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

by Ryder Carroll

If you planned your Sprint well, shutting it down won’t derail you from related Sprints. At worst, you may have to shuffle around your schedule a bit.

you have an opportunity after each Sprint to pause and reflect on the experience thus far. For example: What am I learning about my strengths, my weaknesses? What’s working, and what isn’t? What could I do a bit better next time? What value was added to my life?

Rather than uproot her life, Leigh took a systematic approach to accomplishing her goal. She approached change with patience and curiosity, gradually figuring out one piece of the puzzle at a time.

Create your Tasks through the lens of curiosity rather than by giving yourself commands or ultimatums. It’s the difference between “Lose weight!” and “What one unhealthy thing could I remove from my diet?”

Over the years, most of the solutions I tested didn’t work. Yet I wouldn’t describe those efforts as failures. Each attempt that missed the mark taught me something new, which ultimately led to a better solution.

When you run into issues, take a step back and start to tease them apart by asking small questions like: What exactly did not work? Why did it not work? What small thing can I improve next time?

As Carl Sagan once said, “There are naïve questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question.”40

Iteration sounds more complicated than it is. Once you ask yourself a small question, like What small thing can I change to make this better?, you’ve already started a process known as the Deming Cycle, after W. Edwards Deming, the father of kaizen.42 The Deming Cycle provides us with a four-stage framework for continual improvement: “Plan → Do → Check → Act.” Let’s break that down. Plan: Recognize an opportunity and plan a change. Do: Put the plan into play and test the change. Check: Analyze the results of your test and identify what you’ve learned. Act: Act on what you’ve learned. If the change didn’t work, go through the cycle again with a different plan. If you were successful, incorporate what you learned to plan new improvements. Rinse and repeat.

DAILY SCHEDULE 7 AM Reflection ↓ Plan 8 9 Priorities ↓ 10 11 12 1 Lunch ↓ 2 Tasks ↓ Do 3 4 5 6 7 Dinner ↓ 8 Personal Priorities ↓ 9 10 11 PM Reflection ↓ Check Act 12

Each day can be viewed as an iterative cycle. The most straightforward way is to plan during your AM Reflection (this page), do during the day, and check and act during your PM Reflection.

Productivity is in large part a matter of consistency.

If you’re not happy with your life, then ask yourself, What tiny thing could I do tomorrow that would make my life a little bit better?

Again, we’re looking for any win, no matter how small. Set the bar so low that you’ll actually do it, and log it as a Task in your Bullet Journal.

Continue doing this every day for a month, and keep track of it in your Bullet Journal. Before you know it, you’ll have reconnected with people you care about, found fun new places, and enjoyed returning to a home that is less of a disaster.

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

Measuring the quality of time is not an exact science, but a key indicator is impact. How often have you sat at your desk all day, yet felt like you accomplished very little? Conversely, sometimes you sit down for a few hours and crank out a few days’ worth of work.

If you only have 30 minutes a day to read something you will be tested on, you’ll make those 30 minutes count.

If there’s something you find yourself putting off, then you’ve identified your chore.

The next time you cross off a Task in your BuJo, slow down. Take a moment to pause and reflect on the impact of your accomplishment. What do you feel? If by chance you feel nothing—or maybe nothing but relief—then chances are the thing you’re working so diligently toward isn’t adding much value to your life. That’s a critical insight that needs to be recognized. If on the other hand you feel even a small sense of joy, pride, appreciation, or fulfillment, then you may be onto something.

let’s take a look at two simple examples of how to incorporate a gratitude practice in your Bullet Journal. In your Daily Log (this page), during your PM Reflection (this page), write down more than one thing that you’re grateful for. Try to do this every day. Create a “Gratitude” Collection (and remember to add it to your Index). Again, write down more than one thing that you’re grateful for. Try to do this every day. If you’re so inclined, you can even get creative with how you capture your favorite moments (this page).

During your Daily Reflection, or Monthly Migration, scan your Tasks and try to identify what is and what is not in your control. An easy tell is if your tasks are focused on outcome rather than process: “ • Give awesome presentation,” “ • Lose 10 pounds,” “ • Read five books,” or “ • Get Chad to see reason” are goals. Though goals provide direction, they focus on outcomes that are ultimately out of our control. This is why we break our goals down into small actionable steps: “ • Memorize presentation,” “ • No soda on Sunday,” “ • Set aside reading time,” and “ • Address Chad’s concerns.” These are the things you can control.

Self-compassion can start by asking yourself a simple question: What would I tell a friend in this situation? Asking this question interrupts our inner critic and makes us switch gears into problem-solving mode.

