Bullet Journal

[scrub-jay]

Mine is solidly utilitarian. No doodles to be found.

[MsSassyBaskets]

Mine is solidly utilitarian. No doodles to be found.

Yep, mine too. Terrible handwriting and I'm not really very artistic... And definitely not meticulous and careful enough to design anything nicely. Just lists and bullets and scrawled headings.

[DrBandMe]

Are we all talking about bohoberry?

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[niener]

[MENTION=4334]DrBandMe[/MENTION] that's my assumption. And actually as I've perused further into the depths of bujo photos, some people make hers look downright plain! She at least seems to stick to the basic ideas behind the bullet journal; I've seen quite a few that just look like regular day planners that they've just hand-drawn which makes me think they've missed the point. Regardless, I like that the system is so versatile that everyone from the artsy fartsy types to the utilitarians get such great use out of it. I'm honestly pining to get my hands on my new journal and kind of annoyed I have to wait til Friday (SOOOO long )

[spotty_dog]

Yeah, I was a little paranoid about badmouthing her by name in a google-able public forum. I'm not even badmouthing really, but it's just a little unfortunate that so many people follow this trajectory of "Bullet Journal? Ooh, hers is so pretty and has so many cool productivity functions! Ack, mine is not so pretty, and trying to set up perfect layouts leaves me frustrated and without time to get stuff done."

Then layered on top of seeing so many people getting disappointed by her lofty example, the fact that she's building a career out of blogging about building a career by hacking a method that she never fully followed, it's just…*mind blown* LOL.

I totally agree that the method is flexible! If what you need is a creative outlet, an excuse to use washi, or a reason to acquire new pens -- it can do that for you! I totally doodled an egg on Easter and a pi on Pi Day. And I am so in love with my Mildliners. Little pops of muted color all over my journal now…

[DrBandMe]

I doodle a bit and I have a couple trackers but I don't flip out if it isn't perfect. And I won't doodle if I don't have time. It's a fun thing to do if I find a moment to sit and let my creativity flow instead of playing a game on my phone or facebooking.

See....just simple doodles.

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[spotty_dog]

Cute! The BJJ group led me to discover Zendoodling. My kids are so impressed whenever I feel like embellishing a letter in my journal…I did the number "7" all fancy when DD had her birthday.

[rufflesanddots]

...I've definitely run across that blogger's site when looking into the bullet journal and definitely written it off as too involved for me...

[niener]

Ha cute sucker [MENTION=4334]DrBandMe[/MENTION]! The only doodles I ever put in my previous (non BuJo) journals were little weather doodles (I know the aforementioned blogger uses them too but I was doing it before it was cool haha). I like the different headers I've been seeing for the daily entries, I'll probably try some of those when my new journal arrives.

[spotty_dog]

...I've definitely run across that blogger's site when looking into the bullet journal and definitely written it off as too involved for me...

Right?! Before you write it off completely, definitely go to bulletjournal.com and then http://thelazygeniuscollective.com/b...bullet-journal.

[MsSassyBaskets]

So, I'm learning that I was right to split my work and personal BuJos, because I'm running into an unfortunate consequence... I know too much. My work BuJo is out of control with tasks to do, and I'm not sure how to deal with it when I have 3x as many tasks than I can complete on any given day. I can write them down and carry them forward, of course, but that starts to become depressing and tiresome when I'm migrating 2/3 of my list every day and writing the same things over. I know I could put some of them on my future log or monthly tasks list but I hesitate to do that because they are actually pressing. If I had all the time in the world, I would do them all today, and tomorrow I would still have a full plate.

I feel more organized, and I'm more confident that I'm not losing sight of things. But I think in my work, losing sight of a few things here and there has been keeping me sane!

So what do you do when you have tasks that you could reasonably schedule out for 2-3 days from now, or that you need to remember to do next week? Right now I'm writing them on each day and carrying them forward, because I think if I were to just put them on a future log or monthly list I wouldn't address them as quickly (and also those lists would quickly balloon to hundreds of items that I put there because they're not the #1 priority for *today*).

I'm open to suggestions!! Maybe I need a weekly task list?

[DrBandMe]

I was going to suggest a weekly task list. You ate effectively wasting time by migrating so many activities every day.

Can you break things down more to accomplish parts of the whole daily?

Could you create a collection of reoccurring tasks?

