The importance of the 'journal' in a bullet journal
It took me about 5 years to realise that bullet journals are, first and foremost, journals! I think when you look on Reddit and especially Instagram and Pinterest there's a huge focus on the aesthetic side of things, and along with that, for some reason, more of an emphasis on the planning aspect. I guess a lot of people like to go on the internet and see what's essentially a custom-made week-to-view planner?
When I'm talking about journals vs planners, I'm saying that keeping a notebook that primarily looks at what's going on in the present and gives a record of what happened in the past would be an example of journalling. Keeping a notebook to record future appointments and todo lists – having that focus on what you intend to be doing in the near future or longer term – would be a planner. Of course bullet journals are a mix of the two, and that's what makes them so brilliant, but I recently started to put the 'journalling' side of things first and things really clicked again for me.
I started my first bullet journal towards the end of 2016 and I stuck with the 'standard' format for most of it. I would always re-write out any tasks that weren't completed into the next day though, so that I'd have a fresh to-do list every day but also a lot of repetition in there. I'd use notes for ideas and thoughts that I might have during the day. I would write a sentence or two at the end of the day, a little like a traditional journal. Breaking the rapid-logging format but keeping things to just a paragraph or so so that it never got out of hand. I'd use my monthly log as the place to write upcoming appointments and things, and that was it. Primarily a planner, but with a little bit of journaling in there.
And all of that works! It's great, and it's still super interesting to look back through my old notebooks. And if I'm honest, I'm not sure if the way I use it now would have clicked with me back then. I remember I started bullet journalling because I actually wanted a system for work. I'd just got promoted to a retail manager job, I knew I'd have a number of things to keep track of, and limited access to a computer or any digital tools to help me. So an A6 bullet journal fit the bill perfectly. I started a personal one at the same time because it just seemed so awesome and over time the work one has grown and shrunk and grown again as I've changed jobs, but the personal one has hung around, albeit in a few different shapes and forms and I've taken breaks from it from time to time.
So bullet journalling now. I use it a lot for my job now. I'm actually not sure if I could keep track of everything in such a controlled way if I wasn't using a bullet journal. And at home, it's recently become a handy way to keep track of my moods and a good place to write down quick thoughts and ideas and to records quotes and things that I feel are helpful while I've been working through some mental health things.
But both of these notebooks now are primarily journals, primarily backwards-looking, and I think it's really amazing that that's how I can then manage to get my future planned that bit better.
For work, I'm trying to build the habit of reviewing my notebook at the end of each day. I'm normally pretty tired out by then anyway and don't have a lot of brainpower left for more tasks, so a review seems like a good use of the last 15 minutes or so of the day. I try to step away from my desk and away from my laptop and give myself the chance to just quietly read back through all I've done that day. To be honest, I'm quite often surprised by what I've written down at the start of the day (that only happened this morning!?) and it's a nice feeling to be able to tick off any tasks that I've gotten done. This is huge actually – I struggle a lot with the thought that I'm not doing anything well enough and being able to look back and see that actually, I did get stuff done today is an important reminder that actually maybe I am alright after all.
It's a chance to write down anything significant that happened that day that you might wan to refer back to. It's a chance to look at any ideas and tasks you've written down, and think if they're realistic, if they're something you can do right away, or if they're something that's going to need to be broken down and/or discussed. And if so, you write down what your actual reasonable next steps are going to be. So for those big things that you might get stuck on, that review time is the time to think about how you might get yourself unstuck.
It's also the time to fill in the monthly log. This bit is new to me and I didn't think it made much sense until I started doing it. So, at the start of a new month, the right page of the monthly log should contain all the tasks that you didn't get finished the month before. That's fine, that's planning and that's why you want to look at your monthly log every morning. The left side, the side that's laid out like a calendar, should start out pretty blank each month. You can add in appointments that you're sure aren't going to move but otherwise you should leave it fairly sparse to begin with. Then when you're reviewing at the end of the day, think of the key things that happened that day. Some memorable event or something you achieved, and write it next to that date in your monthly log. If you're rapid logging well you might get 2 or even 3 things in there. By the end of the month, you have a very concise month in review right there on that page! For work, I find that really useful for monthly 121s but also it gives me this overview of how the month has gone for me, and I realise how much has changed and how much I adapted and progressed along with that change. It's really amazing how this larger perspective just appears after you chip away at it in your little daily reviews.
I'm talking about my work notebook a lot here but the same applies for my personal one. I like to write down important one-liner quotes, or something that I want to remind myself of or try to internalise here. I will also record when I finish a book or a video game, and when I watch a film. For my personal journal this page becomes one of those '1 line a day journals' that you can buy, and it's super interesting to read back.
Mostly it was the realisation that I'd been using the monthly log page 'wrong' that prompted me to make this change. I've read The Bullet Journal Method three times now, and I still don't think it's a good book but I have to admit that each time I've come away from it with a new concept to try out. This time around, when I re-read it around December/January time, was this idea of using the monthly log as a retrospective thing.
I think one of the things I love about bullet journaling is the different 'zoom levels' you can have on different pages – the future log is looking months ahead at a time on one page at the most zoomed out level, and your daily log is the most zoomed in, focusing on what you are up to right now and what you might want to do in the next few hours. This new style of monthly log is a new middle level of zoom for me that helps me see the bigger picture. From there I have the perspective to think of how things are changing, and where I might want to be several months (or years) from now, and how realistically fast or slow that change is going to be, give, what I can see changing right now. I can then start using that right hand side to plan out reasonable steps to take, and watch them slowly progress.
It's strange to think that I've been writing stuff down in notebooks for 6 years, using more or less the same format, and still find ways to be surprised and find new insights and things to try in there.
-- @jaymy
