On July sixth of this 12 months, I formally ended my three-year-long experiment with attempting to arrange my life utilizing a bodily bullet journal. I do know the precise date as a result of I’m taking a look at my discontinued pocket book as I write this. Apparently, 5 months in the past, I wanted to take images of the Corsair K70 keyboard for a then-forthcoming overview and comply with up with a quote I’d acquired to insulate my roof. I took the images. I didn’t find yourself insulating my roof. 

Since then, I’ve used the pocket book for jotting down issues to recollect right here and there, however in relation to retaining observe of day by day duties and chores, I’ve switched again to the identical hodgepodge of various note-taking and to-do listing apps that I used three years in the past. These embody Notion for longform notes and lists, Apple Notes once I want one thing immediately, and Todoist for to-do lists and reminders. However though I’ve ditched the bodily pocket book for apps, I don’t suppose bullet journals are a waste of time. The truth is, I feel my experiment taught me an vital lesson about tips on how to keep organized digitally.

Bullet journals may be both bodily or digital (resembling with this Notion template), however they’re finest often known as a strategy to manage a clean pocket book into a private planner. There are web page codecs on your yearly, month-to-month, and day by day duties, a technique for weaving your to-do listing between them, and a sequence of widespread symbols and notation to make sense of all of it. Finally, it’s all in service of supplying you with a format to design your personal planner and versatile guidelines for tips on how to use it.

There’s lots of potential complexity, and other people like to put them out in several methods, however my fundamental strategy every day was to write down out my listing of duties, manually copy over something incomplete from earlier days (aka “migrate” them), and tick every activity off because the day progressed. Some folks like to repeat over duties on a weekly or month-to-month foundation, however day by day was what labored for me.

The bullet journal’s core is sensible, however I used to be additionally drawn in by the aesthetics. YouTube is crammed with movies of individuals painstakingly laying them out, filling them with delicate illustrations and little visible components they slowly replenish over the course of the 12 months. I dreamed of getting a small pocket book crammed with neat handwriting and perhaps a sketch or two, like those Naughty Canine has its protagonists carry in its video games. I imagined my bullet journal as being as a lot of a scrapbook of my day by day life because it was an organizer.  

The fact of my really horrible handwriting meant this by no means actually got here to cross, however that didn’t cease my pocket book from changing into a half-decent planner. Essential emails received jotted down reasonably than being marked as unread, upcoming articles received categorized with deadlines and precedence ranges, and I assigned condo chores to myself on a daily schedule reasonably than a chaotic advert hoc foundation.

However most vital was that each one of this was being achieved manually, reasonably than having an app’s inner logic whisk duties back and forth. Each morning, I’d be pressured to spend a few minutes writing out and prioritizing the day’s duties — and reckoning with what I’d didn’t do yesterday. You’d be amazed at how rapidly you get round to doing a nonurgent activity after forcing your self to write down it out every single day for per week. Different instances, I spotted one thing that appeared tremendous pressing once I first wrote it down wasn’t price going via with once I appeared again at it the next day. 

Having to write down every activity out manually turned a to-do from one thing I may simply file away in an app and overlook about into one thing that I needed to handle each day. I needed to actively prune and prioritize and take into consideration these chores that previous Jon had lumbered current Jon with. Did I actually want to purchase a alternative pair of swimsuit trousers with no formal occasions on the rapid horizon? And isn’t it time I let that horrible weblog submit thought go? In every case, forcing myself to only take into consideration what was on my listing inevitably stored it extra manageable.

It wasn’t that I grew uninterested in the writing, however finally, I received sick of getting to hold round a bodily pocket book. A buddy would remind me a few movie I wished to observe whereas we had been within the pub, and I’d have to notice it down in a notes app earlier than transcribing it into my bodily pocket book later. Or I’d be passing a grocery retailer on the way in which residence and never have my bodily buying listing with me. Ultimately, the attract of retaining issues digital on my telephone and with me always grew too robust. 

What I’ve since realized, nevertheless, is that it’s completely doable to maintain a lot of the issues I favored about retaining a bullet journal with out sacrificing the comfort of apps. Finally, what I favored concerning the pocket book was much less about its physicality and extra about the truth that it pressured me to spend actual time actively fascinated by and organizing my life each day. And that’s one thing that’s simply as doable to do with an app as it’s with a pocket book. You simply must keep away from pondering the know-how can manage it for you.

Now, as a substitute of spending time writing out duties every day, I as a substitute take a spin via Todoist, pruning out outdated duties, altering due dates on others, and usually attempting to maintain issues neat. I don’t must struggle towards my horrible handwriting, and I at all times have my telephone on me once I have to jot one thing down for later. I can nonetheless profit from the streamlined interface, however reasonably than submitting and forgetting a activity, I pressure myself to maintain observe of it. 

And though I don’t suppose I’ll ever discover an app as aesthetically pleasing as a YouTuber’s bullet journal, that doesn’t imply I’ve to surrender on good designs totally. I just like the choices Notion has right here, permitting you to customise pages with components like cowl images and emoji. It’s sufficient to encourage me to start out pondering of it as an ever-evolving scrapbook reasonably than a utilitarian assortment of paperwork.

It’s simple to suppose that an app or to-do listing service will take you by the hand and manage your life for you, however in the event you’re not cautious, it may possibly simply turn into an infinite digital locker with a messy assortment of notes filed underneath “overlook.”

I’m nonetheless tempted to provide bodily journaling one other go in some unspecified time in the future, particularly after scanning via a few stunning bullet journal illustrations within the means of scripting this piece. However for now, I’m blissful sufficient to be again on the apps. They’re removed from the proper resolution, however I’ve discovered that you just get as a lot out of them as you’re ready to place in.