How I Am Keeping Organized This Year

February 10, 2020 |

I’ve written before about my low-key bullet journaling style twice. Over the last year and a half, though, I’ve found bullet journaling to not be sufficient anymore for my needs and I took to finding a new system of keeping myself organized, motivated, and reflective of what it is I’m doing with my time every day.

The bullet journal stopped working for me because, as much as it was useful for assessing task importance, it didn’t give me a way to delegate my time during the day nor plan further ahead. I slowly began to shift over to a digital task management system, then realized that alone wouldn’t be enough for me.

Every Day Organization

Enter: Day Designer.

As I noted in the Instagram post above, whenever I lug this thing around — and lug is the right term, given how substantial it is — I get asked about it. The Day Designer is exactly what it promises to be: a way to design your day around time blocks. Every single day has its own page, except for Saturdays and Sundays which are on the same page, and the days are broken down into hours from 5 AM to 9 PM.

In addition to the time breakdown, though, each page offers a ton of other ways to track what’s important that day. There’s space for a top three of the day, for notes, as well as a space for that day’s to-do list. I don’t use the gratitude space in the planner, since I leave that in another place, but there is room for those who want to see that when they open up their planner.

I get up at 4:30 every morning. Having the chance to start planning my day at 5 AM is a game-changer. So many planners start much later, but I do need to get started early. Sure, “reading” and “meditation,” are things I’d likely do automatically, but the act of slotting those into time boxes prioritizes them and is a reminder of what exactly I did with my time on any given day.

I don’t write down every single thing I want to get done on the to-do list each day because I also use a digital task management system. Things is the one I prefer, as I can set up recurring tasks, can reschedule things easily, and I can keep a running list of “future ideas.”

Under “Today” on Things, you get a check list and can just mark things off as you go. You get a nice view of upcoming tasks like that seen above, and you can keep track of ideas in the “Someday” folder. This is where I often brainstorm post ideas or take notes about trends or topics I want to remember to go back to but that don’t necessarily have any due date associated with them. Often, one of the recurring tasks in Things ends up on the Top 3 priorities in the Day Designer, just because it is. I know I’ll do it, but it’s the most important thing to get done, no matter what else pops up during the course of a day.

The to-do list in my paper planner becomes a bit of a dumping ground for things that are small but need to get done: packages to take to the post office, appointments to make, emails to send or follow up with. When I collect those administrative-like tasks together in that space, I’m able to get an idea of how much time I need to allot in my day to complete them. Will it be an hour? Two hours? Or do I move those to another day and schedule a longer period of time to knock out a lot of things at once?

My last tool is one that isn’t updated daily. I have a monthly calendar planner that has just each month of the year. In it, I write down my planned blog posts, newsletter topics, and other regular writing when it’s scheduled. It’s an old-school content calendar and allows me to see what I’ve got cooking so I don’t repeat myself or find myself being bored by writing the same kinds of things all the time. It also ensures I don’t forget to do something.

Goal Setting and Reflection

In addition to the organization system for my day-to-day life, I keep a similarly-large planner for my goal setting. After reading numerous rave reviews of the PowerSheets system, I decided to splurge on one this year. I’m so glad I did!

The PowerSheets ask for a lot of upfront work, but it’s all good upfront work. You reflect on things going well in your life, then think about what it is you really want to get out of the next year of time. Those are distilled into no more than eight goals for the year, which are then broken down even further. Those micro-steps are transformed into tasks you tend to, either over the course of a month, each week, or every day.

Image from https://cultivatewhatmatters.com/.

Every week, I review my tending sheet a couple of times and update it. What did I get done from the month’s tasks, the week’s goals, and the daily tasks? It’s a reminder to refocus and also to allow myself space to deviate — an example is that I make it a daily goal not to turn on my laptop until 7 am and use that time to read and meditate. But sometimes things come up and my morning gets compressed and I need to turn on my laptop for some work. When I look at the daily goals and see that 10 out of the last 11 days have been successful in no turning on the laptop, I do not feel an ounce of guilt for doing it once because I can see how good I am at maintaining the goal overall.

I’ve taken this a step further, too, in that I have been creating themes around my goals by month. February, for example, is “renew,” and it’s when I’m trying to take care of overdue tasks. I went and got my Real ID at the DMV, I ordered new glasses, and I am in the midst of figuring out what to do with my hair. I made myself a massage appointment and will be taking my car in for some overdue repairs I’ve put off. Spending time at the start of the month to put all of those things down and look at them in conjunction with my big goals, I see how each of those moves me closer to the bigger picture in some way. It’s incredibly motivating.

