Bullet journal or not, I’ve always had problems with the shift in schedule between the days I work, and the days I don’t. Now that I can’t go out on weekends or after work, it’s even worse. Yup. There’s something about looking at a clock that says “ass crack of dawn” and actually getting up and staying up. No matter how long you’re on a weird shift, it’s next to impossible to convince yourself that getting up at four in the morning is sleeping in.

And with nothing to prop up my schedule…

You can see where this is going.

I need to be actively, enthusiastically working toward something. Right now, I’ll settle for actively.

I stole an idea for my bullet journal from Rebecca Galardo’s podcast, Alone in a Room With Invisible People.

I made daily routines card to thread onto my bookmarks. Now, I will guarantee you that Rebecca’s version is prettier than mine, but since I can’t find the direct link, you’ll have to look at mine.

The general mechanics are index card, two punch holes, and thread the bullet journal’s ribbon bookmark through the holes. I made two of them. One for the days that I work my–highly essential–job, and one for days when I’m off. (And yes, they’re both just as ugly.) Laminated the damn thing with tape, but I’m already feeling guilty about the pretense of permanence.

I won’t waste your bandwidth, but the circadian rhythm things–waking up, going to bed, meals, and exercise–line up on both cards.

Everything else gets squeezed in around those things, and to whatever degree possible, in the same order each day. It’s been a long time since I sat down and wrote a schedule for myself. Like… grade-school long. And maybe it’s the kind of thing that’s so obvious I should have tried it sooner. Maybe my sleepy brain just needs a nudge to figure out what the next thing on the list is, and maybe it’ll work so well that I keep doing it, even after the “outside structure” gets back to normal.

I don’t know.

I’m still working on the exact list of things that I want to get done while the world is on hold, but I can add those things in later, if they’re not already on the cards.

Part of my objective is to make sure that things are getting done.

But I also want to confine work (paid, unpaid, my own, and others’) to a predictable chunk of the day, to make sure it’s a reasonable amount of time, and to know how much time I am working. I don’t want to wind up working sixty hour weeks, and then feeling guilty about not working more.

And I want to leave time to relax and unwind and do the fun shit. (Just as soon as I figure out what the fun shit is these days.)

(Found that link to Rebecca Galardo’s Bujo. It’s a video.)

Read more about the bullet journal I use for writing here.