Bullet Journaling 101: My Process Revisited

June 6, 2016 |

Now that I’m well over a year deep into using a bullet journal for my everyday life management, and seeing that bullet journaling has become a hot and happening and trendy thing now (even BuzzFeed wrote an extensive image-driven post about how-to do it), I thought it would be worth revisiting what mine looks like for those who are curious about how it works, how you can modify it to make it your own, and why you absolutely do not need to buy a million fancy things to make this task system work for you.

I love looking at the bullet journals people post on Pinterest or on Instagram or on Tumblr or on Twitter. But something about seeing them over and over has bothered me a little bit — there’s been a weird need to make them super fancy, to create what amounts to an entire industry, over a task management system. No shame on those who love doing it, since I am a person who keeps numerous notebooks and art journals for various things, but I want to emphasize to anyone intimidated by the idea of bullet journaling to realize that the goal isn’t to make it fancy. It’s to make it functional for you. I am bare bones with my journal, and that works for me. I use only supplies around my house, and I don’t make anything fancy. I don’t even use a lot of the suggested setups that the original bullet journal video suggests. I tried some of these things out when I first began but soon realized that they do no work for me, my life, or how I think. So I ditched ’em.

There is no index at the beginning of my bullet journal. Instead, I just hop right into the monthly calendar.

I like a quick overview of some of the big events happening in the month ahead. I don’t feel the need to fill everything out. I included one note about a private yoga session I have, but otherwise, I don’t mark down on the overview when I’m going to work out or anything. That’s easier to implement in the day-by-day pages.

Immediately after the calendar for the month, I like to keep a running “read” and “to read” list. The read is straightforward, and the “to read” isn’t necessarily my agenda of reading, but books I’ve heard about or have nearing their expiration date on my Nook. As you can see in April, I read a lot, but I don’t have anything noted on the “to read.” I don’t use it as much as I want to, but I keep it there because there are times I think of something or need to make a note and want it where I know I’ll find it.

Following the books lists, I keep two or three pages with the super helpful and descriptive title “Notes.” This is where I keep notes to myself so I don’t have a million pieces of paper floating around. Above, you can see my flight and travel information for going to Providence in March. I marked it with a little washi tape so that when I was sitting in a cab, I could flip to that ASAP without juggling a lot of paper or searching. As you can see, too, I mark so little with tape or coloring that it stands out immediately.

I also like to keep a list of blog ideas in this section every month. This is so much easier than random bits of post-its, which was my prior method. Efficient, but not necessarily organized or useful when you have 50 of them floating around. Capturing all those ideas in a single space each month is actually useful.

And then here’s how I lay out my day-to-day pages. Every day gets a half of page on the journal, and I usually combine Saturdays and Sundays into one half-page, since those tend to require less “to do” space. Starred items are things that I have to do/are appointments, so I know those are priorities around which the other things will fit or fall. I cross off tasks as I complete them, and then I spend each evening or early morning choosing which tasks will get carried over and completed and which will be thrown away completely. I don’t have time to do everything I want, and it’s through bullet journaling I’ve learned how to pick and choose what gets done and what gets left behind.

Sometimes I keep additional notes to myself in the journal. On the top right is a card with some of the assignments for my photography class, and I keep it in the journal for quick access. I don’t want to lose it, but I haven’t gone out to tackle the assignments yet. I did the same thing with edits for Here We Are, in that I kept track of who sent back revisions or who I was waiting for stuff from on notes like that. Keeping everything in this journal saved me from never finding exactly what I needed when I needed it.

I keep my journal written out a month in advance, so the pages for June and July are done now, and next month, I’ll create August and September pages. I know a lot of people need more planning time than that for their lives, but I rely on reminders or my own brain for things (I can recall appointments and plans for months in advance in my head, and some places, like my dentist’s office, send me text reminders a week in advance). When there is something well in advance I need to keep in mind or fear I’ll forget, I’ll pull out a post-it or notecard and stick it in the journal like the photo assignment card above. Easy!

