How to use a bullet journal to record your life.

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Feeling overwhelmed? Try bullet journalling. The best bullet journal is one that works for you. You can spend from $2 to over $25 for a note book to journal in. I prefer a $2 composition book. It is cheap and easy to find in office supply stores and the stationary section of most drug stores and a lot of grocery stores.

You can get the details of how to set up you bullet journal at bulletjournal.com. Bullet journalling is a great way to plan and manage you time, but more importantly it provides you a way to reflect on why you did what you did. Why is an exercise in mindfulness. Thinking about why we do something puts us in touch with our feelings. Ask yourself how you feel about what you did today. Then if any of your feelings are negative ask yourself how you are going to do better tomorrow.

Many people like to sketch and make their bullet journal beautiful. I tend to be more practical but I do have fun with the occassional sketch. Mine tend toward stick figures. My ability as an artist is yet to be developed.

Your bullet journal focuses on recording what you did and how you feel about what you did each day. But it goes beyond that I have a page for my five year goals. I use to make 25 year plans but at 88 I've cut back on my planning horizon. I have a page for each of my annual, quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily goals. Each one breaks down the longer range plan into smaller stemps till I finally record the most important task I need to accomplish each day.

Evernote is my computer brain. Everything I know is stored in Evernote including my daily, weekly, quarterly, annual and five year plan. I can duplicate my daily page and avoid a lot of daily rewriting of tasks brought forward. This is where I review my daily bullet journal and update my daily review. PM me if you want a template of my daily review, or you may want to join my mastermind group. I have software that helps us work together and support each other in our efforts to move each day a little closer to our goals.

The key to the bullet journal is being able to find things. I create an index by numbering each page in my book. Then in the front of the book, I number each line with the number of the pages in the book. Each day I write a brief note about the stuff I may need to find on its appropriate page. I do the same thing for each month. When things planned for the month don't get done I take a hard look at what is left over and decide whether a particular task is worth doing. If it is not worth copying into the next month it is not worth doing.

Some people like to have a line for each project they are working on. Then they record the page number to referrance where notes about that project are located withing the bullet journal. As I said, the bullet journal is ultimately flexable. Use it in whatever way works for you. I find a spreadsheet works great to index my bullet journals. I can have rows for each Project I am working on. then I can have columns for the project, and as man columns I need to record the pages in my journal that have any reference to the project.

It takes one and a half pages to record each day of the month. The remaining half page is used to record the projects I expect to complete that month. Each week I review the current month page and decide what the most important thing I must do each day.

My daily page is a two page spread. The left page is used for notes I record throughout the day. On the right page i draw a horizontal line about 2 inches down the page. A verticle line divides the top section in half. In the left half I record the important things I need to accomplish that day. In the right half I record the urgent things that need to be done but do not contribute to my moving forward with my important goals.

Below the horizontal line I draw two verticle lines about an inch appart. The first line is the red line provided on all composition book pages. the line next to it is the width of my ruler. The first column records the time of day, The second column contains a four letter abreviation for the project I am working on. The large space to the right records the details about the task I am working on at the moment.

I have used all kinds of computer programs to plan my life and manage my projects. I keep coming back to paper and pen. A hybrid system works best for me. I record what i am doing hour by hour in my bullet journal. It is quick and easy and I don't have to break up my workflow to bring up a comuter program.

I use Zenkit to plan my projects. Evernote stores everything I want to remember and more. In Evernote I have a Notebook for my Journal. It contains the plans I described and the reviews I create daily.

Try joournalling. It helps you record your life and serves as a guide to steer you toward a better more purposefull life.

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Recent Comments

9

Great explanation of bullet journalling...I had never heard the term before. I m going to check out the link. Thanks
Debbie

I think you will like it. I found I evolved how I used it over time. Pinterest has a lot of Boards by Bullet Journalers. It is amazing what some people do.

Bill,
Thank you for your insight and instruction in this concept of a "Bullet Journal".
The first and only introduction to journaling has come from other members here at WA. This seems so logical to maintaining ones effort in reaching goals, it is a wonder I've not stumbled upon it before.

Again, thank you for taking the time to offer this and I wish you the very best week ahead.
By the way, loved your comment about your planning horizon...lol, pays to be aware where you are in the game.

Much respect and admiration for being helpful to us all!

David

never heard of a bullet journal before. I'll have to look into this. You learn something new every hour here at WA.

Google Bullet Journal. they have a great website.

Thanks Bill. I’d love to get back in to journaling. Thanks for the reminder :)

I've kept a dairy of and on since I was a kid. Bullet journaling makes it fast and easy.

The bullet journal technique make it quick and easy. And of course you can always use traditional journalling to record your thoughts in detail. I keep my index at the back of the book, Record a subject and then document the page it was mentioned on. Could be mulltiple pages. You still have to scan the index because it is not alphebetical, but it is a lot faster than turning every page.

I wanna start bullet journaling, I've heard its really effective.

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