Bullet Journal 2019 Setup
Bullet Journal, or #bulletjournal or #bujo
A phenomenon. I have been on and off with it for a while. I am determined to make more of the system work for me in 2019.
To that end, I bought myself Ryder Carroll's "The Bullet Journal Method", some nice gel pens and a funky stencil / bookmark / ruler. Notebooks - well, I have a few of those to choose from. ;-)
November and December 2018 were intended to be my sandpit - where I could experiment and reacquaint myself with the method.
Now, as 2018 draws to an end, it's time to setup my first journal for 2019.
This, in itself, is dangerous. After all, the first of January is just a day, like any other. There is no imperative to move to a new book. Doing so, smacks of perfectionism; of making the look of the journal more important than the function. There is nothing wrong with that in itself, however, I am not looking to create a work of art, I'm looking to fashion a bespoke tool that helps me get things done.
Typically, I am a completionist. I finish one book before moving to another.
However, I have made a decision that I will commence a new journal each quarter. This is for a variety of reasons - and I'll write a post on why I have chosen to do that over on my personal blog at stuartlennon.com
Therefore, I have been working on getting Q1 Journal set up.
The "1 book per quarter" commitment allows me to immediately impose some structure to my bullet journal, upfront. I have a monthly log for each of the first three months and the six months following as a future log. Whilst I love the flexibility that the method affords me, I personally need a framework to build around. As well as the first "standard' sections, I have also started building collections from the back of the notebook. These are the collections where I can accurately predict the size requirement. for example - Deliveries, Podcast List, Key page, Books, TV - they are all lists, effectively.
As I am using a notebook that is not Bullet Journal specific, the contents page lists the page number first and then the topic, in the traditional method. I have simply ignored the titles and listed by subject and then added pages numbers after.
Collections that are 'open-ended', will be inserted into the contents as they come up.
When buying Ryder's book, Amazon tempted me into a Bullet Journal stencil from www.peterpauper.com. You never know, I may feel the urge to add some stencilled symbols at some point???
Stencils not withstanding, I'm now completing a review of my current journal. I'm going through all of the daily logs and collections, assessing what merits 'migration' into the new journal.
Migration can seem the epitome of inefficiency. I am writing down things that I have already written once, or possibly multiple times. It's not inefficient. It's disciplined. It forces me to assess whether the item remains relevant and important.
Right, where's that stencil?
