Robb. Knight.

I started doing bullet journalling in January and amazingly, I've kept it up. I read the book, watched a bunch of the videos, and spoke about it on Ruminate. I'll start off with some questions, starting with Marco:

How do you carry your Journal? Do you use it on the go as well or only at home and work?

I'm using an Ottergami A5 dotted notebook along with an elastic pen holder that slots over the cover - the pen loop on this notebook broke off pretty quickly^[1]. If I'm at home it's either on my desk or on the counter in the kitchen. My Lihit case is always with it as well. I throw it in my bag when I go to the office. For my next book, which is coming up in the next few weeks, I'll be using a Scribbles that Matter notebook - the paper is thicker and it has page numbers.

Do you use it for private and work related stuff or only for one?

Both. For the first few weeks I was mixing in work notes with my personal ones but I found this a bit too confusing so I switched to using a single page layout for work which I do at the start of the week, then I do rapid logging for personal things on the subsequent pages.

Did you stop using digital PKM tools completely?

No. I'm still using Obsidian and I'm still updating the Intersect. I still use Reminders for things that are more time sensitive than just "today at some point". My journal is, usually, the starting point for ideas - the sticker shop (which are available to order again right now) started life as a todo in the journal but expanded to a note in Obsidian.

Caroline asked:

What do adults who are not self absorbed adolescents write in a journal???

Below I go into a bit more detail but to be clear: I'm not writing down my hopes and dreams^[2]. I do write down funny things my kids do, or when something else noteworthy(!) happens but this isn't the kind of thing you'd find when someone dies and sit down to find out what their life was like, blown away by their way with words. This is much closer to the indecipherable ramblings of a lunatic.

Finally, Neblib asked:

how do you manage "refile" tasks bringing knowledge out of daily journals into easier reference stores / calendars / notebooks?

Mostly if I write something down and it needs moving to say, a calendar, I'll add it when I get a chance then mark it as migrated > or done × in my journal. Notes that become a bit more involved like planning a new project will eventually get moved to a note in Obsidian.

Capital B Capital J Bullet Journalling

The Bullet Journal method suggests a lot of reflection, looking over your notes, thinking about your life, your goals, your feelings, reviewing everything you've done all the time. I'm not into all that.

I did try a lot of the ideas when I started but I didn't get any value from a lot of it. I don't feel the need to write down my goals or aims for the week. I don't need to reflect on what I've achieved the previous week. I have two young children and a full-time job, my goal is usually just "get everyone through the week without major injury". If that kind of thing works for you that's wonderful but it's not for me.

There's some other things that haven't really clicked with me starting with the future log. This is supposed to keep "all of your future events in one place". That sounds like a job for a calendar. I won't be doing this spread in any new notebooks. The monthly log has similar issues for me although I do enjoy the act of writing down what the month is going to look like. I think the date-based spreads would work better if I always had my journal to hand but I don't.

Collections, which is bullet journals way of saying "lists", have been handy to collect^[3] ideas or similar notes about a single topic. I have some collections for this website, EchoFeed, and some house projects. What I wish I'd done is put these all in one place at the back of my journal. Having them wherever I started them in the journal is not helpful and makes it a pain to jump quickly to them. And I'm definitely not using the index.

The bullet system itself (todo, done, migrated, event, note) I do find useful. Putting every thought I have in there I find useful. Just physically writing a thing down is so much better than dumping it into an endless stream of notes in a todo app.

Now I've written it out like this it's pretty clear: I'm not doing the Bullet Journal method, I'm just journalling. The purpose of a system is what it does and a quick glance at the BuJo website (which has changed significantly even in the past 4 months), tells you what the system does: it sells courses and notebooks. That's not a necessarily a bad thing but it's a big jump from "do journalling".

One thing I've had to contend with is not having access to my journal while I'm with my kids because they like to grab everything with their grubby little hands. So I have to use something on my phone to dump notes at those times. I started with Godspeed and I'm currently using Tot. When I do sit down with my journal, I'll open Tot and transfer anything in there over to the daily log.

For the start of a month I do a small monthly spread along with a section to add any general notes I think of for that month. I don't use this spread that much so I'm considering dropping it completely.

Typically, I will start the week either Sunday night or Monday morning by picking a pair of highlighters to make my headings pretty and any pens I want to use that week. I usually pick a new fountain pen then rotate in some random standard pens. I'll setup my work spread, usually on a left hand page, and then Monday's heading ready for logging on the right hand page.

I take a quick glance over the previous week to see if there's anything that wasn't done and move them over to the new week. If there's some idea there that needs expanding, I'll add it to Obsidian to expand on later. If I get any fun stickers, packaging with pens, little notes with things I order, or someone gives me something, I'll stick it into the journal as well, sometimes with a note of what it's related to.

Depending on the week, I might make a note with a sample of the pens and inks I'm using or add a tracker to note down how many hours I've worked on a specific project. The biggest thing I've realised is there's no wrong way to use a notebook. Some weeks, I might only use a single page for the whole week. Other times a week can span over multiple pages with brainstorms for new ideas, flowcharts to understand a concept, notes on a video I've watch, or just a sketch of something I thought of.

I am going to continue with this, tweaking things as needed. As long as I'm keeping up with the things I want to get done, whatever that ends up looking like in my journal, I'm happy.