The Bullet Journal: My Try

I am a list maker.

I love to make lists.

Long lists. Bulleted lists. Lists within lists. Great big mind dump lists.

The bullet journal was designed for people like me.

Here is a short little video which explains how it works:

Other than show up at my job, I almost never have to do any particular thing on any particular day--or at any particular time. All planners based on a schedule, even one with only a few lines to each day frustrate me. No room to make a list! But I need my lists! So I was making them on the computer--and printing them out. And I'd make them every few days--and keep the old ones 'cause, well, I hadn't quite finished everything up. I starting to get piles of lists. To Do lists. Piles. Stress.

Bullet Journal to the rescue!

I started using this system in a 40 page exercise book I bought for less than a dollar. I didn't want to invest in a fancy schmany notebook for something which may not work out. After finishing my first month, I've transitioned into a bona fide moleskin lined journal. The compact size and the fact that it is hard cover will be great.

A couple of caveats:

Its not a planner. No. This is a task management system. In fact, one of its drawbacks is that there is no way to capture events that really must be done on a particular day other than the Monthly "list view" page which isn't really large enough. It is also constructed as one goes along, so it's a bit of a problem to jot down an event occurring several months down the road. There are more than a few creative solutions to this which a little googling quickly revealed.

1) Create a "Future Dates" page as Kim Holmes explains in this post on the Bullet Journal.
2) A rather elegant solution (with a rather inelegant name): the calendex by Eddy Hope.

I did the former. I wish I'd done the latter. And the beauty of the system is that I can do the latter, if I want, when the time comes, later.

The absolute best thing about this journal, though, is that I can create lists of any kind--based on the quirks of my very own mind. For example, I have three lists which pertain directly to my goal to follow-up on Minimalist March.

"Items to Schlep" is a list of items I have to take to various stores to sell, "Items to List" is a collection of things I need to post on kijiji (our local version of craigslist), and then there's "Places to (which to) Schlep" with phone numbers and hours of operation.

It is too cool to be so organized.