The Bullet Journal Method That Organized My Life Does More Than I Thought

A couple of months ago, I posted a video about the bullet journal method.

In it, I shared how this one notebook has become a task manager, planner, journal, and reflection tool all in one.

I was not expecting the response that it got. The comments were incredible, and a lot of you had really specific questions and things you wanted me to go deeper on.

That video was based on the traditional bullet journal method, and I have come to learn that the method has gone through some evolutions over the years.

So today I want to cover three specific things.

A few updates to the actual method from Ryder Carroll himself that many people do not know about (including me at the time of the last video).

What happened when life got really busy over the past couple of months and I had to strip the whole system way back.

And some things that have genuinely surprised me about the journal.

If you are brand new to all of this, you may want to start with my first bullet journal video first. The comments called it one of the most comprehensive videos about bullet journaling, and it has become one of my most-watched videos.

Small Evolutions to the Rapid Logging System

Let me start with a couple of small evolutions, and they are mostly related to the rapid logging system, which is really the core of everything in the bullet journal method.

For those of you who do not know, rapid logging is essentially the language of the bullet journal.

It is condensing all of these thoughts and ideas and messages into succinct bullet points with symbols that help identify what they are and what they mean, and then putting all of those thoughts onto paper.

The three traditional rapid logging bullets are the dot for a task, a circle for an event, and a dash for a note.

As some of you pointed out, there have been some micro evolutions even to those three main bullets.

The dot, which used to be a task, is now called an action, which can help you mentally process things, because not all actions are tasks.

The event circle, which I did touch on last time, is more of an experience.

I love the way Ryder differentiates a typical event, like something on your calendar, from any kind of life experience that happens at a particular time.

I shared in the last video about a family member passing, and how I would notate experiences that happened at certain times that were not events on my calendar.

Somebody passing away at a certain time is not something that was scheduled for me to do at a specific date or time, but it was an experience that happened at a specific time.

And then a dash is for a note or thought.

What you do with a dot changes depending on what happens to it. The dot representing an action item should be a really small dot on the page, because you are going to transform it into something else depending on what happens to that action.

It turns into an X if you complete it, a right arrow if you are moving it to the next day, and a left arrow if it is going back to the future log to be done in a later month or quarter.

I love the rhythm of it. Once it clicks, it starts to go really fast. Dot, dot, dash.

I probably use more dashes than anything, because a lot of times it is not an action item or an event, it is just a thought or a notation of something that enters my head or that I did that day.

Chloe and I played with Play-Doh for a couple of hours. Not necessarily an event I need to track the time of, but also not really an action item. It is just a note of something that happened that day.

The New Fourth Bullet: Mood or Feeling

There are actually four main bullets now, not three, and I think this is a really good addition.

That is an equals sign for mood or feeling.

I used to put that down as a note, and I would try to add a little heart next to it if it meant a certain feeling, or a frowny face if it meant something negative, just to denote that it was different from every other thought or idea on the page.

But now it has its own symbol.

The moment I saw it, it was so easy to pick up. I did not even have to think about it. It was like my brain was waiting for a special symbol to latch onto.

So you are not trying to wedge feelings into a dash or save them for a separate journaling session. They just live there in the daily log with everything else.

The full rapid logging set is now a dot for action, a circle for experience, a dash for note or thought, and an equals sign for mood or feeling.

And you can still transform the dot depending on what happens to it: X for done, right arrow for tomorrow, left arrow for the future log.

Migration and Threading

There are a couple of other things that were actually mentioned in the book, but with me being so new to the correct method of bullet journaling, I had not had the opportunity to try them out at the time of the last recording.

Migration

The first is migration. This is the habit of reviewing what you have logged and then deciding what moves forward and what does not.

I had tried that on a daily basis, moving over the tasks I determined were worth rewriting in the next day. That is the first filter of deciding what is worth my time and what is not.

But I had not had the opportunity to do that on a monthly or quarterly basis, moving things between future logs or between monthly logs.

If something keeps getting moved month after month, or from one month in the future log to the next quarter, and it just keeps getting shuffled around, that friction is intentional.

It is the system's way of filtering out things that are just burning your energy without going anywhere, and it cues you to ask if this thing actually needs to happen at all. Sometimes it does not.

It was really eye opening going back through some of my monthly log activities from back in April and seeing how much my plans had changed over the past couple of months. Some of the things I had already mentally written off and just needed to update or change around.

