backlinks.
And then lastly there are set it and forget it templates. You can make custom templates that you can use again and again inside Notion. This is how I have my daily Bullet Journal set up in templates, so let's head on over to my Notion workspace and I'll give you a tour of my Bullet Journal inside Notion.
[This is the point in the video where I start screen-sharing my Notion workspace. Click here to go to that point in the video.]
Welcome inside my Bullet Journal inside the Notion app. I'm going to give you a quick tour of my daily view, my weekly view, and my monthly view, so let's go ahead and get started.
One of the things I really like about Notion is that you can customize the icon and the cover photo of every page, so today I decided to make it a unicorn for this example, and then just hills for the unicorn to run amongst. 🦄🏔 Yay.
So this is my daily view. I title each daily page very simply with the day of the week and then the date, and then I actually associate that with a date on the calendar which makes it easy to search later. And then I also have a week database, which we'll get into more, but I have attached this daily page to this week so if we were to look at this week you can see that every single day inside this week is attached. So this is part of that things-relating-to-each-other like I mentioned earlier.
And then we get into the more database-y part of my daily planner. So I have a checkbox for my morning review. Those of you who are familiar with the Bullet Journaling process, the morning review is really important, and then I just check that off when I get that done. And then I have where I can write my priorities. So I write my priority for the day, and then as I complete them throughout the day I can check them off. And then here's the evening review. And now you may have noticed that this was changing every time I clicked one of those buttons, so each of these check boxes is associated with a formula inside my effectiveness section. So if we uncheck all of these, you can see that it looks very sad because I haven't done anything. If I click one of them it gets slightly unsad. And it doesn't matter which one of these is the only one that's clicked, because the formula is based on the ratio of checkboxes that have been clicked. So if two of them are clicked it's getting a little better. If three of them are clicked it's like it's getting better. Four of them: starting to feel cool, like I feel really satisfied if I get four out of five things clicked in a day. And then if I click all five of them: partay! 🥳 I got it all done! It's very exciting.
But then I also have a place where I can put in my mood. This is a select-as-many-as-apply, so I can click this one, I can click this one, I can click this one, I can click this one, but it's just a way that I can keep track of my mood on a day-to-day basis. And then here is where I can put in my energy, because (and you could do this with spoons - I like doing it with battery bars because that seems a little bit more obvious) but like this [one battery] is a bad day, this [five batteries] is a really good day. And most of the time just for reference (in case you're wondering) I live around a two or three, that's kind of my baseline with my invisible disability.
And we already talked about the effectiveness. (I will talk about the formula a little bit more next week.) And then here's where I can actually do some journal entry about my mood and energy. So like if I woke up in an emotional flashback because I had a nightmare, or a nightmare I don't remember, I can write that here. I can explain why I was tired, or why I had lots of energy, that kind of stuff.
So then we get to my symptom tracker, and I should probably do an entire dedicated video on my symptom tracker, and if you would like to see me do that at some point in the future please let me know in the comments below. In here I can either add it here, or I can add it here.
And this is one of the things that I love so much about Notion. I can put copies of the same database I'm in INSIDE that database. So this is just a view of my symptom tracker database, and then this is a link to that database from my daily Bullet Journal database, so they can talk to each other.
And then the number completed - this is part of the formula to create this effectiveness formula, because if you see, if I click one of these here this now says one. If I click two, this says two now.
If we scroll down, this is kind of like the journal part. So up here we have all of these database entries, which would be like a spreadsheet. So if I were to go back here to the full daily agenda, you can see here each of the pages in here are the things, and we could scroll further to the right, further to the left. Let's go back into here. So now this is the journal part. So I can write - I could write a little novel in here if I wanted to. There is endless capacity for stuff.
And then this is just my meeting notes with my business partner for my West Coast Swing dance membership and YouTube channel that I run with my dance teaching partner. And then these are just links to other tasks: personal tasks, Accountability Muse tasks, Nerdy WCS tasks.
And then this looks more like a Bullet Journal. And in Notion you can have bullets, you can have checkboxes, you can have toggles, you can link to other pages, you can create dividers, you can link to other databases (and that's how I created this). You can make so many things. But I like having check boxes.
