Geek's Guide to Getting Better

I’ve spent the last month doing something that, honestly, surprises me. It’s not new or revolutionary to the world. But to me? It’s both. It’s something I have tried before and have never really gotten it to stick, but this time it seems to be working.

Bullet journaling. Yeah, I know.

I know, you don’t need to tell me. Every productivity and self-improvement blog on the internet has fifty posts about the bullet journal method, and this one isn’t going to tell you anything that the other, better bloggers can tell you. What I hope to tell you is a bit about why I think it is working for me this time around.

What is a bullet journal?

The Bullet Journal method, created by Ryder Carroll in 2013, started as a way for him to organise his chaotic life. It is a simple, minimalist approach to documenting what happens in our lives, reflect on what happened, and refine what we want to carry forward. There’s some great resources out there explaining how the method works, but I’ll try to cover it as best I can.

A bullet journal has a few different types of pages within it. First are the “look ahead” spreads. There are a few types, but the key ones are yearly and monthly spreads—simple layouts that let you see what’s coming up so you can plan ahead. Typically you would start each period (year, or month) by creating one of these spreads.

Next is the day-to-day management. These can be a weekly spread (which I do) or a full page-to-a-day where you can track every task, every event, every note which you want to document. There is a very simple way to keep on top of all of the different notes easily, using the key below:

• Tasks are denoted with a bullet point
x Completed tasks are denoted by crossing the bullet
> Tasks that will be put in next month are migrated forward
< Tasks that will be put somewhere else in the future are migrated back to the yearly spread
• Cancelled tasks are struck-through
– Notes are denoted with a dash
○ Events are denoted by a circle

My key looks a little different, but that’s the gist.

And that’s the whole system. It’s as easy as that, what could go wrong?

What went wrong.

I mentioned that I have tried bullet journaling before and that it didn’t stick, but there has to be a reason. For a long while, I thought it was just me. Something was fundamentally wrong with the combination of me and an analogue note-taking system. I thought that if it wasn’t digital, then it wouldn’t work. And for the few times I kept coming back around to the bullet journal, I kept bumping up against this wall. I would do great for a few weeks and then it would just fall apart.

This time, as you might have guessed, has been different. So, I spent some time thinking about this and I realised one thing that I did differently this time compared to all the other times: I took the pressure off.

The “cult” of BuJo

I don’t think most people discover bullet journaling through Ryder Carroll. Like me, they find it through Instagram.

There are hundreds of accounts on social media displaying gorgeous, artistic spreads with themes and colour. It’s clear that these people spend a few hours a week doing nothing but designing their monthly spreads. And while this isn’t necessarily a problem, the spreads are great and they are very pretty to look at, but the problem was: I started chasing those aesthetics. I wanted my bullet journal to look that good, and I pressured myself to design spreads for hours each week.

I don’t necessarily think that the social media content in the bullet journal community is a bad thing, but it is easy to get caught up in the perfectionism and desire to spend more time designing your bullet journal than you actually spend using it. It’s something I want to discuss in a future post, but this need to constantly chase the perfect system typifies what I have come to think of as the “cult” of BuJo.

(BuJo is the way the “cult” refers to bullet journaling. I, personally, hate how that sounds).

So what’s different this time?

The main difference this time is that I started small. The first month, I just tracked to-do items, I had no spreads, no planning ahead. I just got into the habit of writing my notes directly into the book. Some days were only a few lines, some were a page and a half. I kept it basic—a list of dates and somewhere to jot down key things to remember. I stuck to using it almost every weekday through April. I didn’t get much use at weekends, but I wasn’t too bothered by that.

This month, I went a little step further. I designed a minimalist monthly spread, somewhere to jot down the key details, important events, reminders, etc. I also put in a habit tracker, and somewhere to track my sleep, mood, and stress. During the month, I have been doing a simplified weekly spread. The first week was set up in columns, which was a little cramped, and this week I am working in rows instead which feels more comfortable and gives me space to add detail to my notes.

I haven’t yet decided on how I plan to capture meeting notes, but that’s something I can work on through the month. The key thing is, I am not putting too much on in one go. What matters is that my thoughts, ideas, actions, and notes go into the book and that I regularly review and move things around to make sure nothing gets lost.

More than anything, I think bullet journaling has turned out to be less about the spreads and the systems and more about giving myself a tiny, daily reminder: I am the kind of person who shows up for myself, even if it’s messy.

Not perfectly. Not beautifully. But consistently enough to matter.

And if you’ve ever tried something like this and felt like a failure because it didn’t look like the pictures—maybe the problem wasn’t you. Maybe it was the pictures.

So maybe we both give ourselves permission to try it badly. To drop the aesthetics and the performance. To do it quietly, for ourselves alone.

Maybe that’s the point: not to build the perfect system, but to keep showing up as the person we want to become. One scrappy bullet at a time.