Threading

The second is threading, which is something several people asked about.

Threading is a way of connecting non-consecutive pages in your journal.

The way I came across using it this month is that pages 35 to 88 were all daily log entries before I had the opportunity to make any other monthly log spreads or modular spreads.

By page 88, when I was finally ready to add another monthly log and some other modules like health trackers, it felt a little weird to put such a big break in the middle of all these daily logs.

That is exactly where threading comes in. Threading is the process of adding the previous page number to the top of the new matching page, and then the new page number to the bottom of the old page.

My daily log stopped at page 88. I entered my monthly logs and a couple of other modular logs, and I am picking back up on, say, page 94.

At the top of page 94, I put 88 to indicate that is the last time I wrote a daily log. At the bottom of page 88, I put 94 to indicate where it picks up.

Another spot you can put all of that is the index at the front of the journal, which is where I would write daily log 35 to 88, then a comma, then 94 to wherever I end up next time before I need to enter another module.

You could also put all of your year's monthly logs into one consecutive space and make them all in advance. But even then, you never know when you are going to need another spread.

That is one of the cool things about a bullet journal: it is modular, and you can create as many modules or special spreads as you need to support your life.

Threading can be done between pages in a journal, or even between journals. If you have an old journal you want to reference, you can note it right there on the page, like book two, page 44. I am not there yet, but I have seen other people use it that way.

What Happened When Life Got Busy

Now that you know the full picture, here is what actually happened back in April and May.

Those two months got really full for me. We had a lot going on personally, we had a little bit of travel, and I just did not have the bandwidth to sit down and build new spreads and maintain some of the more elaborate parts of the system, which I know is a concern for a lot of people based on the comments.

So I made a choice that I think is really important to talk about.

I let go of everything except the daily log for almost two full months.

No new spreads, no weekly planning pages, no monthly logs, just the daily log every day. Dot for action, circle for experience, dash for notes or thought, equals sign for feelings.

That is it. Start a new day and do the same thing all over again.

That is bullet journaling. You can do it with no other modules and no artwork at all.

Ryder Carroll describes the bullet journal as a tool that lives at the intersection of mindfulness, productivity, and intentionalism. Not a craft project, a thinking tool.

And the daily log is at the heart of that. It is the part you can do anywhere, on literally any notebook, with just a pen.

If you have a lined notebook right now, you can try the bullet journal system and see if it works for you with just a notebook and a pen. Do some rapid logging. There is nothing else required.

The daily log is the heart of the bullet journal. It keeps the functionality rolling and the reflective nature going, and it catalogs your experiences and the things you have actually done day in and day out.

On days when I got behind, and I have gotten behind up to five days, I still stayed on top of it.

What I would do is go back through text messages, because I am usually messaging Matt or the girls throughout the day. I would look at my calendar, and I might even pull up my health app to see what time I woke up that day to help jog my memory.

I would collect the details I could to stay on top of the daily log with an actual accounting of the things I did and accomplished on those days.

Even stripped all the way back, I was still doing the thing. Still coming back to the page once or twice a day, logging what happened, marking what got done, moving what did not.

That migration habit, where you are constantly re-evaluating what deserves your attention and filtering out what does not, was still running. It just looked a lot simpler.

A lot of people, myself included in the past, abandon the whole concept of bullet journaling during busy seasons, because you feel like you cannot maintain all of it, and if you cannot stay on top of all the spreads, then there is no point.

I have actually tried it, and the system continued at really full functionality.

What I Missed and What I Did Not

There were some things I did miss, and other things I did not miss to the point where I probably will not continue doing them.

The thing I did not miss was mainly the weekly spreads. Even back in April, when I was trying to stay on top of it every week, I just did not need it as much.

I do not think of my tasks so much on a weekly basis as I do on a daily and monthly priority basis, so the weeks are more in the weeds than I need to be.

What I really did miss was the monthly logs.

From now on, I will make an effort to keep one, even if it is just a straight line down a piece of paper with numbers on the side.

There were many times I thought, I wish I did not have to keep writing these tasks day to day, because I know I am not going to do them tomorrow.

There are a handful of things I am not going to get to tomorrow, but I do not want them to get lost, so I was migrating them from day to day when I could have just put them on a monthly log if I had the spread.

Going forward, I want to make sure I at least have a monthly log and the daily log using the rapid logging system.

