Bullet journal: A simple productivity system that just uses pen and paper

Hello, I'm the author of this article, and just wanted to add something here: for anyone who finds the Bullet Journal method overwhelming, there's another system called Strikethru that might appeal more. It's still based on pen and paper, but is designed to be a bit less complex and doesn't use an index at all.

Here's the official Strikethru site: http://striketh.ru/#welcome

And here are a couple of blog posts I've written about my own process that might be useful. I generally use a mixture of ideas from Bullet Journal and Strikethru.

http://blog.bellebethcooper.com/strikethru-notebook.html

https://exist.io/blog/strikethru/

And finally, I wrote another article recently that looked at both these systems, as well as some other less-developed analogue methods that you might find useful: https://foundrmag.com/analog-methods-for-getting-things-done...

Great concept. Tempting, but the digital version I set up saves a bit of drudgework with the pen and could be a little more private. [0]

I like the bullet signifiers. I split events and tasks into calendar and todo list, but the bullets could work in a long, timestamped single file. Perhaps using # to comment out lines that are complete. Might make more sense than the archiving I do by moving to the bottom of the todo list. Actually, my calendar events comment out the done lines, so perhaps the todo really should too. Anyway, good share.

[0] https://github.com/luxpir/plaintext-productivity

From a workflow perspective, this is basically a practical tickler system (but also integrates notes/collections). Ticklers can be very helpful for removing anxiety about things falling through the cracks, but requires staying in the habit or they become useless. Another once popular system was 43 folders.

imo, the major innovation of GTD and related systems is the inclusion of context beyond do/due dates - specifically the notion of resource availability and alignment towards explicit long-term goals. Done right, this can bring clarity to 'next action' in a way that decreases the incremental cognitive load to select a task to complete - hypothetically making it easier to act in a state of flow and stay in the habit.

Everyone's different, and if any system works for a while thats a win. If you talk to a productivity coach / trainer they will probably share experience that the GTD-type systems have the best impact on busy professionals long-term. When someone figures out how to remove the cognitive overhead of both organization and task selection in a contextual todo-list, I believe its going to change the way many people work.

Here are some critiques of this technique: http://blog.sandglaz.com/demystifying-the-bullet-journal-why... http://joshmedeski.com/bullet-journal-didnt-work/

I personally just use Google Tasks for deadlines, Google Keep for shopping lists, etc., and a private Google Doc for notes (like a private blog/journal). And of course there are kanban board tools like Trello for collaborative productivity/projects.

The charm of pen and paper is simplicity and restriction. It is simple to implement this /bullet journal/ in a plain text file, but then... you want to add a timestamp; you want to add more markups; you want to add links; you want to add tags; you want to add code snippets; you start to move around your file aimelessly for an hour;... You whole text file life scheme blows up in front of you and you don't even know what hits you.

Think of why people like type writers? Simplicity and restriction! You are forced to focus on writing down what's on your mind.

Is there a solution on our over powered computers? Yes. Use ed, the text editor!

I really like it, I have been basically using a much dumber "system" (I guess everyone tend to come up with something similar intuitively, when the need of having a minimum of organization arise) where I just list the task for the day in a notebook page in order of priority, strike the ones that I manage to finish and carry the rest to the next day.

It is inefficient and limited, but the advantage of having a physical list sitting in front of you that can be effortlessly updated and referenced as a glance trumps most more "advanced" methods using a computer. This seems like a smart extension of that very basic method.

Like diets, the best productivity systems are the ones are those you are able to keep indefinitely without too much effort, the moment that organizing the task organizer becomes a task itself, the less likely you are to stick with it, IME.

Howdy, Ryder here - the creator of the Bullet Journal. Let me know if you have any questions.

I've been using a bullet journal inspired system for a while now. Picked up the numbered pages, mostly sticking to one topic per page and maintaining the index for the particularly interesting pages. Also there's the note-taking tic of writing everything as single-line bullet points which makes it easier to do quick stream-of-consciousness capture. The notebook is filled chronologically, each page gets a date marked on the margin. The note pages are useful for thinking aloud about problems even if I never read them again later.

Instead of the planning calendar, I've got a daily done things calendar. Each month gets a dedicated page, and the page gets a one-line summary of what I accomplished that day. This builds up a long-term log of what I've been doing with minimal daily effort. Didn't really figure out the more complex calendar systems in bullet journal and I use a digital calendar to track appointments. The journal is more of a thinking tool than a time management tool.

