If you google the term ‘Bullet Journal’ (or BUJO if you’re cool), you’ll find beautiful and carefully curated Instagram images of the kinds of diary entries most of us unwashed masses assume are used by True Adults (go ahead and google the term, I’ll wait). The creators of these everyday works of art, these marvels of time management makes you think of the kinds of people who have a proper handle on life. The kinds of folks that are supremely organised, nibble only on salads, go for long walks on beaches daily and wear mostly cream colored outfits.
These spreads reminds me of a passage from ‘Red Dwarf’ by Grant Naylor:
“In fact, it was now possible for Rimmer to revise solidly for three months and not learn anything at all.
The first week of study, he would always devote to the construction of a revision timetable. At school Rimmer was always at his happiest colouring in geography maps: under his loving hand, the ice-fields of Europa would be shaded a delicate blue, the subterranean silica deposits of Ganymede would be rendered, centimetre by painstaking centimetre, a bright and powerful yellow, and the regions of frozen methane on Pluto slowly became a luscious, inviting green. Up until the age of thirteen, he was constantly head of the class in geography. After this point, it became necessary to know and understand the subject, and Rimmer’s marks plunged to the murky depths of ‘F’ for fail.
He brought his love of cartography to the making of revision timetables. Weeks of patient effort would be spent planning, designing and creating a revision timetable which, when finished, were minor works of art.
Every hour of every day was subdivided into different study periods, each labelled in his lovely, tiny copperplate hand; then painted over in watercolours, a different colour for each subject, the colours gradually becoming bolder and more urgent shades as the exam time approached. The effect was as if a myriad tiny rainbows had splintered and sprinkled across the poster-sized sheet of creamwove card.
The only problem was this: because the timetables often took seven or eight weeks, and sometimes more, to complete, by the time Rimmer had finished them the exam was almost on him. He’d then have to cram three months of astronavigation revision into a single week. Gripped by an almost deranging panic, he’d then decide to sacrifice the first two days of that final week to the making of another timetable. This time for someone who had to pack three months of revision into five days.
Because five days now had to accommodate three months’ work, the first thing that had to go was sleep. To prepare for an unrelenting twenty-four hours a day sleep-free schedule, Rimmer would spend the whole of the first remaining day in bed – to be extra, ultra fresh, so he would be able to squeeze three whole months of revision into four short days.
Within an hour of getting up the next morning, he would feel inexplicably exhausted, and start early on his supply of Go-Double-Plus caffeine tablets. By lunchtime he’d overdose, and have to make the journey down to the ship’s medical unit for a sedative to help him calm down. The sedative usually sent him off to sleep, and he’d wake up the following morning with only three days left, and an anxiety that was so crippling he could scarcely move. A month of revision to be crammed into each day.
At this point he would start smoking. A lifelong non-smoker, he’d become a forty-a-day man. He’d spend the whole day pacing up and down his room, smoking three or four cigarettes at a time, stopping occasionally to stare at the titles in his bookcase, not knowing which one to read first, and popping twice the recommended dosage of dog-worming tablets, which he erroneously believed to contain amphetamine.
Realizing he was getting nowhere, he’d try to get rid of his soul-bending tension by treating himself to an evening in one of Red Dwarf‘s quieter bars. There he would sit, in the plastic oak-beamed ‘Happy Astro’ pub, nursing a small beer, grimly trying to be light-hearted and totally relaxed. Two small beers and three hours of stomach-knotting relaxation later, he would go back to his bunk and spend half the night awake, praying to a God he didn’t believe in for a miracle that couldn’t happen.
Two days to go, and ravaged by the combination of anxiety, nicotine, caffeine tablets, alcohol he wasn’t used to, dog-worming pills, and overall exhaustion, he would sleep in till mid-afternoon.
After a long scream, he would rationalize that the day was a total write-off, and the rest of the afternoon would be spent shopping for the three best alarm clocks money could buy. This would often take five or six hours, and he would arrive back at his sleeping quarters exhausted, but knowing he was fully prepared for the final day’s revision before his exam.
Waking at four-thirty in the morning, after exercising, showering and breakfasting, he would sit down to prepare a final, final revision table, which would condense three months of revision into twelve short hours. This done, he would give up and go back to bed. Maybe he didn’t know a single thing about astronavigation, but at least he’d be fresh for the exam the next day.
Which is why Rimmer failed exams.
–Grant Naylor, Red Dwarf, 1989”
Lets be honest with ourselves: we’ve either been a Rimmer, or know one.
But does bullet journalling help?
So should you Bullet Journal? Yes, at its heart bujo is a very flexible, easy to understand and quick to use system. Bullet journalling can be as pretty as those seen on Instagram, but it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try it if you’re not artistically inclined. Everyone should give it a go at least twice.
Check out the core system in this video below:
I’ve been bullet journalling over the past few years, with various levels of success. This isn’t because of a flaw in the bullet journal system, but more in what I need it to do and my often chaotic (and imperfect) workflow.
I have a very process driven occupation that relies on my constant inputs to keep things moving. I often have to attend to multiple processes during the day, across multiple projects and disciplines.
I find I get the most effectiveness from the bullet journal as a tool to help me reboot when I get those ‘I’m overrun with tasks and no idea where to start’ moments. So its basically David Allen’s ‘Brain Dump’ exercise from Getting things Done where you get all the things you’re juggling around in your brain, down on paper in a list. This helps me mentally unburden myself and allows me to fix a dynamic situation firmly in place. It relieves any additional background mental strain I might be under because of FOMO (the Fear of Missing Out, or rather in this case anxiety resulting from worrying about forgetting to do something important).
I also find it extremely useful when used in conjunction with J.D. Meier’s Rule of 3, from his Agile Results system. If you’re struggling to be productive, just aim for 3 outcomes you want to produce for the day. Sometimes it’s as simple as ‘have a nice lunch today’. But aiming and completing 3 goals in a given timeframe helps to mentally unstick your gears and get moving again.
I do sometimes find that I have trouble meshing my digital and analog lives together. This usually becomes an issue where sometimes I need to almost digitally duplicate parts of the analog bullet journal to be able to share and collaborate with others timeously (which takes time to do).
And like most database managers will tell you, keeping everything up to date across multiple platforms is almost a job in itself (in this case the platforms are the bullet journal and my digital infrastructure). It works fine when my tasklist is manageable but spirals out as the tasklist increases. It starts to look less neat and then FOMO starts setting in again (I need to check both platforms to make sure that I’m not forgetting something).
Don’t get me wrong, it works great for what its designed for (e.g. rapid note taking, etc), but I’m still finding my way in its application across my entire workflow. That being said its addressed a lot of issues I have in my workflow (but not all of them).
I also don’t see anything wrong with only using bujo for certain parts of your life, instead of a complete life-wide implementation. Its useful for section of your personal life; your studies or hobbies for instance.
As I’ve said before, the challenges I find myself having implementing bullet journalling are unique to me and not inherent flaw in the bujo system itself. This is on me in how I have decided to hamfistedly implement it. I’ll probably find the ideal mix eventually, given enough time.
It gives form to thoughts in a way that is both elegant and fast. As someone who’s always liked the idea of a diary but has never been able to keep a proper one, bullet journalling provided me a way to do that in a way that is logical and allows for easy information retrieval (the other important half of any system).
You on the other hand, might find that it’s the answer to all your prayers.