How I Got Into Bullet Journaling

I’ve tried my hand at journaling for at least a decade now. My main goto has been the app Day One, who is now owned by Automatic, the same guys who oversee Wordpress. I’ve always struggled with the habit. Often, I’d feel forced to push out long paragraphs, essentially writing something like a 1,000 word essay. That felt exhausting to me.

A few years ago, I discovered bullet journaling. At first, I dismissed it as a fad. It seemed like I saw a lot of people talking about it, but I took it as something nobody would ever talk about a year from now. Then, I gave it a chance.

What I found is a minimalistic approach to journaling. The Bullet Journal system is built to be quick and painless at its core, as it relies on bullet points to jot thoughts down. Each of those bullet points comes in the form of a symbol, representing a different kind of thought. They are as follows:

• Dot = a todo list item. When an item is done, it’s marked with an “x”. Further, you can mark something as in progress by drawing a slash across the dot. Or, if you need to push something to another day, a “more than” (>) sign does the trick there. A “less than” (<) sign signified a scheduled task.
• Hyphen = A note or thought. This could be a simple as when you wake up if you’re looking to track this kind of thing, to what you ate. The beauty is there’s no pressure to elaborate if you don’t want to. One sentence is fine.
• Equals sign - An emotion. Are you tired? Overwhelmed? Overjoyed? This is how you jot that down.
• Circle - This is an event. If you’re meeting someone for coffee or you have an important meeting, this is how you record that.

Note you can combine these symbols. Say you have an event for a meeting, you can make notes below of things you don’t want to forget or log your emotions on that meeting. Or if you make a todo to go grocery shopping, you can jot down your list below that.

The benefit for me in doing things this way is by writing it out, it forces me to slow down and think because the act of writing is itself slower than typing on my phone or laptop. There’s also something cognitive about writing things out that helps me remember them better than anything digital could. If I write it down, I typically don’t forget it, even without a reminder on my phone.

All of this said, I’m not perfect. I have lapses where I forget to write things out. I find these are the times I become more scatter-brained. I feel chaotic. When things get bad enough, I’ll end up pulling my notebook out and writing things out. Suddenly, I feel like I can breathe again. This is what works for my brain.

For more information, check out bulletjournal.com. Also check out their YouTube channel for tutorials for how to get started. They also provide lots of ideas to expand on your journal if it fits you. The beauty in this method is its flexibility. It can be a simple or complex as you’d like it to be. It’s all up to how you want to do things.