Avian’s Blog

How can you tell if someone uses a Bullet Journal®? You don't have to, they will immediately tell you themselves.

Some time last year I saw this book in the window of a local bookstore. I was aware of the website, but I didn't know the author also published a book about his method of organizing notebooks. I learned about the Bullet Journal back in 2014 and it motivated me to better organize my daily notes. About 3000 written pages later I'm still using some of the techniques I learned back then. I was curious if the book holds any new useful note-taking ideas, so I bought it on the spot.

The Bullet Journal Method is a 2018 book by Ryder Carroll (by the way, the colophon says my copy is printed in Slovenia). The text is split into 4 parts: first part gives motivation for writing a notebook. That is followed by a description of the actual note-taking methods. The third and longest part of the book at around 100 pages is called "The Practice". It's kind of a collection of essays giving advice on life philosophy with general topics such as meaning, gratitude and so on. The last part explores a few variations of the methods described in the book.

The methods described in the book differ a bit from what I remember. In fact the author does note in a few places that their advice has changed over time. The most surprising to me was the change from using blank squares as a symbol for an unfinished task to simple dots. The squares were in my opinion one of the most useful things I took from the Bullet Journal as they are a very clear visual cue. They really catch the eye among other notes and drawings when browsing for things left undone in a project.

In general, the contents of my notebooks are quite different from the journals the book talks about. I don't have such well defined formats of pages (they call it "collections"), except perhaps monthly indexes. My notebooks more resemble lab notes and I also tend to write things in longer form than the really short bullet lists suggested in the book. The author spends a lot of time on migrations and reflection: rewriting things from an old, full notebook to a new one, moving notes between months and so on. I am doing very little of that and rely more on referencing and looking up things in old notebooks. I do see some value in that though and after reading the book I'm starting to do more of it for some parts of my notes. I've experimented with a few other note-taking methods from the book as well, and some seem to be working for me and I've dropped the others.

I was surprised to see that a large portion of the book is dedicated to this very general motivational and life style advice, including diagrams like the one you see above, much in the style of self-help books. It made me give up on the book midway half-way through for a few months. I generally have a dislike for this kind of texts, but I don't think it's badly written. The section is intertwined with exercises that you can write down in your journal, like the "five whys" and so on. Some were interesting and others not so much. Reading about a suggestion to write your own obituary after a recent death in the family was off-putting, but I can hardly blame the book for that coincidence.

There is certainly some degree of Bullet Journal® brand building in this book. It feels like the author tries quite hard to sell their method in the first part of the book via thankful letters and stories from people that solved various tough life problems by following their advice. Again, something I think commonly found in self-help books and for me personally this usually has the opposite effect from what was probably intended. I do appreciate that the book doesn't really push the monetary side of it. Author's other businesses (branded notebooks and the mobile app) are each mentioned once towards the end of the book and not much more.

Another pleasant surprise was the tactful acknowledgment from the author that many journals shared on the web and social media don't resemble real things and can be very demotivational or misleading. I've noticed that myself. For example, if you search for "bullet journal" on YouTube you'll find plenty of people sharing their elaborately decorated notebooks that have been meticulously planned and sectioned for a year in advance. That's simply not how things work in my experience and most of all, I strongly believe that writing the notebook with the intention of sharing it on social media defeats the whole purpose.

In conclusion, it's an interesting book and so far I've kept it handy on my desk to occasionally look up some example page layouts that are given throughout it. I do recommend it if you're interested in using physical notebooks or are frustrated with the multitude of digital productivity apps that never tend to quite work out. It's certainly a good starting point, but keep in mind that what's recommended in there might not be what actually works best for you. My advice would be only to keep writing and give it some time until you figure out the useful parts.