What is Bullet Journal and how to use it

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

A single notebook can replace dozens of productivity apps and services.

You may have heard of such a thing as the Bullet Journal from your sister, colleague, or some other person who ate a dog on the topic of productivity. It's an incredibly cool and versatile tool, easily adaptable and easy to use. And with it you can organize anything in life.

What is Bullet Journal

First of all, please note that Bullet Journal is designed for analog media only. Simply put, you have to use a pad and pen. Or a pencil - but then real Bullet Journal fans will look askance at you. No electronics.

The idea for the Bullet Journal (abbreviated as BuJo) first came to the mind of a guy named Ryder Carroll. He briefly describes his day planner concept in this video.

The main message is this: you only need one notebook, which will contain absolutely all to-do lists, notes, plans and other important information for you. It looks like a regular planner, but it is not quite true: the Bullet Journal does not have any rigid templates, pre-laid out pages and rules. Therefore, the system is very flexible. There are only two conditions:

1. Your Bullet Journal should have a so-called index. This is the table of contents at the beginning of the notebook, with which it is easy to find the notes you want.
2. Pages must be numbered - without this, the index will obviously be useless.

By observing these two conditions, you can always find the record you need, whether it's a list of goals for the month, a trip plan to Bermuda, or an insurance number.

Since there are no more special rules in Bullet Journal, you can fill in your notebook with any information. You can write something in a journal by hand, draw, stick a photo or sticker. Your Bullet Journal is a to-do list, calendar, and archive at the same time.

Why People Lead Bullet Journal

Recordings have a positive effect on mental and physical health

Research shows a positive correlation between handwriting (especially journaling) and health. Take, for example, the numerous Writing to heal experiments by psychologist James Pennebaker at the University of Texas. He asked a group of subjects to write in a diary for 20 minutes for three days in a row.

And those who kept the records felt much happier than the people in the control group. For several months after the experiment, their blood pressure returned to normal, their immune functions improved, and they visited a doctor less often. In addition, subjects reported a stabilized relationship with others and greater success at work.

Studies have also shown that handwriting increases Disclosure of traumas and immune function: Health implications for psychotherapy the activity of immune cells, strengthens Opening Up by Writing It Down memory and reduces Emotional disclosure through writing or speaking modulates latent Epstein ‑ Barr virus antibody titers in the blood of people with the Epstein-Barr virus. It also helps solve sleep problems. Counting blessings versus burdens: an experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life.

Diary allows you to find new ideas through associations

The free association method is often used in psychotherapy. The specialist invites the subject to keep a diary to help understand how different moments of his life are related to each other and how to react to certain thoughts and emotions.

Bullet Journal is a collection of a wide variety of thoughts and challenges. As you reread your notes, covering the physical, mental and emotional aspects of your life, you will surely gain inspiration and new ideas.

This method offloads memory

If you've read Harry Potter, then remember that Dumbledore and Snape dumped unnecessary memories into the magic bowl. You can think of the Bullet Journal as a kind of Memory Pool, a place to store your thoughts. By transferring them to paper, you offload the resources of your brain, eliminating the need to remember everything.

Handwriting is satisfying

Nowadays, when there are a lot of smartphones, tablets and computers around, paper media have some special charm of their own. Keeping a to-do list on a simple sheet of paper is very enjoyable, not like typing on a keyboard or handwriting on a touchscreen.

It's just fun

Many people are so creative with the Bullet Journal that a notebook becomes a work of art over time. Moreover, it brings not only aesthetic pleasure, but also practical benefits.

How to run a Bullet Journal

Select tools

The main tools are a notebook and a pen. And if you decide to keep the Bullet Journal in full accordance with the precepts of Ryder Carroll, you will need a Leuchtturm 1917 notebook - like this. Its pages are pre-numbered, with an index at the beginning and dots instead of cells.

You will also need colored gel pens (Pilot Juice is best) and ink pens (such as the Pigma Micron).

Markers are also useful for highlighting important points. For example, Mildliner: they have nice discreet shades and are not printed on the pages.

In addition to all of the above, you can use stickers, stickers, bookmarks - whatever your heart desires. But this, in principle, is not necessary. You can just as well get by with an ordinary notebook with a cheap pen. The main thing is that they are convenient to carry with you.

Remember the notation

Most of the Bullet Journal entries are short bullet lists. Unlike traditional paragraphs of text, they have two advantages: they are quick to write and easy to read. A separate item in such lists is called "bullet", hence the name of the method.

Bullets are marked with special symbols depending on their content. Here are the options.

• Tasks. Marked with a simple dot (•). It is better than a check mark, checkbox, or whatever, because it can be easily converted to any other character. A task can have several states, and each has its own symbol:

  • point (•) - the task has not been completed;
  • cross (×) - task completed;
  • arrow (>) - the task has been moved to another collection;
  • back arrow (<) - The task is scheduled in the annual plan.

  Alternatively, you can simply cross out the task that you no longer need.

• Events and meetings. Marked with a circle (°). These are records attached to a specific date. They can be done in advance so as not to forget. Also, the event can be entered after it happened - as a keepsake.
• Notes. Marked with a dash (-). These are notes, facts, ideas, thoughts and observations that do not require any action from you - they just need to be taken into account.

