This is the first of a series on productivity, struggles, and solutions. Alternately, an insightful early reader points out that this is the first of a series “about self-knowledge, self-empathy, and self-kindness”.

I’m not the only person in IT who always had trouble concentrating, trouble keeping organized, and trouble with timeliness. Being a great student or an outstanding employee kind of requires those three skills, among others. So, I – and a lot of my techie compatriots – spent years of our lives searching for ways around those problems.

The struggle with productivity 

When I was a kid, school was often boring…but that’s not unusual. Once I hit my preteens I found it incredibly hard to just sit and listen in class, and so I took up doodling – scratching out patterns, making random lists, and practicing writing with my off hand. It helped to have something to do while the teacher was talking.

In my senior year, my math teacher actually taught us how to take effective notes, which was a huge gift (both then and now).  Hey, I thought, productive doodling!

College and beyond brought my tardiness and disorganization into much sharper focus. I began trolling stationery stores for calendars, planners, or any organizational tool that might turn out to have the ultimate answer to paying the electric bill on time, or showing up to a 9am shift on time. 

Professional disorganization

I continued to have high hopes – and to then be disappointed – in organizational systems for the next couple of decades. Being chronically unable to keep track of money, I found it an actual windfall when I found a bank account that didn’t charge overdraft fees. 

From about 2005 onward, I started reading articles and videos about productivity hacks, to-do lists, apps, reminders, calendars, Pomodoro timers, Kanban boards, and on and on. I would corner people and compare notes at conferences: “What are you using to keep track of your schedule? Oh yeah? What’s the URL???”

I’m being lighthearted about this, but I was really trying to be better, and I kept failing. I blamed myself; I felt broken.  Then sometime around 2014, I found my answer: Bullet Journaling.

What is a “Bullet Journal”?

It’s time to talk about what, before we talk more about why.

A Bullet Journal is a an operating system for a notebook. (Yes, like Windows/Mac Os type operating system.) 

Ryder Carroll – who developed the system – calls Bullet Journaling “a mindfulness practice disguised as a productivity system.”  For me, it’s a very forgiving method that helps track everything in my head and life.

For the briefest of descriptions, watch this four-minute video or read on: 

• Each day (that you feel like it), you’ll write bullet points of thoughts, things done, and things to do. 
• Each month (and/or week), you’ll set up a page or two where you can see your upcoming schedule and tasks.
• As plans happen, you’ll make note of them in your Future Log (which shows the next six months or so at a glance). The Future Log is a special section at the beginning of the journal where you can see the next six months of highlights.
• As you use the BuJo, you’ll complete tasks, or move them forward to the next day (or week, or month), or decide that they’re not worth doing, and just cross them out.
• Number the pages as you go, so you can make entries in an Index. A sort of “table of contents” for your thoughts! It’s the bomb.

The secret’s in the….method!

The simple organization is great, but it’s the underlying methods that are magical. 

First, “rapid logging”, which just means writing down short notes, is very freeing. Your Bullet Journal won’t judge you for writing down a thought, “What if giraffes were sentient?”, right next to the time of your next dentist appointment.

The practice of considering and migrating your tasks from each month to the next forces me to consider the worth of each item. E.g., if I’ve migrated “build a birdfeeder” three times to new monthly spreads, maybe it’s not super urgent that I build a birdfeeder. Maybe I can let that thought drop, or stick it in the Future Log for later consideration.

The Bullet Journal method has been a life raft for me, and I bet you’ll find it helpful too.

In future articles in this series, we’ll look at examples of bullet journal greatness, address objections, talk about digital Bullet Journaling, and more.

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