One Month of Bullet Journaling

About a month ago I heard the first time about bullet journaling and decided to give it a try.

Hardware

It seems most people use an A5 or B5 notebook for bullet journaling, but I think it is slightly too large to take it everywhere with me in any type of bag, so I started to use a pocket size A6 notebook from Leuchtturm 1917 (Notebook Pocket (A6))
The size works quite fine for me. Although the dotted version was probably not the best choice. I guess, the next time I will go with one which has squares. I like the numbered pages and the dedicated pages for an index. On Moleskine notebooks there are no page numbers and no prepared index pages. I always had to set this up on my own. And I never liked to number the pages on my own…

On this A6 notebook each page has 27 lines which means the monthly overview is spread across a double page with 15 or 16 days on each page. So there is enough space right beneath the monthly overview for tasks and aims of the current month which do not relate to a specific date on the same two pages.

Another quite interesting thing for me is tracking of different metrics, eg. my daily condition, access to various bank accounts, my sleeping hours per night, my daily expenses for launch and stuff etc. The tracking is done on the next two pages, with days in the first rows and the metrics form top to bottom.
I always knew it takes quite an amount of money to order lunch or go out for lunch on each lunch break, but know I know how much.

Software

I got used to rapid logging quite fast. There are just a few symbols and rules which feel very natural. Either I solve a task (x), push it to the next day (>) or move it back to some superordinate log (<), depending on where the task came from.
In the morning I take a few minutes to setup the plan for the upcoming day and in the evening I take some time to reflect the passed day, strike and move tasks, fill the tracker and probably make notes about remarkable things. During these minutes of reflection I analyze tasks I push from day to day and seem to require a decision if they are worth the hassle of writing them down day after day or if they can just be dropped or maybe need some special treatment.

The journal is only used to personal and non job related stuff. Actually I wanted to include items for the job as well, but I remembered it is always a good idea the separate the job from private life. And since I work within a SCRUM environment there should be no use for a journal on job related stuff. My entire work should be organized in features with tasks represented on the sprint board – no need for another paper to write them down.

March was a busy month with quite a few more personal issues than usually. The symbiosis of calendar journal and task list was very useful to keep track and organize all kind of things. The lack of a strict format provides room for additional extended notes and lists or projects between the daily logs.

Looks good to me…