My Bullet Journal Introduction

Bullet Journal in General

I saw a posting on Facebook referring to an article in the WSJ about how the tech savvy are turning from technology answers to keeping track of important ideas, projects, and calendar items and moving towards journals of one type or another. Specifically, they called out the concept of a Bullet Journal.

I've done various types of time, task, and project tracking in the past. My own system (when I manage to use it) has been a mix of Franklin Covey and Getting Things done. But really, it tends to be a bit messy and I'm not the best at managing it.

At my first reading through it, it looked like it had some great ideas in it, but there was something missing about how to put it all together.

Some of the GTD ideas are there:

review daily (something I'm bad at)
focus on the things that are important to you
space for putting thoughts and ideas that you trust to not lose them

as well as some of the ideas of Franklin Covey:

notation for different actions to be taken on items
deciding which incomplete items should move forward

On first reading, I didn't quite catch how the pieces were supposed to work together, despite there being lots of pictures of people's very creative and artistic "bullet journal" collection pages (everything in a BuJo is considered a 'collection').

I found a couple resources which gave me a much better understanding of how it all worked together, both from Tiny Ray of Sunshine:

Also, on the Bullet Journal web site, you can order a specific journal that seems to be pretty favored, and I can see why. It has 3 cords to mark places in the journal. It's a good heavy paper (the Leuchtturm 1917 has a 80g paper, according to their site)

My Process / Bullet Journal

Physical Journal

I started off playing with what I wanted it to look like in a journal that I already had going: a Fabriano EcoQua A5 size with Elastic. It's a good notebook, I'm not thrilled with it for a few reasons. It doesn't lay flat easily, and with the Bullet Journal collections often spanning 2 pages this is starting to feel like a problem already. It doesn't have a ribbon bookmark connected to it. I'd been using a binder clip to mark my current location which was good and fine for a day-by-day tracker where there will be nothing past where I am currently writing. However, treating it as a Bullet Journal, I feel like I may be bouncing all over the place a bit more, and having the pages past my current 'Daily Log' locked in a binder clip may be limiting. I hot-glued a couple ribbons into the back of my current journal, but I think I chose a poor width and because they are clustered and connected to the back, when I open the book up it becomes ungainly. I did get some post-it tabs based on one persons organization ideas, and those are already showing their utility. It doesn't have page numbers, which isn't really that big of a deal as I can add my own page numbers. This might even be a benefit as I'm starting from a few pages in with this notebook. Also it means I can get 'creative' with my page numberings if I really feel the desire (only right-pages get numbers, as a potential creative numbering scheme).

I think I am going to keep using the Fabriano to play with layouts and ideas before I decide which one(s) I want to finalize on, or feel will be worth the experiment for at least a month. At this point, the lay-flat is becoming enough of a pain that I am thinking of moving right now to a Shinola Large Grid notebook that I've had on the shelf for a bit. It was my "when I use up the current notebook" choice,

My chosen initial collections

Index

Maybe I'm a purist, but an index goes at the back of a book. Since I am starting from a book that is partially used, I decided that would be a better place for it. It has a tab marker so it's easy to find, but that's one of the reasons that using a binder clip for my 'current' marker is problematic. I may decide my 'index' should be called a 'table of contents' and place it at the start.

I think I've also decided to put a calendex back there as well.

Future Log

The Future Log displayed on the Bullet Journal site is a 2-page spread where you have two columns of 3 blocks with space to put things in each month. Having been writing in paper trackers for a while, I know that one thing that almost always comes up to bite me later is when I have a proscribed space I've alloted for something. I found an alternate Future Log which I think will suit me a bit better.

Monthly Log

I like the idea of a monthly log and also monthly trackers to at least pay attention to what my habits are in particular areas. What are the regular (daily or weekly) activities I want to see if I'm keeping up on.

Conclusion

For now, I'm still working with which journal I want to use, and my basic layouts, but so far I see a lot of promise in this as a method. There will likely be many more posts on this topic, or it might migrate from being specific to bullet journal and become more organization focused.

My intro to Bullet Journal(ing)