The very last page of each month, I create a “month in review” space. This is where I write about triumphs and things I accomplished that I want to remember come the end of 2016. I just spend a few minutes at the end of the month writing them down in a list and keeping it simple. It’s a really nice way to reflect on the achievements, rather than on the things that didn’t go so hot, during the month. One of those is more useful to remember and reflect upon than the other.

I have in the past also kept pages for logging workouts, but since working out is now a daily event in my life, I no longer feel the need to see my progress like that. I have a yoga routine and a cardio routine and they work for me without the log. But it’s never out of the question I might choose to implement it again. Same with a word count tracker for writing — keeping a running list of how many words I wrote per day was nice to see and motivating when I needed it.

And that’s the beauty of a bullet journal: there aren’t rules. You can do what you want and make it work for your life.

If you’re curious about what tools I use, it’s a grid-style large Moleskin, along with black Pilot V5 pens (my go-to for every kind of writing). Each month’s dates and titles I put in color from the Staedtler colored pen collection I have, and the washi tape I got at Target (the masking sticker set I got in a subscription box, but it’s $4 at Amazon). The little library checkout cards I got from Knot & Bow.

There is literally nothing else to my bullet journal. I do nothing fancy, I draw nothing wild, and I don’t feel compelled to do more than list stuff I need or want to get done. I am not a digital planner at all, despite being online all the time, and the bullet journal lets me manage my time and my life in really satisfying ways. I see stuff getting done, and I make conscious choices about time and energy use. I don’t separate work tasks from life tasks, since my time with work is fluid and working on all of those things within my day is my reality. Keeping separate logs would confuse me.

I don’t have any symbols or keys or page numbers or indexes. Minimalism is what works beautifully for me. Others find fancy and pretty works for them, and heck yes, I love looking at those works of art. But they just aren’t realistic for me and my life.

Do you bullet journal? What sorts of things do you track or keep notes about? If you use another method of managing your life, I’d love to hear about that, too.

Micromovements, The Cult of Busy, & Owning Your Time

April 11, 2016 |

For readers who get my personal newsletter, this is a rerun of a piece I wrote last month that generated so much feedback privately that I knew I had to post it on STACKED. I’ve written about “busy” as a status here before, but after diving into Laura Vanderkam’s I Know How She Does It, I couldn’t stop thinking about the concept and how we can change our mentalities to fit everything we want into our lives with a little shuffling. I think that we can all relate to it, no matter what our careers, and I think for readers who want to be doing more reading, more talking about books, spending more time in the book world, this is all applicable.

____________________

I am and have been endlessly fascinated with the concept of “busy.” It is, in my mind, about giving a false sense of importance when shared. I’m so busy lately. Of course life gets busy and your day to day can be hectic and then you have other shit coming at you requiring your attention.

But here’s the thing: in general, in the day-to-day scheme of things, busy is a status and it’s one that’s taken on the same role as bragging.

Laura Vanderkam’s recent(ish) book, I Know How She Does It, explores the idea of mosaic time management. Her argument is that we all have time to do the things that we want and we are, in fact, doing most of the things we want to with our time. But because we do not track our time well or see how we can shift around the tiles in our lives, we instead choose “busy” and “tired” as markers of how we’re doing. Even when we are technically neither. These are ways for polite conversation. It’s more acceptable to say you’re so busy, rather than to say you’ve been slaying it and are feeling fierce about it.

The book goes on to look at how women who are successful — and Vanderkam is clear in defining successful as women who make $100,000 a year on their own, a narrow and yet culturally-relevant measure of success — and how they manage their lives. Are they really working 50 or 60 hours a week? (No). Are they only getting 4 or 5 hours of sleep a night? (No). Are they spending any time with their families? (Yes, a lot). The thing is, we as individuals do not code or label the things we’re doing into useful categories, nor do we quite understand the measure of time on a bigger level. Vanderkam suggests rather than looking at the 24 hours we have in a day, we instead consider the 168 hours we have in a week.

When you do that, suddenly things shift in your perspective.

Maybe you only got 5 hours of sleep on Monday night, but on Saturday, you got 10 solid hours. That averages to 7.5 hours each night, right there. So yes, maybe you WERE tired on Tuesday, but how did you feel on Saturday and Sunday? Bet the answer might not be the same.