Each month’s tending is paired with a reflection page about what went well and what didn’t that month, which is so helpful and grounding.

I don’t stop at the PowerSheets though. The other tool I use for dreaming and goal setting is the Start Today journal. I’ve written before about my complex relationship with Rachel Hollis, in that I see where she has weaknesses but also that there are a lot of things she talks about and shares that are extremely helpful to me (and frankly, I think a lot of the feedback she’s seen has made her a lot more aware of those shortcomings, as I’m finding myself liking her more and more because it’s clear she’s working and is indeed complex and flawed and sees that!).

Start Today is her methodology, and it requires on fancy journals. I do have one, though, that she sells because I grabbed it on discount. The premise is extremely simple: every day, you write down 5 things you’re grateful for, then 10 dreams — written as if they’ve already happened, so it doesn’t read like a to-do list, and then the ONE goal you’re going to achieve first. This fits in SO neatly with the PowerSheets and gives me a roadmap to success in the grander scheme of things while also inviting me to not only dream, but find gratitude every day.

Journaling

The last tool in my daily regimen for staying organized and grounded is a simple journaling technique I learned from a fellow student while doing my Yoga Life Coach certification.

While all of the above tools are extremely useful, they’re not the best for looking backward. They’re all set in the now or in the future. And while those aren’t bad things, there’s tremendous value in also reflecting and recalling what it is you did in a day.

I use a journal I’ve had at home and answer these four questions every single day:

What brought me joy?
What am I grateful for? (Yes, I repeat something from the Start Today list)
What is it I can let go of?
What am I most proud of?

On days when I am working, I add a fifth question:

What did I work on today?

This gives me the chance to reflect on the highs of a day, the things I’m glad I did, and gives me a reminder of what the heck I am doing with my time, so that when I look back on the week, I can acknowledge that I wrote 4 newsletters for work and recorded two podcasts, had a number of phone calls, wrote a couple of posts, and so forth. It’s the “Ta-Done” list, if you will, and writing it out, as opposed to simply checking it off my planner or task list solidifies accomplishment.

So How Long Does It Take You?

Honestly, half an hour on a slow day. After I get up, I make myself a cup of tea, and while it’s brewing, I generally journal from the previous day or work on the Start Today page. By the time my water is hot, I can enjoy my cup of tea while doing the other, and as soon as that finishes, I often still have most of my tea.

That’s when I crack open the Day Designer and plot out my time for the day. I prioritize things that are on my Things task list, as well as things on my Tending list for the month or week. When I see there’s time in a day, I will get cracking either on the tasks on the Day Designer list or poke through my tending list and make some progress.

That half hour is more than worth it weight in gold, especially when I see each way those tiny steps adds up to a much bigger picture and forward movement toward those big, juicy goals and dreams.

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.

How Do You Organize Your Books? (Follow-Up)

June 16, 2015 |

Thanks to all who answered my informal poll about organization of your personal books! I thought the results were pretty interesting, if unscientific. Because we’re clearly all nerds, I thought you’d appreciate seeing the results in graph format. I’ve also shared some of the more interesting “Other” responses below.

Click on the graph to make it larger.

A total of 111 people responded, and most of you selected more than one option, which I assumed would be the case. Leading the pack is “by genre” with 52 responses, which was pretty surprising to me as it’s never something I’ve done before (though I’ve always wanted to). I also think it’s interesting since it seems like genre separation is something public libraries are moving away from. People clearly think it’s important for their personal collections, though.

In second place was “alphabetical order by author’s last name” with 41 responses. This one doesn’t surprise me at all. It’s a really easy organizational scheme both to set up and to use for locating titles afterward. On the opposite end, almost no one organizes their books by Dewey or Library of Congress. Either this means our readers don’t have much nonfiction (I realize fiction can be classified this way too, but that’s just silly – I’m looking at you, academic libraries), or these classification schemes just aren’t that easy. Or both. (I’m in the both camp.)

If I combine “wherever they’ll fit” and “organize? What is this word organize?” into one category, it comes in third place with 38 responses. These people seem to be in the same situation I have been in for the past several years: limited space means books just get shoved where they can fit, and organization is not as important as making sure the books don’t get stored in, say, the oven.

The “other” responses were the most interesting. Many of you wrote that you organize by size, which is something I should have included in the original poll. It’s something I do, too, without really realizing it. For example, I keep all my mass markets separate from my hardbacks (which is something I’ll probably continue to do in the new house). Many of you mentioned space as a factor, and a few mentioned giving away lots of books due to space or just not feeling the need to keep something you won’t read again.

