I use some of the ideas from bullet journalling, but in Orgzly on my android phone.
http://www.orgzly.comInitially ended up with it because I wanted something non-cloud and where the underlying file was plain text, but it was only after a brief foray into paper bullet journalling that I figured out a good way of using it.
Bits I use from bullet journalling:
- monthly log/calendar
- daily log (but nested under the monthly log so I can fold/unfold the whole month)
- future log (think about this thing in approximately this month)
- the general ethos of just write it down quickly and get it out of your head until a sensible time to review and deal with it.
Things I gain from it not being a notebook:
- Rightly or wrongly, I've always got my phone
- I don't index. I can get to a month quickly by collapsing everything and scrolling. I file non-date collections under the day I started them, but just tag them 'collection' so I can find them all. Also use a few other tags like 'links' and 'spending'.
- Has TODO/DONE states, so don't have to try and mentally parse things from multiple pages and decide what to do, just filter for all TODO. Ethos of bullet journal seems to be very much you don't rewrite your tasks, you just leave them where they are and 'reflect' by flicking through, but I can't deal with it, so would end up migrating stuff forwards every week or so.
- I can create monthly logs in advance, so I can use it as my proper calendar. I just have them all nested under 'Future', which is also my future log, then move them up when the month arrives.
- Because it's foldable, I can start from a nice bullet-journal-esque short note saying 'email X about Y', but if I'm sat on a train or whatever I can draft the actual thing right there under the task.
Nerdy/niche point:
- Underlying file format is Emacs Org-mode. Laptop is Linux so when I want to really write stuff with a proper keyboard I can just plug my phone in, sync the file across, and work on it there in something that understands the file format and folds/unfolds the same way.
You could almost certainly do all this in something like Evernote, probably more prettily, but see initial point about simplicity and non-cloudness/control of my own data.