If you look at the whole of a week, you’re spending a lot of time pursuing the things you love to do. Maybe it’s not in one heap of time like you’d prefer. Maybe it’s not as much as you’d prefer; we all have those projects we want to get to but just find that, after all of our other tasks, we don’t have it in us to get to. But, by looking at time in 168 hour chunks, it might be easier to see where pieces of the time mosaic can be moved around to accommodate those passion projects. You feel fantastic when you wake up on Saturday morning after 10 hours of sleep? Maybe you spend that first hour laying in bed reading or writing or tackling a puzzle or playing a board game or writing a letter to a friend. That sounds and feels more manageable than throwing it on a to-do list for, say, Wednesday and realizing after putting in work and a stop at the grocery store and laundry and cooking dinner and feeling worn out by the time you get to it.

I wrote last year about how Bullet Journaling has changed my relationship to productivity, and I still remain dedicated and passionate about it. There is something about looking at a week over a two page spread, then choosing what gets carried over and what gets ditched. And when you consider the 168 hour week, suddenly, there is time to write that blog post. There is time to color your hair or get a pedicure. There is time to watch that TED Talk and get in a workout everyday. You probably do get in some good sex and some good time with family and friends. What you have to do is make a microshift in your mindset, though, to see it: driving with your partner to do an errand is family time if you make it a conversation or a game. You can watch that TED Talk while you’re on the elliptical or treadmill. Get a pedicure and listen to that podcast you’ve been eager to tune into. During nap hours on the weekend, maybe you spend the first part of that nap getting close with a partner. Shift how you think about your time and suddenly, the time is right there.

The idea of microchanges has been on my mind a lot, as it’s a big component of the yoga practice I’m doing. The instructor talks a lot about adjustments you can make in a pose to make it more or less challenging. But the fascinating piece for me is the microchange, the slight shift in movements and muscles that are working in a pose, whatever the adjustment you’ve decided may be. It’s crossing your legs opposite of the way you normally cross them. It’s placing the thumb you never place on top on top and noticing how it feels. It’s flexing your foot instead of pointing it. Simple, tiny things, but the results are quite phenomenal. Different muscles work. New things unlock. Something internally and/or externally clicks.

I think we get stymied into believing that important things come through adjustments. Adjustments mean change, which means time, and we’re all just so busy and we’re all so tired. And it’s true: an adjustment requires the whole of your body and your mind.

But microchanges are easy, tiny, tweaks in your routines, in the way you think about things, in noticing how you feel when you shift your weight from the front of your foot to the back. It’s in recognizing that maybe you can’t do something in 24 hours a day, but you can put it into one of your 168 hours a week.

Getting Things Done with Bullet Journaling

April 30, 2015 |

Taking a day away from talking about books and reading to instead talk about the art and science behind how I get organized and stay productive. Part of it is being inspired by folks like Jane from Dear Author who talked about this at the start of the year, and part of it is that I’ve really taken to bullet journaling and have had a number of people talk about how they want to get into it and don’t understand how it works.

I’ve always been a list keeper. I have notebooks upon notebooks of to-do lists, stretching back to college and earlier. They’re still sitting in boxes and in closets around the house, in the event I need to do something like see where I was in wedding planning back in 2006. Just incase, I guess. I’ve kept a notebook of every book I’ve finished reading since 2000, which sits on the book case in my living room.

When I worked outside of the house, I kept numerous notebooks for lists. Some were for work. Some were for inspiration. Some were for random note taking. For a few years — recent ones — my list keeping and note taking got out of control. I not only had numerous notebooks going, but I also became an unabashed post-it note user. The great thing about post-its is how easy they are to move around, put into notebooks, rearrange, and, as it turns out, throw away. Where I cannot get rid of a notebook with lists, tossing a post-it of tasks I’ve completed away felt like an accomplishment. I enjoyed that.

The downside to throwing out post-its, though? Not being able to see at a glance what sorts of productivity I can achieve within a certain time frame. Am I getting ten things done a day? Three things done a week? What sort of long-term projects require weeks, instead of an hour? Quantifying productivity with post-its and numerous journals just doesn’t work for me.

