Simple Ways to Stick With Your Journal Through the Holidays

How to Keep Using Your Planner During the Holiday Season

Between parties, family, travel, shopping, and end-of-year stress, it can be hard to stay organized during the holidays and find time for your bullet journal during the holidays. That means bullet journals and planners are usually one of the first things to fall to the wayside when the busy holiday season begins.

While this is totally normal, you can take small steps to keep grounded during the holiday season, especially because journaling and planning can actually make the holidays more enjoyable and less stressful.

In this blog post, we’ll cover some holiday planner tips so you know how to use a planner during the holidays, some quick creative ideas for festive spreads, and how to stay consistent during the busy journaling season.

Simple Planner Tips to Stay Productive During the Holidays

It’s no secret that the holiday season is busy, so let’s get into some tips to help you use your bullet journal or planner so you can stay on top of your holiday planner routine.

Tip 1: Simplify Your Planning Routine to Stay Organized During the Holidays

When your schedule is moving faster than your holiday bullet journal can keep up with, it’s a good idea to take a bit of time to reflect on what the essentials of your bullet journal or planner are that keep you organized.

If you need to figure out your essential bullet journal spreads, consider the questions below.

• What bullet journal spreads do you use the most?
• What bullet journal spreads are most valuable to you? These could be the same spreads as the previous question!
• What is the purpose of your bullet journal? Task planning, appointment recording, memory keeping, etc.

Once you reflect, you can work out what you need for a simple planner routine for holidays. It’s okay to put some spreads on the back burner or scale back if they’re taking too much bandwidth during the busy season.

To speed up your bullet journal setup process so you can stay organized during the holidays, try one of the ideas below.

• Use blank mini calendars or DIY color stickers to track your mood instead of making a fully doodled mood log.
• Use schedule strips to quickly log appointments and events on days that need extra structure.
• Scale back decorative weekly or daily spreads to a title only to save on time and use weekday headers for a touch of decoration without adding any time to your setup.
• Functional sticker sheets, in general, are great for fast setup when your planner needs to stay practical.

Taking your bullet journal or planner back to the basics allows you to use your bullet journal during the holidays, keeping you organized even when things feel overwhelming.

These simple planner tips will help you stay organized during the holidays without overhauling your whole setup.

Tip 2: Batch Your Bullet Journal Spreads When You Can

A great holiday planner tip is to make it as easy as possible to use your bullet journal or planner when it gets busy. One way to make that happen is to prepare your bullet journal for the busy journaling season by prepping and batching what you can.

That can mean taking a couple of minutes each day to review for the following day and making sure your holiday planner routine is ready for you, whether that means setting up a weekly bullet journal spread before you need it or pre-filling out your task list for the next day. You can use tiny icon stickers to make important events or tasks stand out.

If you are the type of person to set up weekly spreads right before you need them, it can be worth setting up weekly journal spreads at the beginning of the month to stay organized during the holidays.

Setting up spreads before you need them ensures that your bullet journal will be ready for you when you do need those spreads, so your productivity stays up during the holidays.

It can take a bit of time to set up multiple spreads at once, but it’s a time-saving planner routine that future you will thank you for! To save even more time setting up your holiday bullet journal spreads, use these weekday stickers to add a hand-lettered element.

Tip 3: Use Journal Stickers for Quick Creativity

When you want to stay organized during the holidays, sometimes that means scaling back your planner to just the basics and essentials. However, just because it’s busy season doesn’t mean you have to scale back completely on creativity or art in your bullet journal during the holidays!

Full artistic spreads are beautiful, but during the busy season, it can feel impossible to keep up with making elaborate bullet journal spreads. There is a way to still have beautiful spreads without spending a lot of time setting up spreads.

A great holiday bullet journal idea to make your journal feel festive is to use journal stickers as a creative shortcut to merry decoration. With wintery-themed stickers like gingerbread cookies, Christmas, cozy winter clothes, and chilly penguins, you and your journal can get into the spirit of the holidays with fast decoration. If you’re looking for some fun winter bullet journal themes, here are 12 holiday bullet journal theme ideas.

