The bullet journal is a system of keeping track of your everyday tasks and daily notes, essentially an alternative to a regular diary. It’s also a way to keep your long term planning in sight and focus on things that matter most. As they say: “Track your past, order your present, and plan your future”.
You can see what makes up the bullet journal method (and what it looks like) on this faq page from bulletjournal.com.
How I got started
For a while I was struggling at work to keep track of all my projects, tasks and notes. I tried to go fully digital, using a combination of onenote, outlook tasks, MS Teams, planner and various other tools to keep things organised. But not very successfully.
At some point I decided maybe it was a good idea to try going back to using a paper notebook or diary. While looking for some ideas I quickly discovered a YouTube rabbit hole of “productivity influencers”. Amongst all this the bullet journal method came up a lot, along with many complicated schemes and “spreads”.
I’m not sure how I saw through all this, but somehow I was convinced enough to buy the ebook and read it straight from the source. It turns out that at its core the bullet journal method is actually very simple and to the point. I’ve used it for a couple of years now at work to keep things organised. I haven’t found it as transformational for personal life, but I’m still playing around with it as a personal diary and note taking method as well.
Why I like it
- One place for everything; you don’t need to think about where to write notes, appointments, etc. Everything just goes straight on the page. At the end of the day, week, or month you review those notes and pull stuff out to organise it more, if needed.
- Friction; it’s harder to do things by paper. Making a monthly to-do list by hand and writing the same tasks you still haven’t done over and over forces you to reflect, is it really still worth doing?
- Distraction free; if you pick up your phone to take a note, it’s easy to get distracted.
- Flexible; technology can’t get in the way of customisations here. If you want to sketch something, or change the layouts to work for you, anything is possible.
- As much or little space as you need; unlike a traditional diary you don’t have a predefined space to fit everything. Sometimes I will fill 2 pages a day, and sometimes I will fit a whole week on two pages. You’re never cramming stuff in or wasting paper.
Find out more
If you’re interested to learn more, I would focus on some basic introduction videos from the official bullet journal YouTube channel, and then just give it a try with whatever notebook you have lying around. Maybe read the book if that all speaks to you. You should be very skeptical of most other online "BuJo content", as most people complicate the method beyond recognition.
Written on 8 January 2025