Things I need to remember fall out of my head sometimes. It’s a fact I’ve learned to live with, but I don’t like it. The danger is that once one thing tumbles out, I can’t trust other things to stay put – and a tiny snowball of forgetfulness turns into an avalanche. But my quest to keep everything in my head – every appointment, commitment, piece of PE kit, email, phone call, school permission slip, shopping list – without any of it falling out, is finally at an end. I have learned about how to create a bullet journal.

This is courtesy of the fabulous group where I learn so many of my new skills: SJPoole Network. At last Friday’s session, the wonderful Sarah Sibley of Got to Jot gave us a tutorial on how to do it. She explained that it takes a little time to set up, but once it’s in place, it’s worth every minute – and she is absolutely right.

It was an excellent reason to buy a beautiful new book from her, accompanied by some lovely double-ended, italic coloured pens (a business expense, of course); and over the weekend I set about it.

The result is that I have a single place to store what’s in my head. And it’s not all jumbled up, the way I normally keep it – it is beautifully categorised, colour-coded, and it’s incredibly simple to find ALL of it.

Calendars at the front – year view, followed by month view, and week view. This level of detail suits me, but you can take it down to page per day view if it’s helpful for you. Each entry on the month and week views is colour-coded according to whether it’s a Work thing, a Children thing, a House thing, a School Governors thing, or a Me thing. I can now see exactly what’s coming up and when, with notes to the side about anything I need to do to prepare for it.

At the back I’ve got a page for all the blog posts I’ve got in mind (you lucky lot), and another for social media planning (yet to write a word on that one – but it’s good to be an optimist). The last page I’ve titled Things That Occur To Me – just stuff that needs jotting down for organisation later. No doubt I will be adding more pages throughout the year too.

The other awesome thing about my bullet journal is that I can now see how top-heavy a week is with a particular responsibility – and start to do some reshuffling if the imbalance is having an impact on other things.

It’s fantastic, and I’ve been searching for it ever since the Baby Brain kicked in eight years ago. Having a book that holds everything that’s swirling about in my head is just such a weight off my mind.

I have also realised that I have now created a single point of failure. I’m not going to worry about what I’ll do if I lose it…