~500 words, ~3 min read time
I started using a bullet journal back in early April in an attempt to have some kind of organizational system that would actually match what I wanted. I made some mistakes along the way, but on the whole I like the bullet journal method. So, here are some lessons I’ve learned in the past couple months.
(1) Choose your size wisely – My first attempt at using a BuJo failed because I tried to use a standard sized composition book. This was too big to fit in my pocket, so I could only carry it if I was bringing my briefcase, or if I specifically decided to carry a notebook with me. This was inconvenient, so I stopped using it. This time around, I chose a small notebook – about 3.5″x5.5″ (like this), so roughly cell phone sized. This fits in my pocket with my phone, and is FAR more convenient. At the same time, I’m sure many would find the thing cramped.
(2) Dedicate enough space for your index – My notebook has 131 pages in it. But, I only dedicated 34 lines to an index at first. Surprise! I ran out of lines in the index, so now I have a secondary index around page 80. Dedicate a line per page, just to be safe.
(3) It’s okay to be simply functional – I’ll be honest. I am not artistic. So, my BuJo is not pretty. Mostly, it’s a dated task list with a few pages of checklists. That’s it. But, it works for me.
(4) Don’t dedicate a page to each day ahead of time – I should have known better. The BuJo guidelines on Bulletjournal.com say this. I had used a Franklin Covey page a day planner for years. I should have known that with a dedicated page per day, many pages would be basically empty while others would be full. Poor planning.
(5) Don’t rewrite your to-do list every day. It’s easy to flip through the Daily Log and find what you need to do. Just migrate at the beginning of the month and you’ll be fine.
(6) A BuJo is not a productivity strategy. It is simply a tracking system that is beautifully flexible. But, you still need a separate strategy for how to deal with the information you store in it. But, in my experience, a BuJo can pair extremely well with Mark Forster’s Do It Tomorrow. I suspect it would also work well with David Allen’s Getting Things Done, but I always found GTD too undirected to motivate me. Now, not everyone needs a system for dealing with tasks. I find it very useful, as it removes the mental load of having to figure out what to do. But, as always, it’s up to you and what works for you.
(7) Use checklists for routine tasks. I have 3 checklists: a yearly, a monthly, and a daily. I prioritize in that order, making exceptions in the evening’s