The Bullet Journal Method: Track Your Past, Order Your Present, Plan Your Future

by Ryder Carroll

If the Task is date-specific and falls outside of the current month—migrate it into your Future Log

When setting up your new Monthly Log, be sure to check your Future Log.

When you get to the end of a notebook, or a year, review your Index.

A new notebook is not about starting over—it’s about leveling up.

Now decide what things you need to work on over the following month. Those items will go into the Monthly Log’s Tasks page. Future Tasks and Events will go into your Future Log. Related items, like books you want to read, will be organized into their own Custom Collection.

Only add things to the Index that have content! No empty Collections!

– Daily Logs don’t get Indexed

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

You can’t make time, you can only take time.

As comedian Tim Minchin once quipped, “Happiness is like an orgasm: If you think about it too much, it will go away.”

“Your ikigai is at the intersection of what you are good at and what you love doing,”

Goals give us the opportunity to define what we want.

create a Goals Collection in your Bullet Journal

5, 4, 3, 2, 1.”

five rows

The left page will be for your personal goals; the right page will be for y...

5 ...

4 m...

3 ...

2...

1...

you may only prioritize one goal in each cell

hour and day cells) to your Daily Log and set them as priorities with a “*” Signifier.

The remaining goals all get their own separate Collection;

Have no major barriers to entry

Consist of very clearly defined, actionable Tasks.

Have a fixed, relatively short time frame for completion

Each Sprint can be laid out in another Subcollection

we’re looking for any win, no matter how small. Set the bar so low that you’ll actually do it, and log it

The hard truth is that we can’t “make time,” we can only “take time.”

Front-loading your day with the easy stuff is its own form of procrastination.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.

Mark Twain once wrote, “I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.”