Defining A Bullet Journal

Have you ever thought about “what’s so great about the ‘Bullet Journal trend’” that’s been going on for some years now? I certainly have but when you use it often and realize how great it can be, well… you get it. 

When you think about a simple way to get organized people thinks “planner”, I use a weekly planner, and it works fantastic, however, it can be completely overwhelming when you try to write more things than the space allows or when you need to crosscheck something that got canceled and you are left with little to no space to continue writing.

A few years ago, there was this great guy who created an analog system called “Bullet Journal” and he said: “It’s meant to help you track the past, organize the present, and plan for the future.” Ryder Carroll, the creator, has a very simplistic way of using the system. It has a very minimalistic approach that helps record everything about a week, a month and even a year. Using it year-after-year can help check your patterns, growth, and fallouts.

Having your ideas written down, using an organizational system that helps you keep everything in an ordered and coherent way can help you with appointments, birthdays, work deadlines, presents, and so much more!

Now that we got the pretty part out of the way, we can go through the condense information of the website, you can also go to the Bullet Journal website to read it from the expert. There’s also an official video you can watch, but if you prefer to read, read on, my friend!

The condensed version of “The Analog Method for the Digital Age” starts now. ALL images are from this official page.

The System

The bullet journal’s joy and pride it’s the ability to use rapid logging. Let’s tackle the rapid logging system.

Rapid Logging

It’s a way of capturing information in bulleted lists.

Syntax

Bullets

Carroll writes “If Rapid Logging is the BuJo (short for Bullet Journal) is written in, Bullets are the Syntax.”

It allows having short sentences with visual categories.

Categories

Tasks

Typically represented by a dot. It’s fast, clean and easy to change the state of the task.

Events

Open circle for date-related entries. (Future or past)

Notes

Represented by a simple dash. Works for anything you don’t want to forget.

Mix and Match

Tasks, Events, and Notes will help you to get it out of your head and onto the page.

Nesting

A picture is easier to help me explain

Signifiers

Provide additional visual context.

• * = Priority
• ! = Inspiration

Now that we have all together, we’ll go into depth with each part of what makes a bullet journal fun and useful to maintain. Keep in mind that it can be however you want it to be. Artistic, minimalistic, or just as simple and functional as the original and it may look like this:

You don’t even need to use a bunch of colors, as long as you understand it, nobody else needs to.

You can check my first attempt at a bullet journal here. It was not my best because I was a little intimidated, but it was fun! I did it in an A5 Charuca notebook, my second attempt was a Leuchtturm1917 and you can also see it here. Now I use any brand that catches my eye (:

What do you think? Are you interested in getting into bullet journaling yet? Let me know 🙂