--- Title: Stealing a Page From Bullet Journals Subtitle: > An experiment: using bullet journal notation as a complement to my existing habits. Tags: [bullet journal, pomodoro, getting things done, productivity] Category: blog Summary: > I’m experimenting with using the bullet journal notation style as a complement to my existing way of tracking tasks, making notes, and so on. Date: 2019-08-29 07:40 --- [Assumed Audience][aa]: people already persuaded of the value—at least to some extent—of “getting things done” strategies. [aa]: https://v4.chriskrycho.com/2018/assumed-audiences.html I have tried [bullet journaling] as a full-on way of tracking and planning my work in the past. It never stuck. The [system] I’ve landed on instead—making heavy use of [Bear] and [a pomodoro timer][tadam]—has been *fantastic*. However… I realized yesterday that the way I take notes during the workday in a notebook already has a lot in common with bullet journaling. So I’m trying something new, and we’ll see how it goes. [bullet journaling]: https://www.tinyrayofsunshine.com/blog/bullet-journal-guide [system]: https://v4.chriskrycho.com/2018/just-write-down-what-you-do.html [Bear]: https://bear.app [tadam]: https://tadamapp.com For my daily task logging, I’m still going to use Bear in exactly the way I have been already. However, I’m writing down notes in my notebook in the bullet journal style: - dots for to-dos - putting an ‘x’ through the dots when I’ve done them - turning them into an arrow if I move them into Bear to tackle later (the next day, the next week, the next month, etc.) - dashes for information I learned I don’t need to bother with all the things that never actually worked for me in bullet journaling, like keeping an index, various kind of date logs, collections, etc.: my logging and note-taking system in Bear already handles all of that in a way that I like much better. But stealing the lightweight notation and the idea of pulling incompleted tasks into a place where I *can* use them later? That’s worth stealing, I think. We’ll see how it goes.