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September 26 - October 8, 2023
Few things are more distracting than the cruel stories we tell ourselves.
Some asked about organizing their day-to-day. So I showed them how to use my system for quickly logging their tasks, events, and notes. Others asked about setting goals. So I demonstrated how they could use my system for structuring action plans to tackle future aims. Others just wanted to be less scattered, so I showed them how to neatly funnel all their notes and projects into one notebook.
The first step was to create a log of everything she had to do that month. She wrote each family member’s schedule in separate columns. They all worked irregular hours. It felt like she could finally press pause on the roller coaster for long enough to see who would be where for the next four weeks. It was horrifying to think about how easily one of them could forget to pick up their baby from preschool in a few years. It felt like it was just a matter of time before they would forget something important. Sandy resolutely drew another column. She wrote down events and birthdays so they were
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A crazy mom story. We all feel tied up by work or the fact that will we ever catch a break. Writing things down and setting it down on a piece of paper has incredibly calming effects on you.
The Bullet Journal provided a framework that allowed Anthony to explore his potential.
This story seems incomplete. The author speaks about the challenges of the freelancer in managing workflows, highlights that he uses notebooks to list tasks but later doesn't remember where he filed his notes. Then one fine day he learns of bullet journaling and everything changes. It doesn't add up.
The Bullet Journal method consists of two parts: the system and the practice. First we’ll learn about the system, to teach you how to transform your notebook into a powerful organizational tool. Then we’ll examine the practice. It’s a fusion of philosophies from a variety of traditions that define how to live an intentional life—a life both productive and purposeful.
It will help you track the past and order the present so that you can design your future.
The Bullet Journal method will help you accomplish more by working on less. It helps you identify and focus on what is meaningful by stripping away what is meaningless.
Do more by focusing on the less
One possible explanation for our productivity slowdown is that we’re paralyzed by information overload. As Daniel Levitin writes in The Organized Mind, information overload is worse for our focus than exhaustion or smoking marijuana.3
Like building muscle, we need to train our intentions to make them resilient and strong.
Through Bullet Journaling, you’ll automatically form a regular habit of introspection where you’ll begin to define what’s important, why it’s important, and then figure out how to best pursue those things.
Though the product added value to the lives of our customers, it added little to ours. We weren’t passionate about the product—we’d just fallen in love with the entrepreneurial challenge.
What an incredible thing to say. I for certain share this feeling with he author. I too stated multiple startups ony because i liked the idea of being my own boss. There was litte passion.
How often do we find ourselves in this position? You’ve worked incredibly hard on something, only to discover that it leaves you feeling empty.
Feeling empty
We need to understand what’s actually driving our motivation before we ascend.
Our motivations are heavily informed by the media. Our social feeds are populated by endless images of wealth, travel, power, relaxation, beauty, pleasure, and Hollywood love. This virtual runoff perpetually seeps into our consciousness, polluting our sense of reality and self-worth every time we go online.
When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.
Postmortem bias and ensuing regret often hurts us more than we think.
When we believe in what we’re doing, we stop mindlessly clocking in. We become more innovative, creative, and present.
Cultivating this self-awareness is a lifelong process, but it starts by simply checking in with yourself. That’s where the Bullet Journal method comes in. You can view your Bullet Journal as a living autobiography. It allows you to clearly see what the rush of life tends to obscure. You can track the decisions you’ve made, and the actions you’ve taken that led you to where you are. It encourages you to learn from your experiences. What worked, what did not, how did it make you feel, what’s the next move? Day by day, you’re deepening your self-awareness by becoming a steady witness to your
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BuJo allows you to self reflect on your thoughtfs and actions than just living your life on autopilot.
Left unchecked, decision fatigue can lead to decision avoidance. This is especially true for big life choices, which we tend to put off till the last minute.
Writing things down allows us to capture our thoughts and examine them in the light of day.
By externalizing our thoughts, we begin to declutter our minds. Entry by entry, we’re creating a mental inventory of all the choices consuming our attention.
Creating a mental inventory is a simple technique that will help you quickly take stock of what you’ve been jamming into your mental closet. Chances are there are a lot of useless responsibilities hogging valuable mental and emotional real estate up there.
When you christen your Bullet Journal, you should do so with only things that you believe are important or will add value to your life. Being intentional about what you let into your life is a practice that shouldn’t be limited to the pages of your notebook.
By recording our lives, we’re simultaneously creating a rich archive of our choices and our actions for future reference. We can study our mistakes and learn from them. It’s equally instructive to note our successes, our breakthroughs. When something works professionally or personally, it helps to know what our circumstances were at the time and what choices we made. Studying our failures and our victories can provide tremendous insight, guidance, and motivation as we plot our way forward.
A University of Washington study demonstrated that elementary school students who wrote essays by hand were far more likely to write in fully formed sentences and learn how to read faster.
handwriting accelerates and deepens our ability to form—and therefore recognize—characters.
The complex tactile movement of writing by hand stimulates our mind more effectively than typing.
It activates multiple regions of the brain simultaneously, thereby imprinting what we learn on a deeper level.
They were also able to better retain this information long after the exam.
When we put pen to paper, we’re not just turning on the lights; we’re also turning up the heat. Writing by hand helps us think and feel simultaneously.
Why is it so important to craft notes in your own words? The science suggests that writing by hand enhances the way we engage with information, strengthening our associative thinking.
How we synthesize our experiences shapes the way we perceive and interact with the world.
Expressive writing, for example, helps us process painful experiences by externalizing them through long-form journaling.
Studies suggest that the act of writing keeps our minds sharper for longer.
True efficiency is not about speed; it’s about spending more time with what truly matters. In the end, that’s what the Bullet Journal method is all about.
If you’re new to the Bullet Journal, I suggest reading through all the chapters in this part before setting pen to paper.
Our experiences—both sweet and sour—are lessons. We honor these lessons by writing them down so we can study them and see what they have to teach us.
Journaling provides a powerful way of facilitating this path of self-learning.
Rapid Logging leverages the best aspects of journaling by stripping away everything that’s not essential.
Once that’s done, slowly scan all of the pages of the past month, reviewing the state of your Tasks. Chances are you haven’t completed them all. This is totally normal. Transform any guilt into curiosity by asking yourself why each Task might still be incomplete. Does it matter? Is it vital? What would happen if you didn’t do it?
The significance of what we’re doing, or how we’re doing it, pales in comparison to why we’re doing it in the first place.
Being busy can be likened to tumbling down an existential staircase: stimulus, reaction, stimulus, reaction. This frenetic cycle of reactivity holds our attention hostage, limiting our ability to recognize opportunities for love, growth, and purpose.
We need to wedge a space between the things that happen to us and the way that we react to them.
Here we can learn what’s in our control, what’s meaningful, what’s worth our attention, and why. It’s how we begin to define who we are and what we believe in.
“Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.”
It’s the lack of attention that’s often responsible for the rubble of cringeworthy decisions weighing on our conscience.
Many poor decisions are born in the vacuum of self-awareness. We get so caught up in the doing of things that we forget to ask why we’re doing them in the first place. Asking why is the first small but deliberate step we can take in the search for meaning.
Reflection is the nursery of intentionality.
Through Reflection, we cultivate the habit of checking in with ourselves to examine our progress, our responsibilities, our circumstances, and our state of mind.
In order to live fulfilling lives, we have to embrace the shifting nature of our experience by making our search for meaning an ongoing practice.
If we live passive lives, ones where we don’t pursue what shines forth, we remain in the dark, largely ignorant as to our place in the world. In this state, our efforts, no matter how well intentioned or noble, will often feel meaningless because they seem to serve no purpose.