Enter bullet journal.

If you’re not familiar with the bullet journal, take the three minutes to watch the video which gives an overview of the theory and system:

After watching this, I had more questions than answers. It felt overcomplicated for my own needs while also feeling too simple. Can I really keep numerous lists in one place? Why do I need multiple calendars within the journal? Do I need the journal AND a calendar? Will it make sense to mix up my work-related tasks with my personal tasks? Blog tasks? How will I make sense of all the little symbols and notations?

In short, I watched the video and felt like it was a lot to take in. But I wanted to try it anyway.

A little bit of backstory here: I noted being a journal and note book nerd, but I didn’t mention the level to which this exists. Back in the glory days of Livejournal, I was a member of numerous notebook and journaling communities, and even after, I connected with many folks who were into that, too. Is there something more nerdy than talking about how you journal or stay productive? About what kinds of pens you prefer? About where to score really great notebooks (…and yes, I have preferences on the note books I use and for what purpose)? I knew there’d be people out there showing off how they bullet journal, and while there are some great examples on Tumblr, I knew where the gold mine would be: Pinterest.

Here’s a quick and dirty set of search results for “bullet journal” on Pinterest. While many follow the formula of the original, many diverge. If you spend some time digging around through people’s posts, you’ll find so many variations on the standard bullet journal, and it was through a few hours of time, I was able to cobble together a system that absolutely, positively works for me.

Yes, I am 100% analog in my tasking and I foresee this being the case for a long time. I am better at remembering things when I write them down than I am keeping them in my head or on a digital calendar or document. I have no more post-it notes in my life, and I keep only two notebooks now. One is for almost everything I do (that’s the bullet journal), while the second is my notebook for keeping track of work scheduling of social media, meeting notes, and generally uncategorizeable note taking. I use a large Moleskine with a grid format for the journal, while I use a Chronicle journal for my note taking (this one right now). I am very, very committed and devoted to both of those products for those very specific reasons. It’s partially about size, portability, and quality. Likewise, they sit together neatly on a shelf when I am finished with them, which is important, since I refer back to many of the note-taking notebooks frequently.

This is how I organize my bullet journal, and as the year has progressed and my projects and work have shifted and grown, you’ll see my methods have evolved, too.

I began like the video does, by numbering my pages and creating an index at the front of the journal. This method lasted for approximately 15 pages and two days of January. I don’t care about being that organized. If I do, I can go back later and fill in those gaps. I did end up making a yearly calendar at the beginning of the journal, month by month, with key dates highlighted and marked. I haven’t referred back to this much since creating it, so it’s stayed blank. I’d probably ditch this in future iterations.

At the beginning of each month, I write out a rough events calendar:

This is nothing more than the dates of the month on the left, along with events or important things I ned to remember beside it. On dates with more than one event, I just separate them but put them all on the same line.

On the next page, I keep a single-page monthly task list. This is a list of things I need to do during the month that don’t necessarily have a due date or need to be done by a certain point. I refer back to this every day when I’m working on my daily task lists (getting there in a minute) in order to build those daily to-dos.

Following those pages, I like to make myself a place to track my monthly workouts. Some people do things like Fit Bit or Polar Vortex (which isn’t the real name, but that’s what I call my husband’s fancy tracker). I think I’ve made it clear I’m a paper person.

Following those three key pages, I then flip to the following page for a two-page spread which becomes a place where I keep track of two things during the month: blog post ideas, as well as books I’ve read and books I’d like to read that month. I don’t get to everything on the “to read” list, but that’s become a way for me to keep up with what I’ve been thinking about or wanting to read so when I do finish something and wonder what next, I have a place to turn.

After that, I give myself 3-5 pages which I’ve so creatively titled “miscellaneous.” This is where all of my monthly catch-all to-dos, lists, and other things I can’t forget or want to refer back to end up. Sometimes it’s literally a note about something I need to mention in an email or it’s an address. Something I don’t want to lose or misplace and would want to maybe refer back to at some point. I didn’t include pictures because all of those pages have personal stuff on them, but the important part for me is they exist and they’re there before the daily task lists.

