Things I liked about The Bullet Journal Method

This year I started journaling and I’m working to make it a habit, so I decided to give it a read to improve my journalling techniques.

What is the book about

Obviously from the title you can decipher it’s about journaling but the scope of journaling might be limited in some people’s perspective. This book paves you a way for:

• Documenting your life
• Proactively becoming more self aware and reviewing your life to see whether you are on track to achieve your goals.

Things that I liked about the book

1. Extensive logging

• The book suggests to break down your tasks, logs, and reviews into fine-grained pieces. Usually you might put all your goals in a single file/page, which can end up cluttered and hard to prioritize.
• For example, you might have a goal that might take a year to achieve and it might be more effective to place it in a yearly goals log rather than repeatedly seeing them. Similarly the author suggests the same for reviews, tasks, logs(just journals).
• Use of symbols - Alongside your tasks/logs the author suggests using various symbols to use as identifers. The author calls these signifiers. For example, using an asterick to indicate priority. This might come in handy when you managing your journals/tasks on a paper.

2. Migration

• In software engineering, there’s a sprint system, where teams plan tasks ahead usually for the next two weeks and then based on daily review or end of sprint assessments, would move the incomplete tasks forward.
• The author suggests a similar system, where you periodically review your tasks and move them into the next applicable plan (week/month/year). I think this will keep your journals updated and make tracking easier.

3. Events

• The book suggests to add events as soon as they happen and to merely list the actual event without adding your own judgements.
• The main advantage of it is that you can look back and see the event as it was. You can expand things in it and also add your own interpretations later in a separate space.
• his is a game changer for me. When I started journalling I even wondered if I should even include negative experiences, this perspective from the book sounds quite useful to me.

4. Collections

• Collections are like templates which you use for repetitive activities. For example, planning for a vacation may involve the same steps like booking tickets, creating an iterinary.
• Collection is just a name that the author uses for reusing similar patterns in your journal.

5. Wisdom Tidbits

• Beyond journaling, the book talks about plenty of self help ideas(quotes from other popular books) to improve your life.
• For example, the author emphasizes productivity over mere busyness and advises on the benefits of “less is more.”
• In general the author connects and explains the ideas behind these journalling techniques. For example, when describing the practice of recording events objectively (as noted in point 3), the author shared a story about a client who, after reviewing his journals, realized that a relationship with a certain person wasn’t as meaningful as he’d assumed. The person X had done nothing to just the way he prioritized the relationship and end up being disappointed.

Any big complaints?

The book does what it claims to do, I don’t have anything to complain about. The author suggests that the techniques are open to experimentation, so I guess you may feel to adapt according to your own style. Feel free to skim through familiar general concepts which are not related to journalling, especially if you have read about it from other self-help books.

Who is this book for?

For anyone who wants to improving their journaling/life, I would recommend giving it a try.