On ProductivityCast, we talked about the Bullet Journal method, the paper-based personal productivity methodology developed by Ryder Carroll, and tailoring the Bullet Journal method in our own personal productivity systems (as well as managing it in digital environments).
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In this Cast | Tailoring the Bullet Journal Method
Ray Sidney-Smith
Augusto Pinaud
Art Gelwicks
Show Notes | Tailoring the Bullet Journal Method
Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.
We discussed the Bullet Journal Method in ProductivityCast episode 037, “What Is the Bullet Journal? How Does It Work?”
Some resources to get up to speed:
Bullet Journal tutorial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4kueYhGEc8
The Bullet Journal Method book summary
Bullet Journal Guide
The Bullet Journal Method by Ryder Carroll
Essentialism by Greg McKeown
Goodnotes 3 (iOS)
Evernote
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBBLPyBndMY
Arc Customizable Notebook — A Staples® exclusive
Arc Notebook Systems by Staples
Everlast Rocketbook notebooks
Moleskine mini-notebooks
Journey (app)
DayOne (iOS/macOS)
Trapper Keeper
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ym6OYelD5fA
Raw Text Transcript | Tailoring the Bullet Journal Method
Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio).
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Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17
And Welcome back, everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney Smith.
Augusto Pinaud 0:24 I am Augusto Pinaud.
Art Gelwicks 0:24 And I'm Art Gelwicks.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:24Welcome, gentlemen, and welcome to our listeners to this episode where we are going to be talking about the idea of how we would tailor the bullet journal method to our own productivity systems. I've been giving this quite a lot of thought recently. And so I thought we would have an episode where we would all talk about the Bujo method and how we would actually use this in our system, even if we don't just kind of how we would so that you as listeners may incorporate some of the skills, some of the techniques that we have developed over time. How we would develop them using the bullet journal method. And so what we'll do is we'll do just a quick recap of boo Joe, to kind of aware of what it's all about. And then we will we will talk about ways in which we can supplement our systems in both analog and digital and we'll go from there. So let's let's start with what is the bullet journal method? art? Would you like to kick us off and tackle the the kind of top level explanation of what Bujo is?
Art Gelwicks 1:29Sure at the highest level. Bujo is really the brainchild of gentleman by the name of writer Carol. The bullet journal method is originally started as an analogue approach to keeping track of notes, tasks, activities, and basically keeping everything in one spot. focused around month activity in de activity but it is designed to be extremely simple Extremely adaptable. It's one of those things that there is no a lot of predefined structures and templates, there are now in the marketplace because it's so popular, but it is at its most basic. Each day, you're keeping track of the notes that you have from the day tasks, activities, all within just a couple of pages of a paper journal, and then continuing to build that over time. It's, it's a definite understatement of what's involved in the system. But at its most basic, I would say that bullet journaling happens to be one of the few systems that somebody could pick up and start to do within about a half hour.
One of the things that for me, it's really, really interesting about the bullet journal is that it requires zero knowledge about productivity. You know, one of the things that you find in other systems is that you need to at least understand the basics of productivity. You know, the bullet journal came as a solution for people who have zero knowledge If people have zero knowledge of productivity organization or any of those things. They can come read the book, read the basic. Before the book, there was even a basic explanation on it start running an over complicated over time or get more sophisticated over time depending on how you want it to look at that. And I think that was one of the biggest strengths that the bullet journal bring. It was for many people, the introduction to productivity on a on a current world where we have a gap between I don't know anything about productivity or I am an expert in productivity, there is a big big gap between those two.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 3:39And Ryder really explains bullet journal method as a as basically a Venn diagram. On one side you have productivity practices, and on the other side you have mindfulness and when where the Venn diagram overlaps, you know, two circles as they merge together and they overlap that central part What he considers the bullet journal method. And he calls this intentionality the idea of taking kind of the essentialism model from Greg MacAllan and saying, what are the vital what are the vital things in my life that need to get done and tracking those and maintaining those so that I'm able to focus and then to attend to the specific actions, focus on the goals and then attend to the specific actions that are necessary to move those important things forward in my life. And so yeah, that's the that's the bullet journal kind of in a nutshell, it's it is an analog system that Ryder Carroll developed because he had had some some attentional deficits. And maybe he is he was diagnosed with ADHD. I can't remember specifically from the book but I believe he was diagnosed with ADHD and he was feeling the stigma of it. Didn't know why he wasn't able to get things done. And this Bujo method was derived from his frustrations, his trial and error from all of this. I will, I will say that from my perspective, he kind of talks about this idea that there are these productivity principles. And then on the other side is mindfulness and or practice of, of the bullet journal method. I tend to disagree with that. I think there there are the traditional classical Greek, you know, components of theory, practice and performance. And so, there's kind of like a there, there are actually three circles in that Venn diagram. And so those three overlapping circles, the center part then becomes what he's talking about, perhaps, of intentionality, I would call it focus. And that's a that's an important kind of thing to kind of keep in mind here is that I think that there is there is learning productivity principles, as Augusto said. I think to a great extent, people who come to the bullet journal method can just implement the tool and get going and not necessarily have to have a background in productivity principles to begin with, although I would argue that we all have some level of it from being productive members of society. If you if you got to adulthood, you probably have some level of stuff going on.
Art Gelwicks 6:25The thing that's really nice about the bullet journal method is it's one of the few methods I found that lends itself to the digital digitally resistant, if I want to tag them as that when I look at and talk to people who are like, Look, I don't want anything complicated. I want all these online things. I don't want to try and tack track tasks on my phone. This is a perfect bridge type of solution for them. In many cases, it can be the end all solution for them. Honestly, I've done this very thing with my 82 year old mother who needed a way to keep track of What was going on and her need set was not only the amount of information she was keeping track of, but also keeping track of it over time and being able to go back and reference. Her concern was being able to remember things. And this is the type of tool, not just bullet journaling. But in this specific case, that lends itself to that kind of capture, and process and report methodology of being able to pull stuff back when you need it. Without panicking of Where did I put it? Where did it go? How do I find that information out?
Raymond Sidney-Smith 7:34Great. So what I'd like to do is just very quickly for our listeners, give us a just very, very brief overview of how you would set up the bullet journal system in an analogue environment that is opened up a notebook and then create a bullet journal method. Now we covered this in a prior episode. I'll put a link to that in the show notes. And but I do Just one, I want people to get kind of a sense of just the very basics of this art. Do you want to? Do you want to try and tackle that? You know, I can get started and then continue. What do you want to do?