Here are a few of my favorite “other” responses, with my own comments in italics:

I have a shelf dedicated just to books I haven’t read yet. (I had this at my old place where we had a ton of built-ins, but in my current place, the books I haven’t read tend to just sit on tables.)
My other shelf is for books I’ve read and LOVED.
By books I’ve read and books that are unread and then by genre. (An organizational scheme after my own heart. Perhaps something I’ll do in my new place.)
Importance
Personal interest
By imprint (all NYRB together, all Penguin black spines together, etc) (By far one of the nerdiest responses, and I mean that lovingly.)
If they were purchased for a class, they tend to stay with their “classmates.”
Release date then author’s last name
Loosely by genre– for example, British mysteries are separate from cozy mysteries, etc, but I do keep series together.
By “themes” and by favourites vs. non-favourites. (Organizing by favorites was a popular reply.)
Crammed into boxes by size. I only have space to have out books I am actively reading. Very unhappy. (This would make me unhappy too.)
Stream of consciousness
Alphabetical and then by publishing date except for series… it’s complicated.
Genre first, then beauty (series are kept together, no matter what).

There were a lot of great, more in-depth comments on the original post, too, so be sure to check it out if this topic interests you.

How Do You Organize Your Books?

June 10, 2015 |

I just recently bought a house, and it’s big enough that there’s room for a dedicated personal library. I’m very excited! It presents a really fun challenge: how do I organize my books now that I have enough space to display all of them? (Previously, I had been just shoving a bookcase wherever it would fit and stacking books on tables. I expect I’ll probably continue to do that, but the majority of my books will now fit in a single room.)

I was in library school when I first learned that some people organize their books by color. The effect is really cool, and I don’t think it would be that difficult to find a particular book since I tend to remember what color my own books are. I actually have this IKEA bookshelf where I’ve organized a few of my books in roy g biv on their sides from top to bottom. It looks pretty neat. When I was first dating my boyfriend, he moved into a new apartment and I convinced him to let me organize his books by color because I really wanted to see what it would look like. I found out later that he hated the idea, but he let me do it anyway. (Aww.) I can definitely see the drawbacks. For example, a lot of series books wouldn’t be shelved together since they each have a different cover color, like the Harry Potter books.

Aside from the IKEA shelf, my books right now (prior to moving into the new house) are organized in the standard alphabetical order by author’s last name. Most of what I own is fiction, and the few nonfiction titles I have occupy a single shelf and they’re not really in any particular order.

I say that my fiction is organized in alpha order, but that’s true only to a certain extent. Because we have limited space in our rental, I’ve divided them into hardbacks and paperbacks. The hardbacks go against the back of the shelf and the paperbacks go in front of the hardbacks. Most of my shelves are deep enough that this works without any of the books hanging over the edge. In theory, this allows me to see all of my books at once. In practice, I still have to lean the paperbacks forward to see the title of the hardbacks. I hope that this won’t be necessary in the new place. My graphic novels I also keep separate, and they occupy just a couple of shelves next to my cookbooks in the kitchen. (You see what I mean about putting books wherever there’s space?)

When I was a kid/teen and living with my parents, I’d frequently take a couple of hours and reorganize my bookshelf in my bedroom for fun. I loved looking at all of my books and remembering a title I had forgotten I had. At the time, I had a single bookcase and it seemed like I had quite a lot of books. Teenage Kimberly would look at my current collection and feel awed. I know the trend nowadays is often to downsize material possessions, including book collections, but acquiring books has always made me feel good and I’ve come to like that aspect of my personality. I do have a lot of books that I haven’t yet read, but the fact that they’re there comforts me. I always have a book at hand, on almost any topic, whenever the itch hits me – sci fi, contemporary, romance, high fantasy, classic, middle grade, YA, adult. I strongly associate books with memories, so almost each title I pick up reminds me of something good, like the first time I attended a library conference or a particularly engaging undergrad literature class.

In my new house, I’ve been toying with the idea of organizing my books more like they’re organized in a library. I think I want to separate my adult books from my children’s and teen books, and I may even decide to separate them by genre as well. I doubt I’ll go the color route, since I’ll be sharing the space with my boyfriend’s books (we don’t interfile!) and it would look a little odd to have some shelves in the room color-coded and others not.

I thought it might be fun to take a little informal poll to see how our readers organize their personal book collections. Feel free to elaborate on your system in the comments!

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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.