Some of the specialty logs, like my health trackers and migraine trackers, are nice to have.

I would like to continue using them, but they are not must-haves for keeping the reflective nature and the firmer benefits I am trying to get out of a bullet journal. Those are just icing on the cake.

If I get too busy, I am okay cutting them. If I have time, I am okay adding them.

Unlike the monthly log, which I am not okay cutting after experiencing not having it, and the weekly log, which I would prefer not to add even if I have time. That is going to vary from person to person.

What Surprised Me Most: The Journal as a Memory Device

Here is the thing that really surprised me about using the journal these past few months.

We took a trip to the Oregon Wildlife Safari, which was really cool. I brought my journal. I took pictures. I have videos.

We got to feed the giraffe with our hands. We got to go in a bird enclosure and the birds just came and landed on our arms and our hands and our feet, and Chloe loved that. It was a really cool experience.

My phone was with me the entire time.

When I would get back to the hotel in the evening, and especially right before we left to drive back home, I was trying to capture all of the thoughts and memories and experiences inside the bullet journal.

I started logging the trip the way I log anything else. Dot for action, circle for experiences, dash for notes and thoughts, equals sign for how I was feeling at different moments.

And I started realizing that my journal was doing things my phone could not do.

I was picking up on little in-between things, little details that there is no way a picture or video would be able to capture or hold onto.

For example, we stayed at two different hotels this trip.

We were initially just going to stay at one, and the first place we stayed was a situation where the staff all seemed miserable. Nobody ever smiled. The receptionists on all the different shifts seemed miserable to be there.

Weird things happened, like a call from the front desk at 10:30 at night saying people were outside our door because they thought we were making noise.

It was an unpleasant experience, from the quality of the room to the reception. This was not a cheap motel either. It was one of the two better options in the area.

But it was such a downer that I ended up going to the receptionist the next morning at breakfast and asking if we could leave a day early.

We went right next door to another hotel where the staff was genuinely wonderful. I still remember their names, partially because I wrote them in my bullet journal.

The facilities were better, the beds were more comfortable, the pool was better, and it had a hot tub, for the exact same price.

When I got home to write reviews, I had everything.

The specific things that happened at the first hotel, in order, with enough detail to actually describe the experience.

The names of the staff at the second hotel, so I could mention them by name in their review, which actually matters to those people and to the facility.

The photos from that trip are beautiful, but a photo just shows what something looks like in a snapshot of time. A journal can show you what it felt like and what actually happened.

The staff names that are not on my camera roll. The little in-between things you are just not going to get on camera.

The way Chloe got car sick on the way home and we had to pull off at a little gas station because she threw up everywhere, and I had to basically give her a sponge bath in the sink.

It may not be a pleasant memory, but it was still part of the experience, because right after that I gave her half a children's Dramamine and we took her to Matt's old college campus, where we walked around and he pointed out the different buildings and the dorms he stayed in.

It was a beautiful big campus, and he carried her around on his shoulders. On the walk back to the car, the Dramamine had her knocked out so hard that she was just dead asleep, slumped over his shoulders.

It was funny and cute, and it makes the experience of walking around his old campus feel more visceral. I can feel like I was there. Thinking of all these details reminds me of what it actually felt like to be there.

Or the fact that the giraffe's name was Muimu.

Or that when we pulled up to the big brown bear at the drive-thru part of the safari, the bear started noticing us and lifting its head and staring us down, and Matt got nervous and wanted me to put the car in drive, and I would not do it, and we just died laughing about it.

Or that the emus were so incredibly aggressive that it scared me and made me start screaming to Matt for help, which had him laughing to tears while my hair got completely frazzled from trying to escape this emu at my car window.

What I am trying to say is that the memories I have been able to hold onto for longer than I normally would, with just a couple of pictures and cute videos here and there, have really surprised me.

It is not something I necessarily thought of when I started bullet journaling back in April.

Still Showing Up Every Day

In a nutshell, this has continued to be something I come back to every single day for the past three, going on four, months.

Even with the system stripped all the way back for at least a month and a half of that time, I have still found enough value to keep showing up every day, to keep tracking, and to keep chugging along.

And I am seeing the progress happen, even in my professional and productivity life.

Let me know if there is anything else you want an update on when it comes to this method, because I know it sparked a lot of interest. I will chat with you next week.