Do not try to write down notes and cases on the page separately. Write everything in a continuous list, just do not forget to mark each item with the appropriate symbol.

In addition, each "pool" can be assigned separate characters at the beginning of a line to provide additional context. There are two such characters in the original BuJo. But, in principle, you can come up with your own options.

• High priority task or event. Marked with an asterisk (*). Use this symbol sparingly: if you label each item with it, you will simply get lost.
• A good idea that is important not to lose. Marked with an exclamation mark (!). These can be especially good thoughts, quotes, sudden insights.

In Bullet Journal, there is such a thing as migration, or transfer of notes. Let's say you have something planned for this month, but you haven't done it. Mark the task with> and rewrite it into next month's plan. So you can transfer any items to the pages to which they correspond more. For example, you wrote down the title of a book, and now you want to move it to the "To Read" list.

Handle this duplication of tasks with caution. It takes some effort to move cases from one page to another. Remember: if you don't want to rewrite an item, then it is not so important. And you can just cross it out. And when you're done, don't forget to give the page a theme and index it. By the way, about the index.

Make the markup

1. Index

The Bullet Journal Index is a table of contents. It will help you find the records you need. This is how BuJo compares favorably with traditional diaries: you don't have to flip through a notebook for a long time to find something. The first page is highlighted under the table of contents. If the magazine is large, leave a little more space.

In the future, the principle of action will be as follows. You write down some information in a notebook. Then open the table of contents and enter the appropriate topic there with the number of the page on which you made the entry. If a note takes more than one page, it should be indexed as follows: "Note subject: 5-10 pages."

Some recurring topics may be scattered around the magazine in no particular order. For example, you keep a list of movies that you want to watch, and the spread is full, and then there is another entry. In this case, continue the list in any other place, and in the table of contents write down: "List of films to watch: 5-10, 23, 34-39 pages."

For the index to work, the pages must be numbered. Special notebooks for Bullet Journal have ready-made table of contents and pagination, but you can add numbers yourself.

2. Plan for the future

The Future log is used to set goals for the next six months. The most important events are entered into it. The easiest way to do it is to divide the spread with horizontal lines into six sections, three on each page, and label each with the name of the month.

Don't forget to add this spread to the index. Review your future plan each month to move assignments from it to the monthly goals section.

3. Monthly plan

In a monthly plan, you can record appointments, bill payment days, class and vacation schedules, holidays, deadlines, and the like that you don't want to forget. Each such section in the Bullet Journal should cover an entire spread. On one page is a calendar, on the other is a list of tasks. This is how it looks:

• Calendar pageused to create a monthly plan. You can add events here that are expected, or those that have already passed, but it is important for you to remember them. Keep your entries as short as possible: this is not the place to write down the details.
• Page with tasksfilled with tasks for a month - here you can add tasks that cannot be tied to a specific date and recorded in the calendar. Prioritize your list and carry over what you haven't done from last month.

Another popular way to make a monthly plan is the so-called calendex (from the words "calendar" and "index"). In this calendar, you write down not the cases, but the numbers of the pages on which the necessary information is located.

For example, on the 13th you attended a meeting and took notes on page 25. You open the calendar at the beginning of your notebook and add a page number to the appropriate date. Like this:

A couple of numbers take up less space on the page than a line of text, but the information content is reduced. You will not be able to glance at the calendar and say what awaits you without flipping through the magazine.

But you can compromise and write things down as usual, simply by marking next to them on which page to find the details. Let's say you are working on a large project and need to finish it this month. List your actions on a separate spread, and add only the title and page number to the monthly plan.

4. Weekly plan

If you have so many things to do that the list with them does not fit on the page with tasks in the monthly plan, you can set aside a separate spread for each week. It looks something like this:

Strictly speaking, there are no weekly plans in Ryder Carroll's classic concept. So this step is optional. But the good thing about Bullet Journal is that there are no hard and fast rules and you can conduct it as you like.

5. Diary

Daily logs make up the bulk of the Bullet Journal. This includes the tasks that you have to do, the events of the day, any thoughts, ideas and notes that only come to your mind.

To start keeping daily records, open a blank spread and write the date and day of the week at the top of the page. Fill the page with information in the form of a list throughout the day. It looks like this:

There is no need to try to determine in advance how much space on the page will be needed for daily entries. If you still have it, the next day just keep writing without jumping to the next until this one ends.

6. Collections

Bullet Journal is notable for the fact that it can be used for any purpose. A workout schedule, a gardening journal, a nutrition tracker, a diary, even a sketchbook - and all this can be in one notebook at the same time. Collections are used to organize this data. They collect all information that is not related to planning.

You may have collections where you collect data about your income and expenses, a list of places you would like to work, your sleep schedule, or lists of books, movies, and games that you would like to see. In general, any ideas that need to be kept close at hand are brought in here.

Collections like this can be scattered in random order throughout the notebook, interspersed with daily lists. The main thing is that they are included in the index, and then they will be easy to find at the right time.

A whole community has formed around Bullet Journal. People on the web share photos of their spectacularly designed diaries, and keeping records is a kind of creativity for them. Do not worry if you do not succeed as beautifully, you should not make an end in itself out of bright colors and straight lines. Just remember, your magazine is a productivity tool, and its effectiveness is more important than being effective.