Bullet Journals are for everybody

Matthew Henry via Burst. 

Nowadays, there seems to be an app for just about anything. From entertainment to fitness to mental health to finances, these apps are made to make your life simpler and easier to manage. In 2015, though, a man named Ryder Carroll struggled to find an integral app or digital tool that could handle anything his life could throw at him. Apps seemed to be so specialized that is was difficult to track all the information in just one place. So he set up to find a solution, going back to basics in an analog system. He ended up coining the term "bullet journal". 

Via bulletjournal.com

The bullet journal is a productivity system that allows you to manage all activities in a single notebook.  The way Ryder Carroll originally designed it, it's a purely practical way to get organized through a simple and clean system of rapid logging, which consists of writing bullet lists with the minimum required information, keeping the benefits of handwriting without the time consumption. Though a series of symbols, you can catalogue each entry in the list as: 

 · a task, 

o an event,  

- or a note.  

Besides daily bullet lists, the bullet journal suggests a series of entries that can help you get your life together from the start:

• Index: a list in the first page that tracks all your entries and the page in which you can find them. 
• Future log: a layout of the months of a year and the important activities that will occur within each month. 
• Monthly log: a monthly calendar to log in daily activities and task for the month. 

The idea behind this layout is that every month, you migrate the entries from the future log to the monthly log, and every day, you migrate the entries from the monthly log, to the daily log.  A set of signifiers can help you with this process by marking which tasks are:

* important, 

x completed, 

> or migrated. 

If you no longer intend to complete an unresolved task, strike it out.  If you wrote down an event or task that is not due for a while, migrate the tasks to your future log so you will read and remember it when the right time comes. This process of migration helps you review your activities and figure out which tasks are worth your time and energy, weeding out unnecessary distractions. In addition to the basic entries, you can add custom collections - shopping lists, books to read, long-term projects, -  in order to track your notes and keep record of what you personally need. 

As the bullet journal becomes more popular, it has been adapted and changed to fit different lifestyles and organizational preferences. The purpose of the bullet journal remains as a system that can take whatever your life throws at you, letting you customize a regular notebook into a life planner of your own. Lately, a more creative take on the bullet journal has created a wide online community of people that use this system. A lot of inspiration can be found online for monthly and weekly layouts as well as budget, habit, and workouts tracking, or even ones that help you keep record of your mental health, your hobbies, or your long term goals. As more people discover this trend, more ideas become available to take inspiration from. 

Currently, the bullet journal as a trend has become a bit more artistic, using layout designs and doodles as a way to express yourself and make time to get your shit together.  Artists such as Amanda Rach Lee and Jenny Journals have taken the helm of the artistic community, capitalizing on their personal designs and original layouts by sharing their process and results on social media. A great thing about the bullet journal community is that there is no exclusivity or copyright issues for creativity. Artists encourage their followers to copy their layouts and share their efforts or suggest ideas for them to try. The point of creating a community around this practice is to share ideas and foster the habit of bullet journaling in whichever form it takes. 

(Top to bottom) Jenny Journals and Amanda Rach Lee via Instagram.

The downside to this trend is that it makes the bullet journal seem as an activity for the creative minds only. Do not let the current outlet of bullet journal references intimidate you out of trying it. Starting a bullet journal can seem like a daunting task; you may think it is too structured for your own taste, or too artistic for your skills, but it doesn't require perfect calligraphy or a special notebook. The point of the bullet journal is fitting a system to your particular needs. It can be as simple or as elaborate as you need it to be. It can include journal entries and random notes, or it can just be a series of lists; as long as it helps you stay focused and organized. The best way to use your bullet journal is trying out new things until you find a set up that feels comfortable, easy to use, and motivates you to open it every day. 

Via Pinterest.

I started bullet journaling about a year ago after my nth failed attempt to follow through with a regular agenda, and I never intend to go back.