The Future Log is a great way to log all the important and fun events you have going on in your life. It keeps all of your future events in one place. Anything that occurs in future months such as birthdays, holidays, trips, meetings, and more would go in the Future Log. It’s a simple and easy place to flip to when you need to check when a specific event is happening.The Future Log is located at the front of your Bullet Journal. If you grab an official Bullet Journal notebook, the Future Log is titled towards the beginning to help you get going.
You would set up a Future Log at the beginning of each Bullet Journal starting with the following month. For example, if it’s May, you would start your Future Log for June since you’d be setting up a May Monthly Log. Each month you would refer to the Future Log to write down any relevant events into the Monthly Log. Update the Future Log as needed.
Here is a curated selection of many useful and clever ideas to help you future plan!
Ryder’s Method
The super simple and easy method to get the months down so you can write in events happening in the future.
Ryder Carroll
With all 12 months
If you want to have all 12 months at a glance, here’s one way to go about it.
With mini calendars
If you need to see the months at a glance, draw out some mini calendar and rapid-log the events as usual.
Color-coded
Need to distinguish between events? Color-coding is a planner’s best friend. Add a simple key at the bottom to know what the colors represent. Bask in the glory of seeing all the occurrences of holidays, birthdays, meetings, and more with this simple visual cue.
Vertical Future Log
Similar to Ryder’s except it’s vertical in a list format.
Vertical Months With Dates
If you prefer to write down all the dates of the month at once and log in events later, you can easily do that.
With Mini Months
Who doesn’t love mini months? This is a simple way to see the month and the events directly underneath.
If you fancy a bit of decoration.
With Mini Months and Color-Coding
Same as above but with the addition of mini months at the top. To jazz it up visually, you can also toss in some color-coding.
All Mini Months
If you can’t get enough of the mini months and love the idea of writing down events underneath them and want to see the whole year at a glance, this spread is for you.
Or this spread, to see four months at a time.
Here’s the whole year with the events to the right done in a few different ways.
Alastair Method
A very clever column solution to make it easy to rapid-log events and see which month it falls under.
Sideways
In case this view works better for you.
Color-coded
Because color makes it easier to focus on what kind of event is happening when.
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Alastair and Mini Months
Some handy columns to jot down events and highlight when the events occur. This makes it easy to see how busy your days are.
Calendex by Eddy Hope
A powerful solution to help you naturally write down information about an event on any page and then log that page according to the event day. For example, if you’re on page 93 and need to write down information about an appointment you have on the first of February, you can write down the number 93 on a block on the first of February as you can see below. When that day rolls around, you can flip over to page 93 to see the details about that event.
Color-coded Calendex
Adding color and symbols to your Calendex can massively increase its effectiveness in your life. Adding color can help you see vacations, meetings, and more at a glance.
Ryder-Calendex Hybrid
An idea is to have the Calendex on one side and Ryder’s method on the other. Having these two formats may make sense depending on your needs. Here is December through March in the Calendex and April through July with Ryder’s method.
And a colorful version, of course.
Calendex-Alastair Hybrid
You can use a hybrid of the Calendex and the Alastair into something like this. Here I placed the exact same months on the left and the right, in their respective formats. The Calendex will help you see what days you’re busy at a glance and the Alastair method will allow you to see the details of the events. Instead of writing down the page number (which you still could) in the Calendex, you would simply add an open circle or signifier (or color-code) for the event to indicate that you’re busy that day. This way you can easily glance at the Calendex to see when you’re busy and you can use the Alastair side to see the details for those events.
Alternatively, you could also place different months on each spread if you prefer a continuous approach and don’t mind flipping pages to find the details for the Calendex portion.
More Variations
The months laid all around in a quirky way.
Brainstormed Future Log.
A circular Future Log for birthdays and holidays.
Someday Log
I designate one of the pages in my Future Log as a “Someday Log” because it is a future type of Collection so it makes sense to write down things I’d like to do someday here.
Bullet Journalists are full of creativity and innovativeness when it comes to their Bullet Journals and the Future Log is no exception.
For more Future Log inspiration, please follow the official Bullet Journal Future Log board on Pinterest.
Hope you enjoyed these ideas!
How do you future plan in your Bullet Journal?
Charles Tsai
May 15, 2017
After trying to different methods of future logging, I found that the simplest and easiest method is to create six monthly logs right at the start of the journal for the following six months. (I chose six because that’s how long it usually takes me to fill up a journal.) Any future event can be logged in the appropriate month – either as an event (left side) or a task (right side).