Bullet Journaling
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It began with a diary, my love affair with pencil and paper. Before I could craft words, scribblings, and scratches were my early forms of communication.
Quickly, however, scratches transformed into childish stick figures and then into words.
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By the time adolescence and finally teenage years and beyond came calling, I had graduated from the diary to the “journal.” And many a rainy afternoon or sultry summer day was spent putting pencil to paper, pouring my thoughts and feelings into those journals.
“Keep a notebook. Travel with it, eat with it, sleep with it. Slap into it every stray thought that flutters up into your brain. Cheap paper is less perishable than gray matter, and lead pencil markings endure longer than memory.” – Jack London
Today, I no longer have as much time to squirrel away and record all the events and thoughts of the day, although I make an effort to chronicle the big stuff in our life. Bullet Journaling, for me, has become my go to form.
What is bullet journaling?
“The Bullet Journal is a customizable and forgiving organization system. It can be your to-do list, sketchbook, notebook, and diary, but most likely, it will be all of the above. It will teach you to do more with less.” — The Bullet Journal
Bullet Journaling is simply, for me, almost an annotated, shorthand form of record. They call it “Rapid Logging.”
“Rapid Logging relies on the use of short-form notation paired with Bullets. Every bulleted item should be entered as short objective sentences. The Bullets will help organize your entries into three categories: Tasks, Events, and Notes.” Specifically, with this system, you create an Index, a Daily Log, a Monthly Log, and a Future Log.
And when the days become crazy and by day’s end I’m too tired to string two coherent words together in my larger journal, I know the important events of the day have been recorded.
“Note-taking and traditional journaling take time; the more complex the entry, the more effort is expended. The more effort expended, the more of a chore it becomes, the more likely you’ll underutilize or abandon your journal. Rapid Logging is the solution. Rapid Logging is the language in which the Bullet Journal is written. It consists of four components: topics, page numbers, short sentences, and bullets.”
For a comprehensive look at bullet journaling, visit bulletjournal.com for resources, journal organizational ideas, inspiration and much more.
You may ask which kind of notebook best suits this form of journaling.
While they sell their own $20 journal, when asked, bulletjournal.com says, “The short answer is: your favorite notebook. The long answer is, use a high-quality notebook that will last. You can also purchase the custom Bullet Journal notebook available from the store. It features numbered pages, an index, a bullet key, and 3 bookmarks.”
Resources for Bullet Journaling
- BulletJournal.com (resources, inspiration, and how-to)
- Bullet Journal Notebook from bulletjournal.com
- Grid Notebook from Amazon.com.