You may have heard about the Bullet Journal from your sister, colleague, or someone else who ate a productivity dog. This is an incredibly cool and versatile tool that adapts easily to any need and is easy to use. And it can be used to organize anything in life.

What is Bullet Journal

First of all, note that the Bullet Journal system is designed only for analog media. Simply put, you’ll have to use a notebook and pen. Or a pencil — but then real Bullet Journal fans will look sideways at you. No electronics.

The Bullet Journal (abbreviated as BuJo) was first conceived by a guy named Ryder Carroll. He summarizes his concept of journaling in this video.

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

Your Bullet Journal should have a so-called index. This is the table of contents at the beginning of the notebook, which makes it easy to find the entries you need.

The pages should be numbered — without this, obviously, the index would be useless.

By meeting these two conditions, you can always find the right entry, whether it’s a list of monthly goals, a travel plan to Bermuda, or an insurance number.

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

Why do people run the Bullet Journal

Entries have a positive effect on mental and physical health

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

And those who took notes felt much happier than people in the control group. Within a few months after the experiment, their blood pressure returned to normal, their immune functions improved, and they saw a doctor less often. In addition, the subjects reported more stable relationships with others and greater success at work.

Research has also shown that writing by hand increases immune cell activity, strengthens memory, and reduces the amount of antibodies in the blood in people with the Epstein-Barr virus. It also helps to solve sleep problems.

A diary allows you to find new ideas through associations

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

Bullet Journal is a collection of a wide variety of thoughts and tasks. As you reread your notes covering the physical, mental, and emotional aspects of your life, you’re sure to gain inspiration and new ideas.

This method unloads memory

If you’ve read Harry Potter, you’ll remember that Dumbledore and Snape dumped unnecessary memories into the magic bowl. You can consider the Bullet Journal as a kind of Whirlpool of Memory, a place to store your thoughts. By putting them on paper, you unload your brain’s resources, eliminating the need to remember everything.

Writing by hand is satisfying

Nowadays, when there are a lot of smartphones, tablets and computers around, paper media have some of their own special charm. Keeping a to-do list on a regular sheet brings a very pleasant feeling; it’s not like typing on a keyboard or typing in handwriting on a touch screen.

It’s just fun

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

How to run a Bullet Journal

Choose tools

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

You’ll also need colored gel pens (preferably Pilot Juice) and ink pens (like Pigma Micron).

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

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

Remember the symbols

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

Bullets are marked with special characters depending on their content. Here are some options.

Objectives. They are marked with a simple dot (•). It’s better than a checkmark or checkmark or anything else because it can be easily converted to any other symbol. A task can have several states, and each one has its own symbol:

You can also simply cross out a task that is no longer needed.

dot (•) — the task is not completed;

cross (×) — the task is completed;

arrow (>) — the task has been moved to another collection;

reverse arrow (<) — the task is planned in the annual plan.

Events and meetings. They are marked with a circle (°). These are records that are tied to a specific date. They can be done in advance so as not to forget. You can also add an event to your memory after it has happened.

Notes. They are marked with a dash (—). These are notes, facts, ideas, thoughts, and observations that don’t require you to take any action—you just need to take note of them.

Don’t try to write notes and things to do on the page separately. Write everything in a solid list, just remember to label each item with an appropriate symbol.

You can also assign separate characters to each “pool” at the beginning of the line to add additional context. The original BuJo has two such symbols. But, in principle, you can also come up with your own options.

A task or event with a high priority. It is marked with an asterisk (*). Use this symbol sparingly: if you mark every point with it, you will simply get lost.

It’s a good idea that’s important not to lose. It is marked with an exclamation mark (!). These can be particularly successful thoughts, quotes, sudden insights.

The Bullet Journal has such a thing as migration, or the transfer of notes. Let’s say you planned something for this month but didn’t do it. Mark the task with > and add it to the next month’s plan. This way you can transfer any items to pages that they are more relevant to. For example, you wrote down the title of a book, and now you want to move it to the “To Read” list.