The final bit is TODO lists inspired by the autofocus system. All active TODO items must live on a single notebook page. Once the page is full, open items must either be abandoned or migrated to the next TODO page. This keeps the list from going stale and works very well with analog notebook pages. I can get an immediate view of the current work situation by just looking at the live TODO page.

I really wish I could start and stick to something like this. I once worked in a newsroom with a reporter who had the best/simplest list for story ideas. He just used a legal pad and wrote new ideas on each line. He then had a system of symbols to signify importance, status, etc. I've strived for something like that since then, but I have not been successful at sticking to it.

I tried to hack together my own personal stack overflow or Q&A system using a directory of text files and Sublime Text (any other text editor that has regular expression searching also work). Basically, each fact or note that I wanted to be able to retrieve would be stored as semi-structured text that is easy to search using regular expressions. For example, when I was first learning web development, I saved a note like this in my note file:

  {
    [how do you create a simple image button in html and css]
    -> style:
       .simple-button {
            background-image: url(...),
            background-repeat: no-repeat,
            background-position: center,
            background-size: 100% 100%,
            width: 100px,
            height: 100px,
            display: inline-flex
       }

       <div class = 'simple-button'></div>
  }

I had a directory called "knowledgebase" which had numerous files with similarly structured notes. In order to find the note above using keywords, I would just do a search of the knowledgebase directory in Sublime Text using the regular expression:

  ^\{\s*\[.+button.+css.*\]

At first I was pretty excited about the method because it actually saved me a few times when I needed to find some boilerplate Linux bash scripts and vim keyboard shortcuts. Unfortunately, the small bit of initial success left me wanting to add more features to the extent that I was never satisfied with the notation for structuring questions and answers. First I used the system for simple notes and Q&A. Then the notation had to support hierarchical notes, like a tree. Eventually, decided I was going to write a program to parse these Q&A files and expose them as a mobile application that I could search via voice. This seemed like a pretty good idea until I decided that what I really needed was to not only be able to search notes by voice but also create them. The whole project kept growing until eventually I dropped the whole note taking thing and turned my attention to the general problem of NLP for question answering.

If I had simply been satisfied with the original, simple process and stuck to it these last couple of years, I'd have a pretty comprehensive and useful knowledgebase by now. I realize that I'm too lazy to keep such a system up to date but hopefully I can adopt something similar as a commenting convention in my source files to make code fragments searchable.

You could probably do this with emacs org-mode pretty well too

I did a comparison of Bullet Journal and Consol: https://www.consol.io/5-reasons-why-youll-like-consol-if-you...

I already have calendars and agendas where I can write. I do not see how using a plain notebook and writing a calendar by hand every month is going to improve my productivity.

I am sure this method has its benefits and, looking at some comments, it is helping many people. But I think that all these manual tasks like the calendar, writing the page numbers, or keeping an index distract me and do not let me to see what really is the added value of this method.

I always find myself hoping that someone will come up with an e-ink notepad of some kind with multiple pages. If you've ever used a BoogieBoard, you get what I'm looking at. The killer for me, and the reason I never use a paper notepad is because it can't be cleanly erased.

I'd keep my pen and paper if my hand writing was legible.

I wish there was a way top clean up my hand writing.

This reminds me of a the dash-plus system for note taking: http://patrickrhone.com/dashplus/

I like Wunderlist. I just pop everything I need to do into that and it is nice and simple. I could probably use it better but tbh just having a central list of everything I need to do is pretty helpful.

Sometimes I find over complicating your todo list just means you end up spending more time on your todo list, time you could spend on actually doing items in the list.

Also the pomodoro technique is pretty good for smaller tasks. Obviously not everything can be broken down to work with it perfectly but for about 80% of tasks it does work well imho.

So every time you want to note something important you have to add it to the index? Denormalization at its finest, I suppose. The index reminds me of a page table.

I tried the bullet journal and it didn't fit me.

What instead fit my needs was some simple printable agenda.

I used the ones at http://philofaxy.blogspot.it/p/diary-inserts.html

The good thing is that it costed me as extremely little.

Looks interesting. If you can decipher your own handwriting that is. (Which I can't).

I don't quite follow. The system is: write down what's happening that day (todos, events, meeting notes), and then if it's something you want to reference later, add it to the index? That's it?

Love the index technic! Every notebook that I use rapidly becomes unbrowsable. Go find those notes you took on the phone with a client last week in the middle of all the scribbling.

Not sure about the rest of humanity but I got a memory for that...never understood why people waste their time on productivity apps and other nonsense

Oooh, I tried this before. Never quite got far with it, but it sure went far since then, with the Kickstarter and all.

Someone should make an app for that ;-)

The future is the past.