BE YOUR (UNARTISTIC) SELF
ruler to concoct tidy looking calendars and tables.
CHANGE IS GOOD
A little over a month into my experiment, I realized that my BuJo use was uneven. I loved having daily to-do lists — an admittedly amateur work-hack — but a useful one nonetheless. The physical monthly calendar, however, I didn’t really need, because I use Google Calendar regularly.
I also found the habit tracker to be a useless exercise in data collection. Discovering how often I clean my apartment and call my dad in a given month was neither surprising nor lifechanging. I didn’t end up doing anything with that data.
The beauty of the Bullet Journal is its flexibility. “If something isn’t working for you, you can fix it without scrapping the whole thing,” Wilkerson Miller says. “If a weekly spread isn’t working, just start something new.”
So that’s what I did. The next month, I ditched the calendars and leveled-up my habit tracker to collect data that I might find useful. Feeling a little more confident in my crafting skills, I found a daily drink tracker on a Reddit thread, which would allow me to log my spending and consumption habits. In the spirit of bullet journaling, I even drew a little martini glass at the top of the page.
I ended up liking and using the tracker; it taught me something new about myself. A little voice in the back of my head constantly worries about how much I’m spending and drinking. The tracker gave me data on the reality of the situation. Armed with that knowledge, I can feel a little bit less stressed about how much I spend on a recreational habit.
One of the appeals of bullet journaling is aesthetic. It looks nice, which results in a sense of accomplishment. But using the journal won’t turn you into something you’re not. My journal is ugly, despite my sad attempts to make it colorful.
And even the pros, such as Wilkerson Miller, admit that they mess up. “There are mistakes in my journal,” she says. “This system really forced me to just roll with it. Just go on to the next page — it’s totally fine.”
Ugly journals aren’t any less useful. Writing things down helps us clear space in our head, which helps us do our jobs and live our lives.
“Your head is for having ideas, not for holding them,” David Allen, the author of Getting Things Done, explains. “If your head is still wrapped around food you should’ve bought this morning, or the last meeting you were in, you’re trying to use your head as your office,” he says. “And your head is an absolutely crappy office.”