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[spotty_dog]

So, the Getting Things Done method is designed for busy professionals who have hundreds of things they could/should be doing at any given moment, and who need to be able to keep track of WHAT needs to be done, so that in the moment they can use their natural problem-solving ability to make an on-the-fly decision of what they have the time, energy, and urgency to DO. I think it could be helpful to approach things that way -- especially the requirement to identify next actions for every project-scale to-do, and the requirement to delegate everything that doesn't have to be done BY YOU! And you could try to organize things by context, so that you aren't faced with the list of emails to send when you're away from your computer and unable to send email, etc. I use signifiers to make context designations, but if you have bigger lists, you might separate them out by columns or even collections (things to do at your desk, things to do on the phone, things to do when face-to-face with your boss or with the people who report to you, etc.)

In the meantime I think I would pare your daily tasks down to something reasonable. If you can't do 2/3 of your list, than you might just have to accept that instead of overwhelming yourself. The other tasks are still waiting for you elsewhere, they're not lost -- the monthly list is still an "ASAP" list, it's just not screaming at you every time you look at your journal. But alternately you might utilize the weekly list in addition to dailies. So the process would be, (sit down monthly and figure out) "tasks that need doing during April" -> (sit down on Monday and separate out) "tasks that need doing during April 4-8" -> (sit down daily and separate out) "tasks to tackle today." If you run out of today tasks, you'd refer back to the weekly list. It would also help with the "I could do that in a few days" stuff. You'd check your weekly list as you set up your daily and if it had "4/7" written beside it you'd make a point of putting it on when you set up Thursday. (Since I have fewer to-dos than that, I use a reminder system to capture those things, the ones where I'm like, "I need to have an errands day later this week," or "Ugh, I'm not going to get to this today, I'll do it tomorrow." I enter them as events on iCal on the day when I want them on my list.)

You've got a huge job! Keep up the good work!

[Sheherezade]

I have a similar situation. My list on Monday is often two pages long. I just migrate the tasks all week in the morning when I have breakfast and plan my day. By week's end it is usually more manageable. It's just how my brain works already, I'm just using paper instead to offload the huge list. For small tasks or daily tasks, I use other systems like a habit tracker and some don't make the journal. I star emails with individual jobs,then write "work on star emails" as a task. It's really like 20 small jobs, but they are always coming in and that's been my system. I'm trying to keep the bujo simple and similar to what I know world for me.

[MsSassyBaskets]

I don't really know anything about the GTD method so I guess I have some research to do.

Unfortunately none of these are recurring tasks. They range from single small short-term tasks ("complete onboarding task in PeopleFluent for new staff") to reminders of something I need to ask my boss when he's back from PTO next week, to somewhat larger projects ("write XYZ proposal"), so segmenting by type somehow might be useful. But that's also exactly why the BuJo is so helpful for me - I can just brain dump. I don't want to paralyze myself by trying too hard to organize my tasks. I could probably create a collection of proposals with deadlines, which lines up with the proposal tracking spreadsheet I keep on my computer (which is not at all up to date because I'm too overwhelmed so a BuJo list might take its place or at least help me get a handle on it). That would be good since there are currently about 10 proposals on my task list... But there are no sub-tasks, really, for writing the XYZ proposal because at some point next week when I have time, or more likely when the account manager starts to panic and send me more and more messages, I'll just sit down and write the damn thing. Once it's drafted, then there are subtasks like getting feedback from the account rep, editing, and finally submitting. I don't bother myself with those until later. Should I have that all on some kind of project timeline? Yes, probably. But I'm good at discrete tasks, I'm terrible at project management. (Which is why I spend so much of my job flying by the seat of my pants and one reason I have a major case of impostor syndrome...)

TGIF. I think today I'll remove the proposals from my task list and put them on a weekly list. I'll probably also create a collection of tasks to delegate to my new staffer who starts Monday since she's ultimately going to be taking some of this off my plate. I got some sticky note tabs and I might use those to flag the active to-do lists for monthly, weekly, and daily and then move/remove them as appropriate when lists are migrated or completed.

I like the simplicity of a single daily list, along with "big picture" lists for annual goals or monthly objectives. I worry about segmenting too much and burning myself out. Maybe by just writing everything on every daily list I'll better recognize what I can't do, and what I need to say "no" to, or delegate. I'm not sure.