I spent all of yesterday creating a bullet journal for myself. Although 2019 was a fruitful year, towards the second half of the year, I felt both stressed and spaced out. During such times, I felt I was wasting a lot of time on social media. During such times, I have always found that creating a simple to-do list really works for me. Usually I create a to-do list and keep migrating the tasks to next day, until they are all done.
Whenever I have had to juggle multiple demanding projects, I have used a to-do list and benefitted from it. A couple of years ago, I came across Bullet Journaling via a blog post by Tammy Strobel at rowdykittens.com. I don’t remember the exact post, but I checked it out. At that time, I created a bullet journal and found it immensely helpful. However, due to certain unavoidable issues, I couldn’t stick to it. Also my priorities changed for a while and I could never get back to bullet journaling.
This year, however, I have decided to stick to bullet journaling. To create my bullet journal, I used the system developed by Ryder Carroll, the inventor of the bullet journal system. I also checked out a couple of videos on YouTube to look at how people have adapted the system to their needs. Here are a couple of videos, which I found useful – one by Pick Up Limes and another by Matthew Kent. I watched a couple of more videos, but I used these two to create my journal.
It took me almost an entire day to create my journal. First, understanding the system, doing research and then planning about how to set-up my own. I am using a dotted notebook and a Micron pen for my journal. I think tools are equally important for something like this.
It’s only been second day but I am feeling very calm and less stressed out. I am more focused and less distracted.
Earlier, whenever I would sit down to work, I would repeat all the tasks I needed to do and then decide which one I should tackle first. The whole process of recalling and then making a decision would take up too much time and fatigue me out before I started working. Once I would start working, my mind would easily get distracted and I would think of million things I could be doing that were equally important or perhaps not take away too much time.
But now things have changed. I have all the tasks laid out neatly in a list in front of me when I sit on my desk. I look at the item, I need to complete. I also remain aware that I have other tasks I need to complete so I must complete the task at hand quickly so as to move to the next item.
It is only second day, but I am already feeling very accomplished and productive today. If you feel overwhelmed by the amount of stuff you need to accomplish each day and you haven’t tried bullet journaling, you should. Let me know what you think.
Reflections 