Look through your Bullet Journal to see who you’re spending your time with. You may know how you feel about them, but have you ever considered their impact on you? Start to take notes on some of these interactions. Don’t worry, you’re not keeping creepy records on your friends; you’re simply becoming mindful of how their radiance affects you. Add some notes about the dinner, date, or meeting when you get home. Did you have fun? What did you learn? Was most of your time spent just sitting there listening to their problems . . . again? How do you feel when you’re with them? You can quickly capture it like this: Dinner with Becca @ Evelina’s Talked about aspirations Want to travel to Portugal together Want to co-host the next party Always leave feeling motivated after we hang out It may seem awkward at first, but recording your interactions grants you the opportunity to articulate something you may not have otherwise. You never know what it could reveal. Maybe you realize that the relationship is vampiric: It often leaves you feeling drained. Or that it’s one-sided: You always call and put in all the work. In contrast, you may realize that some people leave you feeling inspired, lighter, energized, contemplative, or calmer. Whatever the case may be, you’re becoming more aware so you can be intentional about managing your relationships, including which relationships are worth managing at all.

Try to keep company with those you find inspiring, motivating, and constructively challenging. Ask yourself: What can I learn from them? Is the world a bit of a better place because they’re in my life? Do they make me want to be a better person?

“You can’t change the people around you, but you can change the people around you.”53

During your Reflections, ask yourself: What am I learning? What lessons has ________ [situation or relationship] taught me or inspired me to learn? What do I want to know more about? How will I go about learning it?

LEARNING WHAT What things do I want to learn? Create a Collection and write down what comes to mind. ↓ WHY What do I want to learn first? Why? Pick the thing you’re most curious about and create a Collection. ↓ HOW How will I go about learning? Brainstorm what comes to mind. Start creating a list of Tasks. Ask yourself, what small thing can I do now to get this process started? Maybe it’s figuring out a time to research. Get to it!

If no one’s around to listen, you can sit down with your Bullet Journal and write a letter to “Dear Duck”—or some other benign, trusted, or accepting entity. Tell them about: Your problem What’s not working Why it isn’t working What you’ve tried What you have not tried yet What you want to have happen The important part is getting it out of your head. Craft your explanation with care and patience. Do so with the understanding that this entity may not have all the information that you do. Good communication bridges the gap between information and understanding. In the process of carefully communicating the problem, you may help yourself figure out a solution. And if a letter to your rubber duck, padded panda, stupid stapler, or, God forbid, Chad doesn’t do the trick, we can try something else . . .

A break-sprint can be set up in your Bullet Journal the same way as a standard Sprint, but it follows a subtly different set of rules: It should take two weeks or less to complete. You need a break, but you don’t want to lose the thread of your main project. It should be unrelated to the project/problem that’s troubling you. You and your main project need space. You’re not breaking up, but you’re taking some much-needed “me time.” Very critically, it needs to have a defined end (and a clear beginning and middle, too). When we feel stuck, our sense of inertia drains our motivation. One goal of your break-sprint is to give you the satisfaction of crossing off the final Task, of feeling that sense of accomplishment and closure. Reminding yourself what that feels like can quickly refuel your drive.

It’s not about making mistakes on purpose; it’s about reframing your response to them.

As W. L. Sheldon purportedly wrote: “There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”

Custom Collections should serve a purpose Make sure that the Collections you maintain are adding value to your life. Productivity is about carefully investing your time. If you find yourself struggling. . .

Define your motivations Before you figure out how to best do something, clarify why you’re doing it in the first place.

Future-proof your design Your notebooks tell the story of your life. Make sure your designs make that story easy to follow, both today and years from now.

If there’s nothing to be learned from the information in a Collection, it provides little value, and chances are you’ll lack the incentive needed to maintain it. Don’t waste your time tending Collections that won’t add value to your life.

Three Key Sources for Custom Collections

1. ...

2. Challenges

3. Tasks

I like to kick off every project in my notebook by using the first pages of my Collection for Brainstorming.

When creating a Collection for a project—be it writing a book, redoing the basement, or planning a vacation—a good place to start is by examining our motivation. Why are we taking on this project? What need does it address?

As noted earlier, our first opportunity to clarify our intention is when we pause to consider a Topic name that captures the essence of what this project is about. Sometimes, though, we need a little more detail than that. In times like these, it can help to write out a brief mission statement to define why we’re doing something, what we hope to get out of the experience, and how we will go about doing it. You can even use this script if it’s helpful: I want to _____ [what] so that I can _____ [why] by _____ [how].

What better way to wake the page than by stating what you want? Don’t overthink it; just write down what you feel. It’s not a contract.

A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. —ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY

Try to avoid tracking six habits simultaneously.

Start with less, but do it better. You can always add more later. Keep the content of your Collections focused on your priorities.

A great exercise to ensure the longevity of your layout is to design your templates in a way that a stranger could easily understand what they’re looking at.

You want to make sure that maintaining a Collection doesn’t feel like a chore.