“Bullet journaling” has become a social media trend, but many students still can’t dedicate time and creativity to pretty planning.
Third-year art history student Ally Chou runs Ziuá Design, an Etsy shop that sells premade templates of printable organizers to make bullet journals more accessible to students. Bullet journaling is the process of turning a blank notebook into a personal planner with different sets of logs to track the past, present and future, often in a color-coded or visually pleasing way. The practice is a creative outlet for some, but for herself and other busy students, Chou said filling out planners is mostly a stress reliever that helps them stay on top of their responsibilities.
“What I do is literally give people what to write to plan their day out. I thought I could make a template for different types of people that could cater to what they need by also making it pretty,” Chou said. “They don’t have to spend time on the decorating part if they’re not super creative or artistic but still want to do the bullet journaling.”
Customers who purchase her planners receive the files as PDFs via email and print the planners out themselves, Chou said. The digital nature of her products means customers receive their planners immediately and Chou doesn’t have to worry about the logistics of shipping. Many customers hole punch their planners to turn them into more traditional notebooks, so the loose-leaf pages of her products allow for flexibility, she said.
Ziuá Design offers planners and planner packages ranging in price from $2 to $14, with the layout of each product tailored to its specific purpose. Elements of the daily planner, for instance, include a to-do checklist for each day, a list of appointments and a space to record the day’s weather. Others are more specialized to student-specific needs; one page in the student planner package helps break down big projects by providing space to define objectives, write due dates, brainstorm ideas and list the individual steps needed to be taken to accomplish a goal.
While most of the text, tables and organizational elements are digital, Chou hand-draws the watercolor florals and some of the calligraphy on the planners’ headlines. Yoyo Wu, a third-year art history student, said she likes Ziuá Design products for their color palettes and artistic themes.
“The floral designs are really comfortable to look at,” Wu said. “Because the planners are so pretty, it motivates me to write in them and become a more organized person in general.”
Chou started out selling a weekly planner consisting of a monthly overview calendar and two-page spreads with vertical timetables for each week in the month. But as she talked to her friends and reflected on what could make her own planning experience easier, she broadened her range of products to include study and health planners. Over time, the tracking elements and organizational layouts of her different planners evolved as she got feedback from other students, she said.
Isabel Yin, a fourth-year business economics student, said she personally likes to tape the two pages of her daily to-do list together and hang it on her wall since the designs are aesthetically pleasing. She said she fills the Ziuá planner out with her daily routine and adds quotes and notes for herself in the other spaces. Writing out her routine helps her build better habits and be more efficient with her time, and the inspirational quotes motivate her to follow through on her plans, Yin said.
Chou added that she expanded her products to include specialized planners that track customers’ health, mood and yearly goals in addition to their academic schedules. Her designs, inspired by common bullet journal entries, let people track their water intake, exercise habits, dietary choices and daily emotions. These different features keep people accountable for their health and can give them a sense of accomplishment, she said.
“Sometimes you might feel down for no reason, or you’d just be curious, like how did your month actually go? I feel like it’d be useful to have a mood tracker to track how your month has gone, so when you look back you feel like, ‘Huh, I was sad these days, why?’” Chou said. “It’s a good platform, a good way for you to reflect on yourself.”
Wu said she didn’t think much of the mood tracker at first but eventually found it benefited her mental health and academic performance after trying it.
Chou said planning is a good way to relieve stress and help improve time management. She said she has tried to show her friends who are not into planning the benefits of the practice when they feel overwhelmed by responsibilities. Even the simple act of writing their tasks down on paper could help dissipate some of that stress, which, at the end of the day, is the main function of a planner, she said. Her products strive to emulate the artistry and efficiency of bullet journals while eliminating the stress of having to create one from scratch.
“I overthink a lot, and I find that a way to stop thinking is to just write everything down,” Chou said. “It’s basically like I’m writing stuff down to tell my future self what to do so that my future self won’t have to think that much.”