@scatterplot - can you tell me more about the bullet journal? How you got into it, how you use it? Do you find it's a lot better than typical tracking/to do lists? I'm intrigued & love a good organization technique, but don't know how to start.
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@philli14 Definitely! I've been using a bullet journal ("bujo") off and on for a couple years now, but it wasn't until I read The Bullet Journal Method by Ryder Carroll, inventor of the system, that it really clicked deeply. I've been on since reading it in December and I LOVE my system -- not only am I more productive, organized, and focused on my goals, but I also have a noticeably clearer mind. Every time I have a thought about something I need/might want to do, I take three seconds to jot it down and KNOW that my system ensures that I either address it or decide it's not one of my priorities anymore. I had no idea how much effort I was expending to keep things like that in memory, even when I was using to-do lists or a digital system. So yeah, I'd recommend that book highly to start.
I have a 8 1/2 x 11" dotted journal (I found that the size that most people use is too small for me, I really like having the space) and it is divvied up like:
1. Index - the pages of the bujo are numbered, so all of the below is indexed for easy finding.
2. Future Log - four pages divvied by three months. When I get a wedding invite for August, I put a line item "18 - wedding" under August. This ensures that at the beginning of a month when I draw that month's calendar, I can reference this page, remember the priority, and re-copy it down in the calendar.
3. Month -
https://imgur.com/a/Saz8ePl (photo!) - one side of my month spread has a calendar that I hand draw with habit trackers on the bottom, and the other side is a monthly to do list. When I start a new month, I look at the future log and previous month's to do list and either copy over things that I haven't done that are still priorities (and then I put a less than sign over the dot of that item to indicate "transferred"), or realize that the things I haven't gotten to are no longer priorities (so I cross them off to indicate "no longer priority"). I also look at my yearly goal list and see what I can tackle from it. On the monthly to do list I only put the bigger items, not recurring things like "do laundry" - that goes in dailies.
4. Dailies -
https://imgur.com/a/A2ZAH7o (photo!) - this is the bread and butter of bujo. Every morning I look at my monthly spread, see if I have any events on the calendar and write them down on the daily page with a circle bullet, then I look at my monthly to do list and write any tasks I might do that day with a dot or add tasks like "do laundry". An X through the dot marks that it is done. The "-" means "item someone told me about for further research." This is what REALLY works for me rather than a traditional planner because I use the amount of space per day that I need, no more, no less, it combines events and tasks, and because it looks like a big list I don't forget about items from previous days that I haven't done yet. As you can imagine, there are 50,000,000 ways that people set up their monthly/weekly/daily pages - there are many Google search rabbit holes that I hope you have fun going down. I tried 15-20 different layouts until I discovered that these two photos are the best for me.
5. Other tracking logs - I track all purchases, my spending and savings rate, what exercise I do, how much I use my smartphone, what books I read, what sugar I eat, what recipes I cook, all on their own pages. I've been into the "X effect" method for habits for a long time and get a lot of success from it. I'm probably more hardcore than average about tracking elements of my life, it soothes my anxiety ;) That's the great thing about it though! You get to find what works for you!
6. Everything else - pretty much every idea I have that I want to flesh out unrelated to calendar/planning, I get to put in my bujo without disturbing the calendar/planning process. I've tracked training for a half marathon, planned events, itineraried vacations, planned my house purchase and my new house needs, taken notes through books or online courses, written my song repertoire, copied down recipes and book and podcast recommendations. So many things come up that I can capture in my little one-stop shop notebook for my whole life. It's awesome.
Last thoughts... 1. perfectionism kicked in hard and I had to deal with it, 2. I had to set a daily reminder alarm when starting, 3. it took a lot of trial and error to get right.
Good luck! Happy to answer any other questions if you have them.