So this is what my Monday looks like. These are the things that I have to do every single Monday. I have to fill the cat water (and I have this on every day because, you know, cats need to drink water 🐈💧).
15 minutes Butt In Chair Time "the Maroon Falcon" (that's my YA Fantasy novel that I'm working on.) I have to do my social posts on Mondays. I have to prep my newsletter for my email list (and again you can sign up for my email list by clicking here, and when you sign up you get free access to the replay of my Masterclass on what I call Butt In Chair Time). I always work out on Mondays. I always wash the towels. I prep for my biz meeting with my dance teaching partner the next day. And I host office hours inside my coaching membership. And then every day I use my Yoga Tune Up balls to put my body back together (because as a chronic illness person that is very important).
And then we scroll down. So this is what I'm talking about, about having a copy of the same database you're in INSIDE that database. So this is an entry inside my daily agenda, and then this is a particular view of my daily agenda, and this shows the whole week. [SQUEES] Isn't that handy?
So like if I'm here on Monday, and I want to add something to Tuesday, I just click on it and I go down and I add it. And then I can have it look at last week (a dedicated view) and next week - and we're going to look at this a little bit more in a second.
So then there's my weekly agenda. (And because I don't want to share like personal information I haven't filled this out, but usually there would be four or five entries in the month that I'm working on so I can see at a glance what I need to be working on each week.) And then the same thing for each month. I have cards here. So I haven't planned out through April 2021, I just don't necessarily want to show you any private information in this video. So that's what's going on there.
But now here's the really cool thing about Notion. I have TEMPLATES for these databases. So let's go ahead and add a day to the next week. So I'm going to click filter, and I'm going to make sure this is attached to the correct next week (which it is), new. So we're going to make it Monday the 28th for this first one. I'll put in the title Monday 9/28.
Now this is where the magic happens. These are all of my templates, and this way I can have separate recurring tasks on different days. So for instance I work out every Monday, but I don't work out every Tuesday (I need to rest), so I have the workout task on the Monday template but not on the Tuesday template. All right, and this just makes my planning so easy, so we're going to click the Monday and then it automatically fills in with the Monday tasks, and also these copies of the databases that I can then filter so it makes my planning really easy.
I can have a custom template for planning and I set it once and then I never have to set it again. And actually when I was really getting into Notion, I found myself iterating as I went and this has gotten nerdier and more helpful the farther along I've gotten. And I am certain that in a few months it's going to look different than it does now because it's going to be even more effective and efficient for me. So it's really exciting.
And then the last thing I want to say is that like a Bullet Journal, as the day goes by I add things. So if there's something else I need to do today besides my priorities, I will just add it down here. And then if it's a personal task I make it pink, if it's a Accountability Muse task I make it yellow, if it's a West Coast Swing task I make it green. Or if I just want to add notes I do a dash and a space (and I can color code this similarly), and then I can write notes.
It's so intuitive and it's wonderful, and it allows me to do full Bullet Journaling like Ryder Carroll talks about in his book "The Bullet Journal Method" without me having to do the physical labor of using pen and paper, and that is a huge help to me. And it has allowed me to create a system that genuinely is personalized enough to me that I can use it and maintain it consistently, but also WANT to use it and maintain it consistently. And doing that work genuinely helps me get more done faster without overworking myself. So that's why I wanted to share it all with you today.
So there you have it: my planner unicorn - Bullet Journaling inside of Notion. If you want to know how I built this Notion set-up I am going to be releasing a beginner tutorial next Tuesday, so subscribe to my channel and hit the bell to be notified when that video comes out.
In the meantime, if you also happen to struggle with procrastination I highly recommend checking out my free Masterclass on Butt In Chair Time. You can sign up and get access to the free replay by clicking here.
If you liked this video, hit that like button and be sure to share it with your friends.
Again, I'll be back next week with that tutorial. Let me know if you have any questions about Notion and I may film another tutorial in the future. Talk to you later. Bye.
[OUTTAKES: Is that a good segue? I love Stitch, so that's why there's a Stitch sticker on it. Almost gamifying things av, of, if you... I often joke that I'm like a planner in human form, but also a life coach that talks back to you instead of you being alone with a planner and trying to do it all by yourself.]