WHEN you talk about a hot new trend that many young people are adopting, you’d naturally think it’s something mobile or online and certainly, something digital. You’d never imagine that it’d be something analogue.
Yet, “Bullet Journalling” in its strictest sense involves a real, physical journal or notebook. This is a system created by a designer named Ryder Carroll, who apparently spent two decades developing this system to stay organised.
So, is it a “To Do List” or a diary? Actually, it’s a bit of both. In a nutshell, it entails taking a physical notebook and using it to create an index of topics and page numbers, a “Future Log” of things that you need to do, and a “Daily Log” which contains bullet point notes about the things you’ve done during a particular day.
There’s an art and science to bullet journalling and Carroll explains it succinctly in his official website (http://bulletjournal.com), where you can watch a video of him demonstrating bullet journalling in action.
So, there is a “proper” way to bullet journal but it’s important to note that Carroll himself encourages people to customise and personalise their bullet journals to fit their needs and fancies.
It’s sort of like blogging. When blogging first emerged, there was a conventional way to blog which entailed including an excerpt from a website or web page, a link to that page and the blogger’s own comments about the topic. That was how the pioneer bloggers did their blogging.
As blogging became more mainstream, people used the blogging platform to publish as and how they wished. Some blogs stuck to the original conventions, others did away with excerpt and links, and just stuck to pure commentary.
And so it’ll be with bullet journalling as more and more people adopt this “To Do List”/Diary hybrid activity.
IN PRACTICE
I’ve been doing a version of this for some time now without having even heard of bullet journalling (this is a phrase that I came across relatively recently).
Perhaps, if I had heard of bullet journalling earlier, I might have tried to adopt the conventional way of doing it. But because bullet journalling was something I was doing without any reference points, I had my own way of doing it. And it’s all digital.
I haven’t written something in longhand on a piece of paper in years. The only time I scribble something with a pen is on the few occasions, when I have to send something off by snail mail and have to write the address on the envelope. Other than that, I usually type — either on my laptop or my mobile phone. In a sense, I’m more of a typist than a writer.
So, when it comes to my “To Do List” it’s all digital. There are “To Do List” mobile apps aplenty and lots of computer applications as well as online ones to help you keep track of the things you have to do in a day, a week or a month (or perhaps even in a year). But I go really basic with mine. I just use Google Docs.
While conventional bullet journalling has “Future Logs”, where you can plan things months in advance, I don’t go that far. I plan a week ahead at a time. Each day is broken up into Morning, Afternoon and Evening. On days when I have a particularly busy schedule and a lot has to be done, I become more precise and add additional categories for Dawn, Noon and Late Evening.
I then proceed to fill in all the things I feel I need to achieve during that day. It’s not necessarily realistic but more of an idealistic list of things I want to achieve. For the record, I almost never achieve all that I set to achieve for the day. So, I push forward things to another day. If possible, I try to push it to the next day but sometimes, I have something going on the next day that takes up all my available time. So I have to push it to another day.
I’ll spend quite a bit of time every day moving my chores around because so many unexpected things happen during the day that prevents me from getting everything I want done, done.
It doesn’t bother me much if I have a few items that I need to push to another day. I know it’s inevitable and I’m happy that at least, I can keep track of what still needs to be done. If I didn’t have that list, I’d be totally lost. It would literally be impossible for me to keep track of all I’ve got to do without an actual list like that.
ONLINE DIARY
The next bit is the journalling part. For that, I use an online logging application called Penzu. It’s basically an online diary and in it, I’d list down one by one, the things I do throughout the day. If I’m not in front of a computer, I’d enter “Done” items via my mobile phone.
Why not just cross out items on your “To Do List” as you do them?, you might ask. I log down what I do not for sentimental reasons (“Finally threw out the trash” isn’t exactly a memory worth cherishing). But rather, it’s so I have a record of the things I managed to get done which I can look through and reflect upon.
It forces me to think about how I do things and whether I could do them faster or better, or more efficiently. In other words, it forces me to be more mindful about even the everyday things that I do. And that’s important because if I’m not mindful of the things I do and how I do them, how can I improve?
I don’t assign equal importance to my “To Do List” and online diary because the former is more critical than the latter. I can afford to miss writing down what I managed to achieve. I can’t afford to not update the things I have to do for the day otherwise, very little gets done.
So yes, there are days when my Penzu pages are blank when I neglect to list down what I’ve done for the day. But there are no days when my “To Do List” is not updated. In fact, it gets updated several times a day. As things change around me, I adapt my “To Do List” accordingly. For example, if the kitchen sink starts leaking, I’d have to attend to it, which means there are things on my list that I can’t attend to. That’s fine. I can always push it to another day. And if I can keep track of it, at least I know it’ll be done, sooner or later.
If you’re a bit of a Moleskin fan or just like physical notebooks, then bullet journalling is something you really should try. You’ll see it changes your life and I don’t say that frivolously. You’ll be more efficient and effective in getting things done and you’ll be more mindful and thoughtful of the things you do. But if you’re more of a digital kind of person, try Google Docs and Penzu. It works wonders for me. I’m sure it’d do so for you too.
Oon Yeoh is a consultant with experiences in print, online and mobile media. reach him at oonyeoh@gmail.com