Quite a while back, I was looking for ways to be more organized and get things done. I came across the Bullet Journal. Created by Ryder Carroll, it takes a regular journal, and using a few layouts and symbols, is supposed to help you track and accomplish your goals.
You have different sections in your bullet journal – or spreads as the BuJo folks call them – for things like monthly and weekly calendars, collections (where you make lists of things, like books you want to read, or funny quotes, or anything really), habit trackers, and an index to keep track of all the other sections. Many of the BuJo community elaborately decorate their journals with graphics, artwork, stickers and other embellishments.
The main idea is that you put your current and future tasks in the journal so you can keep track of them. The monthly page shows you everything you have to do during that month. The weekly pages break it down to the tasks you need to do during the week.
There are also a set of symbols that are used to note tasks as important, been completed, and which weren’t completed but are moving forward to the next day / week / month.
I really wanted to like the Bullet Journal system. I had high hopes it would help me get better organized and obtain a sense accomplishment seeing all those tasks checked off as completed. I used it for six or seven months.
Ultimately, though, I abandoned it.
Instead of making me organized and productive, it served as a reminder of how little I was getting done. I had more entries with the little symbol to move forward to the next spread than anything else. When I got to the point that a number of tasks were doing nothing but being moved forward for several months I gave up.
And yet, I still feel the need to try and get organized and see if I’m actually getting things done.
I started looking around at productivity systems (I also tried Getting Things Done by David Allen back in the day) and came back around to bullet journaling. As I was looking around at different layouts and uses for the system I ran across a note on marrying the bullet journal system with a role-playing game (https://bulletjournal.com/blogs/bulletjournalist/bujo-rpg/).
I loves me some role-playing game goodness.
The system, worked up by DJ Allen, is more of a self-motivation system. By making getting your tasks done as part of a game, the idea is that you’ll be more motivated to get
them done.
He’s got the basics of RPGs in there – Hit Points (HP), Experience Points (XP), leveling up, buying gear. There are systems for gaining / losing hit points, and gaining experience points to eventually level up when you’ve accomplished a bigger goal.
He suggests setting up four things as “must dos” – things that you should be doing everyday, but aren’t. Things like flossing your teeth, or making your bed. Things that you want to become habits. If you don’t do them, you lose Hit Points. You can gain more hit points but it’s not easy. Lose too many hit points and it gets really hard to get them back.
He also suggests setting up Quests, larger goals that are going to take time to accomplish. Things like losing weight, or learning a language, or writing a novel. Then you set up different task on your quest where you’ll get XP for accomplishing them. So, you might get some XP for losing one pound. Then you’ll get more XP when you lose five more pounds. Then more XP when you lose another ten pounds. You get the idea. It sort of feeds on itself – the more XP you get, the more XP you want to get. That’s the thinking, anyway.
There’s a little more to it than what I’m talking about here. If you’re interested, you can find more information at his site – https://emeraldspecter.com/index.php/bujorpg/
I’m digesting this information but I’m liking it so far. It definitely piques my interest. And that is a big step in adopting it and trying it out. I’ve got some large goals that I’m just not doing anything about. I realize I spend too much time on things that don’t matter if I really want to get them done. This could be the motivational boost I need to get going on them.
What do you think, my Hordeling? Have you tried any type of bullet journal system? If so, hit reply and let me know.
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