Bullet Journaling

I respect the bloggers that have the disciple to write weekly or even more often. Many bloggers even earn their living with monetized blogs. Not me.  I don’t blog to get more readers. I blog for fun and to “stuff” share with family and friends.

This month I will tell about a new experiment in organizing my life. It is a Bullet Journal. It is a simple and flexible way to keep track of daily to-do lists, monthly tasks, future plans as well as goals and planning efforts. I won’t detail the steps because Ryder Carroll, the inventor explains it nicely in this video. It replaces fancy planners and calendars. All you need is a notebook and a pen.  I have used so many types of planners over the years, that it is refreshing to do what I want without being forced into someone’s else’s structure.

It took me a few months to start my Bullet Journal because of the time it took to check out Bullet journal websites and Pinterest Bullet Journal photos. That was a mistake. Too many  photos of elaborate pages decorated with calligraphy, washi tape, and colored pens scared me off for a while.

People even detail the brand of journals and pens they use.  Barry Morris got me on the right path by stressing the flexibility of the system and the need to keep it simple.

I wrote about notebooks before. It turned out I had the perfect notebook for my Bullet Journal – the Rhodia Webnotebook with a dot grid. I have plenty of pens including fountain pens so I was ready. I had been using an index for keeping track of meeting notes so the index part of bullet journaling was easy to understand. In fact, I started doing that several months ago after reading about it when I first discovered the bullet journal method.

I am starting my third month using the BuJo (bullet journal). I joined a Facebook page for Bullet Journal users which is great for ideas. I am not using washi tape , stickers or fancy two-page spreads seen below. I will confess I am using colored gel pens for my daily pages.

If you know me, you might be asking, “What is a techie like you using paper and pen?” Many digitally savvy people are returning to paper and pen for lists and planning. There is somethings about an analog system (pen and paper) that uses a different part of your brain.

“A lot of tech people I know are going back to paper,” organization and time-management guru David Allen tells me. “Because a paper planner … there’s still no better tool than a paper planner.”

Research is showing that there are benefits to writing by hand. In fact, studies show that students comprehend more taking notes by hand instead of using a computer. Your brain operates differently with the tactile feel of pen to paper. A fountain pen even feels different than writing with a ball point and may be better for you. Writing by hand may even help children learn to read successfully.

But to be honest, I still keep my calendar in the iCloud so it syncs across all my Apple devices including my Apple Watch.