A friend of mine was recently digging through some drawers and found five unfinished notebooks stashed inside, all bought over a two-year period. The first few pages had been neatly prepared with little habit boxes, and one had a colour coding system that she must have spent a whole evening working on. Then, in each notebook, the writing stopped around page six. One had miraculously made it to page eleven.

I've got a similar problem, only my notebooks have been found inside boxes, cupboards and on shelves. Most of them are a quarter, maybe even a third, full. In my case it's usually a new idea that derails me. A burst of inspiration comes to me, and my personal OCD kicks in, demanding that the information, idea or "new project" be recorded in a new, fresh, clean notebook.

The bullet journalling system went the same way for me. I felt I had to first make the same visually creative pages everyone else makes for their habit trackers, and the rigid sections of the system got on my nerves. I hate a broken section. All similar information needs to be stored together. Thinking about it, I don't think we ran out of willpower or motivation to keep the notebooks going. I think we just kept guiltily seeing the empty pages that had not been updated, and after a while it was easier not to open the notebook, as it had become a record of our failures instead of a record of our progress and achievements.

So, what's the best way to fix this? Instead of buying a new notebook to capture that "fresh, new journal" feeling, I turn to the next clean double page and start recording from there. I've also found that adding a contents page at the front and back of the book has been a game changer for keeping track of related topics that have been separated by pages of other stuff. Just record the related topics and their page numbers together.

Try it tonight

Take your current notebook out of the drawer. Turn to the next clean double page, write whatever's on your mind at the top, and add one line to the contents page. If you've missed a couple of days, who cares. The important thing is to begin a routine that's also guilt-free.

If you open the page and go blank, start with a brain dump list.

And if the notebook keeps ending up in the back of a drawer, try the Kettle Page exercise, which keeps it somewhere that's always visible.

Common questions

Do I have to throw away my half-used notebooks?

No. Pick the most recent one, turn to the next clean double page and start there. The rest of the book can stay as it is.

Does the size of the notebook matter?

I've found that a smaller, plainer, thinner notebook is easier and less intimidating to fill up and commit to.

© 2026 Alistair Sing Key. All rights reserved.

Filed under · notebooks · pen and paper · bullet journal