Tip 4: Try Reflection or Memory Pages Instead of Daily Logs

If you want to keep up with using your bullet journal or planner, but the thought of using it for tasks like usual is another thing to add to your ever-growing to-do list, you can try using your journal for something different. You can still use your journal consistently during the holidays, even if you don’t use it for task planning!

Try using your bullet journal as a holiday reflection journal and reflect daily or weekly about what you’re feeling, any memories you want to remember, and what you’re grateful for.

Tip: Use these vertical number stickers to set up a quick monthly gratitude page where you can log at least one thing you’re grateful for per day during the holiday season to make an easy reflection journal page.

By using your bullet journal or planner as a place for reflection, memory-keeping, and/or gratitude, your journal remains meaningful during the busy time, even though it’s not part of your everyday routine.

It could become a lovely holiday memory journal, or at least some of the pages can be! You might even love using your journal in this way and keep using it as a reflection journal or a gratitude journal during and after the holidays.

Tip 5: Keep Your Bullet Journal Flexible & Forgiving

There’s no prize for stressing yourself for not having a flexible planner routine during the holidays, so if using your journal for task planning or reflection feels like too much, then skip it!

Your bullet journal is meant to work for you, not to be a source of stress.

Missing a few days (or more than a few) doesn’t mean you’ve failed at using your bullet journal during the holidays; it means that you were living your life and you spent your time otherwise.

Life is like that! Bullet journals and undated planners keep it flexible, so once you’re ready to come back to it, they’ll be there waiting for you.

If you’re looking for extra tips on staying consistent when using your bullet journal or planner, this is the blog post for you. And if looking at blank pages bothers you, check out these simple ways to backfill planner pages.

FAQ: How to Stay Consistent and Calm During the Busy Season

If you’ve ever struggled to keep up with your bullet journal during the holidays, these FAQs cover the most common planner questions so you can kick butt during the holiday season!

How do I find time to use my planner during the holidays?

Try short, 5-minute check-ins each morning or evening. Even jotting a quick to-do list helps keep your mind clear.

What’s the best planner setup for the holiday season?

Stick to your essentials: weekly overviews, to-do lists, and events. Undated planners are great for flexibility, and vertical number strips make it easy to have a monthly overview of appointments and events with your calendar.

How can I make journaling more festive without spending hours decorating?

Use themed sticker sets or washi tape! Try Christmas, winter, or cozy-themed stickers for cute holiday vibes.

Should I skip journaling if I fall behind?

No, you can start fresh on the next page. Your bullet journal doesn’t have to be perfect to be useful.

Can journaling help with holiday stress?

Yes! Writing down thoughts, memories, or gratitude lists can calm your mind and help you stay present.

What’s an easy way to track holiday plans or spending?

Use mini blank calendars or number strips to map out key dates and budgets at a glance.

I’m new to bullet journaling. How do I start during a busy time?

Begin with a few basic spreads from the original Bullet Journal Method and use stickers for quick decoration. Simplicity will help you stick with it!

Where can I find planner stickers and accessories for the holidays?

Check out Tablet & Quill Stationery’s themed sticker collections. Our stickers are hand-illustrated, festive, and perfect for quick journaling!

Enjoy the Season and Keep Your Planner Simple

Your bullet journal or planner is a tool to help you stay organized during holidays, but you don’t have to use it to the fullest every day to get something out of it. Small and simple planning steps can help reduce stress during the holidays and help you be more productive.

Your journal is there to support you, not to overwhelm you! Remember to keep things simple when it’s busy; that’s the key to keeping your planner accessible and more likely to be used. Your bullet journal or planner can help you stay organized and mindful during the holiday season.

Explore our holiday sticker collection to make your journal festive without adding extra time to your spread setup!

How do you stay organized during the busy holiday season? I’d love to know! You can leave a comment below or find me as TabletAndQuill on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook.

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