More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
December 13 - December 22, 2023
I realized that it was up to me to solve my challenges. More importantly, I realized that I could!
Next, I launched a website featuring interactive tutorials and videos that walked users through the newly minted Bullet Journal system, aka BuJo.
In the most connected time in history, we’re quickly losing touch with ourselves. Overwhelmed by a never-ending flood of information, we’re left feeling overstimulated yet restless, overworked yet discontented, tuned in yet burned out.
The result of my endeavor to translate this timeless knowledge into focused action resulted in the Bullet Journal method, the analog system for the digital age. It will help you track the past and order the present so that you can design your future.
The Bullet Journal method’s mission is to help us become mindful about how we spend our two most valuable resources in life: our time and our energy.
BuJo puts you at the helm. You’ll learn how to stop reacting and start responding.
If the journey is the destination, then we must learn how to become better travelers. To become better travelers, we must first learn to orient ourselves. Where are you now? Do you want to be here? If not, why do you want to move on?
Knowing where you are begins with knowing who you are.
The act of writing by hand draws our mind into the present moment on a neurological level unlike any other capturing mechanism.4 It is in the present moment that we begin to know ourselves.
THE WHY Intentional living is the art of making our own choices before others’ choices make us. —RICHIE NORTON
Intentionality is the power of the mind to direct itself toward that which it finds meaningful and take action toward that end.
If intentionality means acting according to your beliefs, then the opposite would be operating on autopilot. In other words, do you know why you’re doing what you’re doing?
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 story.
Leading an intentional life is about keeping your actions aligned with your beliefs. It’s about penning a story that you believe in and that you can be proud of.
As psychologist Roy F. Baumeister wrote in his book Willpower: “No matter how rational and high-minded you try to be, you can’t make decision after decision without paying a biological price. It’s different from ordinary physical fatigue—you’re not consciously aware of being tired—but you’re low on mental energy.”11 This state is known as decision fatigue.
In other words, the more decisions you have to make, the harder it becomes to make them well.
We need to reduce the number of decisions we burden ourselves with so we can focus on what matters.
The first step to recovering from decision fatigue, to get out from under the pile of choices weighing on you, is to get some distance from them.
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.
technology has flooded our lives with more content than we can possibly absorb, washing away our attention spans in the process.
Studies suggest that your concentration suffers simply by having your smartphone in the room with you, even if it’s silent or powered off!
Sitting down with your notebook grants you that precious luxury. It provides a personal space, free from distraction, where you can get to know yourself better. This is one of the main reasons we use a notebook to Bullet Journal: It forces us to go offline.
Our notebook serves as a mental sanctuary where we are free to think, reflect, process, and focus.
As Bullet Journalist Bert Webb put it: “As I do daily, weekly, and monthly reviews, leafing forward and backward in my Bullet Journal, my brain inevitably makes more links between ideas that I was not able to do when using my various separate digital tools.”
Weekly Reviews
As Bullet Journalist Kim Alvarez once put it, “Each Bullet Journal contributes another volume to a library of your life.” In the pursuit of meaning, this library becomes a powerful resource to have at your disposal.
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. As a result, we retain information longer than we would by tapping it into an app.18 In one study, college students who were asked to take lecture notes by hand tested better on average than those who had typed out their notes. They were also able to better retain this information long after the exam.19
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. It allows us to form new connections that can yield unconventional solutions and insights.
Toward our latter days, writing can help preserve our most cherished memories. Studies suggest that the act of writing keeps our minds sharper for longer.
A dear friend of mine once told me, “The long way is the short way.” In a cut-and-paste world that celebrates speed, we often mistake convenience for efficiency.
True efficiency is not about speed; it’s about spending more time with what truly matters.
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. This is how we learn, this is how we grow.
Often all it takes to live intentionally is to pause before you proceed.
Things that you need to do (Tasks) Your experiences (Events) Information you don’t want to forget (Notes)
Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert likens our memories to painted portraits instead of photographs, where our mind artistically interprets memory.20
Productivity is about getting more done by working on fewer things.
Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. —ALLEN SAUNDERS
The only thing you can control is the way you respond. Focusing on things you can’t control allows them to control you. Focus on what you can control.
Study the good in your life. Achievement is empty without appreciation. If you can’t appreciate your hard work, what’s the point?!
We must take it upon ourselves to grow. We grow by learning, and we learn by daring to take action. There will always be risk, because we can’t control the outcome. This is the way of life, and it’s unavoidable. What is avoidable, however, is being perpetually haunted by all the things that could have been if you had only dared. Begin by giving yourself permission to believe you’re worth the risk.
Know thyself. —SOCRATES
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.
Success often feels surprisingly empty. That holds true not just for financial success, but for the kind of self-improvement we’ve always thought to be healthy and good.
Thanks to our ability to rapidly adapt, even the most pleasurable experience or purchase quickly becomes the boring new normal. Soon we’re itching for another quick fix of pleasure. No longer satisfied with what we already have, we treat our withdrawal pains by incrementally upping the dosage. More shoes, more booze, more sex, more food, more “likes,” just more. This phenomenon is known as hedonic adaptation. Exploiting what Sean Parker, founding member of Facebook, called this “vulnerability in human psychology” is the bread and butter of our economy.30 Notice how much advertising focuses not
...more
“Good” is enough, but “better” is a promise of “happiness” that’s just another transaction away.
Happiness, like sadness, comes and goes. It’s an emotion, and like all emotions, it’s blessedly temporary.
Studies suggest that only around 2 percent of the population is psychologically able to multitask.37 The rest of us aren’t multitasking; we’re simply juggling. We’re not working on things simultaneously; we’re actually micro-tasking: rapidly switching between tasks—struggling not to drop the balls.
Our minds respond well to questions because we’re problem solvers.
In the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: “Mistakes are a great educator when one is honest enough to admit them and willing to learn from them.”