Be careful about this duplication of tasks. It will take some effort to transfer things from one page to another. Remember: if you don’t want to rewrite a paragraph, then it’s not that important. And you can just cross it out. And when you’re done, don’t forget to give the page a topic and add it to the index. Speaking of the index.

Make a markup

1. Index

The Bullet Journal Index is a table of contents. With it, you’ll find the records you need. This makes BuJo stand out from traditional diaries: you don’t have to scroll through a notebook for a long time to find something. The first page is highlighted as a 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 relevant topic with the page number on which you made the entry. If a note is more than one page long, it should be indexed as follows: “Note subject: 5—10 pages.”

Some recurring topics may be scattered around the magazine in random order. For example, you’re keeping a list of movies you want to watch, and the spread is full, and then there’s another entry. In this case, continue the list anywhere else, and write down in the table of contents: “List of movies to watch: 5—10, 23, 34—39 pages.”

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

2. Future plan

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

Don’t forget to add this reversal to the index. Review your future plan every month to move assignments from it to the monthly goals section.

3. Monthly plan

In your monthly plan, you can record appointments, bill payment days, class and vacation schedules, holidays, deadlines, and similar things you don’t want to forget. Each such section in the Bullet Journal should take a whole page. On one page there is a calendar, on the other there is a list of tasks. This is what it looks like:

The calendar page is used to create a monthly plan. You can add events that are expected or events that have already taken place here, but it’s important for you to keep them in mind. The notes should be as short as possible: this is not the place to write down details.

The tasks page is filled with monthly tasks — here you can enter tasks that cannot be linked to a specific date and recorded in the calendar. Mark your priorities on the list and bring back what you didn’t do from last month.

Another popular way to make a monthly plan is the so-called calenddex (from the words “calendar” and “index”). In this calendar, you don’t write down things to do, but the page numbers that contain the information you need.

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

A pair of numbers takes up less space on the page than a line of text, but the information content is reduced. You can’t take a look at the calendar and say what’s in store for you without leafing through a magazine.

But you can compromise and write things down as usual by simply noting next to them which page to find details. Let’s say you’re working on a big project and should finish it this month. Write down your actions on a separate page, 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 of tasks doesn’t fit on the monthly tasks page, you can set aside a separate page for each week. It looks something like this:

Strictly speaking, Ryder Carroll’s classic concept doesn’t have weekly plans. So this step is optional. But the good thing about Bullet Journal is that it doesn’t have strict rules and you can keep it however you want.

5. Diary

Daily logs make up a large part of the Bullet Journal. This includes the tasks you need to do, the events of the day, any thoughts, ideas, and notes you can think of.

To start keeping daily records, open a clean spread and write down the date and day of the week at the top of the page. During the day, fill out the page with information in the form of a list. It looks something 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 one, just keep writing the next day without jumping to the next day until this one is over.

6. Collections

Bullet Journal is remarkable because it can be used for any purpose. A training schedule, a gardening journal, a nutrition tracker, a diary, even a sketchbook — all of which can be in one notebook at a time. So-called collections are used to organize this data. They collect all information that is not relevant to planning.

You might have collections where you collect data about your income and expenses, a list of places you’d like to work in, your sleep schedule, or lists of books, movies, and games you’d like to check out. In general, any ideas you need to keep at hand are brought here.

Such collections can be scattered randomly throughout the notebook, interspersed with daily lists. The main thing is that they are included in the index, so that 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 beautifully designed diaries; keeping notes is a kind of creativity for them. Do not worry if you don’t do it as beautifully; you shouldn’t make bright colors and even lines an end in itself. Just remember: your magazine is a productivity tool, and its effectiveness is more important than its effectiveness.

Source: https://lifehacker.ru/chto-takoe-bullet-journal/

For questions regarding ownership, please contact the author of the original text.