The Bullet Journal Method: Track Your Past, Order Your Present, Plan Your Future. Ryder Carroll
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by giving your page a Topic name. It can be as simple as “Shopping List.” Even here—as with most things BuJo—there is more than meets the eye. Topics actually serve three functions:
1 They identify and describe content.
2 They serve as an opportunity for you to clarify your intention.
3 They set the agenda for the content.
How many meetings have you sat through that have little to no agenda? Generally, they’re not very productive. Pausing to define the agenda before you start allows you to focus, prioritize, and use your time far more effectively.
Giving your page its Topic provides that opportunity to pause. What will you capture in this space? What’s its purpose? What value will it add to your life? These may seem like superfluous considerations, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat down to make yet another list, only to realize that it simply wouldn’t add anything meaningful to my life. Does tracking the TV shows I’ve watched this year add any real value? No. I can reinvest that time I saved into something that does. Other times, that pause has helped me refine my aims, keeping the content of my Bullet Journal focused and relevant. Topic by Topic, pause by pause, we’re honing our ability to focus on what matters.
Often all it takes to live intentionally is to pause before you proceed.
Lastly, a good Topic turns your Bullet Journal into a more useful reference. Who knows when you may need to look back through your journal to find a specific Topic? “Oct 13, Meeting 4 notes” says little, whereas “10.13.TH (month/date/day) / Acme Co. (client name) / Website Relaunch (project name) / User Feedback (meeting priority)” provides you with a useful description.
Once you’ve defined your Topic, write it at the top of the page. Now you’ve laid the foundation for what you want to build, but you can’t locate a building without its address. That address in your Bullet Journal is the page number, so be sure to add them as you go. Page numbers will be critical when we get to Indexing (this page). Spoiler alert: Your Index helps you quickly locate your content.
The only time we don’t use a descriptive Topic is for our Daily Log (this page). It’s a catchall for our thoughts, so the daily Topic is simply the date, formatted as month/date/day. This will help you quickly orient yourself when flipping through your pages.
All this is more complicated to explain than it is to do. In practice, you’re just taking a few seconds to think before putting pen to paper. Now, with the Topic and page number in place, your page is prepared to handle anything you throw at it.
04.01.TH
04.02.FR
Don’t forget to number your pages!
If Rapid Logging is the language the Bullet Journal is written in, Bullets are the syntax. Once you’ve set up your Topic and page number, you capture your thoughts as short, objective sentences known as Bullets. Each Bullet is paired with a specific symbol to categorize your entry. We use Bullets not only because it takes less time, but also because wrestling information into short sentences forces us to distill what’s most valuable.
Crafting effective Bullets requires striking a balance between brevity and clarity. If an entry is too short, we may not be able to decipher it later. If it’s too long, then writing down your thoughts becomes a chore. For example, “Return call ASAP!” is too short. Who are you calling back? What are you calling them back about? It’s easy to forget all that in the rush of the day. Conversely, “Call John M. back as soon as you can because he needs to know when you will have the sales figures for June ready for him” is an overly informative word salad. Let’s try again: “Call John M, re: June sales figures.” You’re saying exactly the same thing using only a quarter of the words. In a bit, I’ll also show you how to turn that Task into a priority using Signifiers (this page).
Keeping your entries short without losing meaning takes practice, but over time it hones our ability to identify what’s worth writing down. That’s important because our lives are infinitely complex, and there is potentially a lot to keep track of. If you’ve kept lists in the past, you’re familiar with how quickly they can spiral out of control. They often lack context and priority. Rapid Logging solves this issue in a few ways, first by categorizing entries into:
1 Things that you need to do (Tasks)
2 Your experiences (Events)
3 Information you don’t want to forget (Notes)
Each category is assigned a symbol to upgrade a basic list with much-needed additional layers of context and function. During the day, these symbols