One of the key features of bullet journaling per the video is that people can use a special key to track their events and tasks. This…does not work for me. Instead, I make a running agenda for every single day and mark things off as I go. For important things, like an appointment or call I have to attend to, I usually put a star to note that to myself. Otherwise, it’s a straight list, and I keep the daily task lists to half of a page. That’s all I can reasonably do in a day. Or rather, it’s all I expect myself to try to accomplish in a day that needs to get written down. Some things are so routine, I don’t need to mark them.

Generally, I write out a week of dates at a time. Sometimes I’ll go further. I don’t usually put the day of the week beside the date, but I have done that to keep track periodically. What’s been key for me here is this: I list things I need to do, or a memory cue for them (like “Pinterest” and “Goodreads,” which are things I do for Book Riot) and I mark them off as I accomplish them. When I see there are things being unmarked and unaccomplished, I move them to the next day.

Some people believe in very specific tasks being written. I alternate between specific tasks (“Write a Tumblr post for work about this event doing this”) and cues (“Goodreads,” which simply means do a few things on Goodreads that need to be done that day). It works for me because some things require specific information and other things do not.

If things don’t get done within a week or so — depending on what the task or memory cue is — I reevaluate the task. Do I need to do it? Will I do it? Or is it taking up unnecessary space in my life and it’s time to let go? If something isn’t on my monthly task list and has just been taking up space on my calendar, it’s time to either do the task (like go to the post office, which is a notorious one I hold over) or get rid of it and not think about it again.

By keeping my daily task lists to a week or so planned out, I force myself to make these decisions regularly. I don’t have time to waste writing things down again and again if I’m really not going to do them or if it’s a thing I just need to do and finish.

I keep all of my to-do list in one space. I do not separate out work tasks from personal tasks. I am very good at budgeting my time and energy during the day, so I know how to proceed with those multiple sides to my daily life. I practice energy management as opposed to time management, which I know is a touchy-feely way of getting things done, but it works for me. And since I work from home with an unconventional schedule, I find this method of taking care of things every day really works for me. Basically, I don’t plot things out in time chunks. I plot them out by energy. I know I am more likely to get certain things done in the morning and other things done mid-day. So I look at my lists every day and go from there. (This also tends to be why I am generally very fast at responding to emails or messages I get: as soon as I have the energy for it, I’m tackling it, rather than planning to go at it in one period of time.)

And that’s all.

I don’t do anything else with my bullet journal. I have no fancy secrets or knobs or gadgets. I use the same black ink Pilot pen on every single page. I reevaluate the monthly task lists as I go, and sometimes things get knocked off when they’re accomplished or I know it’s not going to happen.

I’m sold on this method of tracking my life because it’s analog and because I love having both the feeling of accomplishment that comes with marking things off and seeing how much can and cannot get done. More, I have a lot of opportunities to make choices with my time more regularly now that I see how my energy works with me, rather than against me. As a person who has to have control in her life, this is the biggest benefit. I know when and how I can get things done when I see it like this.

Keeping a record of books read, workouts finished, and blog post ideas keeps me motivated. I like seeing those pages full visually. And it’s always nice to know there’s a pile of blog post ideas sitting in line when I feel like I have nothing to work with when I sit down to write.

My bullet journaling came from trial and error, looking at what other people were doing and what would work for my own life. If it’s something that appeals to you but feels overwhelming, I cannot emphasize looking around at how others adapt them and then doing the same for yourself. I started with some idealistic notions on what I’d do with this, but then I let them die away as I realized the key component of bullet journaling for me, aside from organization, was decision making. Where do I invest my time and where do I let things go?

Other resources for getting started in bullet journaling:

Maureen wrote about her own personal methods of bullet journaling earlier this year. As you’ll see we all have methods that work for us. The beauty of bullet journaling is the adaptability of the format.

There’s also a Facebook group for bullet journaling. You can hop in and show off, ask questions, and get ideas for how other people use their journals here.

Bullet journal ideas and examples from Pinterest to get you started.