reviving this thread with a super long post (typical), because i’m trying to figure out how to better integrate my bullet journal into my life again, and talking (writing) myself through my thoughts helps :)
a friend gifted me a bullet journal in december 2020. i know hardcore bullet-journalers would get a new one each year, but i’m not even halfway through with my first one yet (please don’t throw raw vegetables at me XD). in the past months specifically i’ve noticed me using it less, and less enthusiastically. (maybe that’s not exactly right; but it’s definitely true that it feels more and more like a chore to bullet journal the things i used to bullet journal / to keep up the same kind of consistency i had previously.)
sometimes i used my bullet journal for things which i’ve since abandoned, like daily mood tracking. (i’d make notes of my mood three times a day on my phone, and then i’d transfer them regularly-ish to my journal, do a weekly review, look back on the past few weekly reviews, etc.) i don’t plan to restart these things, in the case of mood tracking because i didn’t really feel like i got any super impactful insight out of it. obviously if i ever want to take consistent notes on something again, i’d still put them in my bullet journal. if i end up abandoning it again after a few weeks/months that just means it’s not my thing / not important enough to continue at that moment, and that’s valuable insight.
what i used to use my bullet journal for consistently
these are the two things i had done since the beginning, and have kept up more or less until the end of last year. that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re perfect and that they have to stay, obviously, but i’ll give them special attention here, because i want to try and analyse a bit how i could make them better / how i can motivate myself to continue them.
-
monthly goals: i’d set myself specific goals at the beginning of the month. those varied widely: there was a lot of uni-related stuff, but i also had goals like “text that friend to ask to meet again” or “write x diary entries” or “keep my duolingo streak,” etc. nothing was really out of bounds.
- what i did: i separated them into “minimum” and “maximum” goals. mini-goals on the left page, maxi-goals on the right. mini-goals where basically “bare minimum” things. i didn’t want to overload that section, sometimes there were only 2 or 3 items in that list. oftentimes there were a lot more. very regularly, especially after the first few months, i didn’t finish all of the mini-goals by the end of the month. (i didn’t finish any for last month.) sometimes that was indeed devastating (like when i frogged up my uni paper last autumn … let’s not talk about that …). sometimes it was No Big Deal (like a broken duolingo streak). the maxi-goals were less-imminent goals. (depending on the month and the mini-goals, a duo streak could be a maxi-goal, for example. or “memorise a poem,” or “restart japanese handwriting practice” would be maxi-goals.) maxi goals were kind of aspirational. things i absolutely wanted to get to, but if it didn’t happen this month it would be No Big Deal.
-
possible reasons for stopping:
- recently, i stopped checking my bullet journal as regularly in general, which also meant looking at my monthly goals less. and i’m an out-of-sight-out-of-mind-person—if i don’t check them every (other) day, i won’t remember them next week. or i might remember some, but not work towards them, because thinking about something somehow is less immediate for me than actively looking at it.
- when i looked at them, it was mostly late at night, shortly-ish before i would wrap up my day and go to bed. so, not really much time to start on any task. sometimes i’d read through them and still Do A Thing, if it was as easy as writing a mail or a text. but most of the time i’d just read through the goals and then close the bullet journal again.
- it demotivated me that i never seemed to be able to finish all (or any, or more than one) of my mini-goals. at least in the recent months.
- i realised i’m still functioning perfectly fine without completing these goals, even the minimum ones. yes, if i hadn’t frogged up the uni paper in autumn i would be further along in my studies right now, which would of course be preferable. but i’ll survive.
-
how i could perfect “monthly goals” to address these issues going forward:
- make myself check my bullet journal (and the monthly goals) consistently again. most importantly, probably, make myself check them in the beginning of the day, or at least shortly after i get home from work. (i think it would only stress me out if i checked them before going into work, since i can’t do other stuff at work anyway, and i never have work-related monthly goals.)
- maybe try having one mini-goal per month, so that it seems less daunting. if i consistently manage to get through one mini-goal each month for half a year, maybe only then would it be time to think about stocking up to two mini-goals at most, etc.
- brainstorm the goals on paper. the way i’d always write them down until now would be: write the headers on each page (“january goals minimum” and “january goals maximum”, for example). think about a goal. decide which category it belongs to. write it down in the appropriate category.
maybe a better system, especially with only one mini-goal each month, would be: use the left page for brainstorming, where all mothly goals i can think of go, without categorising them yet. they don’t need to be written neatly either, some can be tilted or whatever. when i can’t think of more goals, think about which of those is the most important to me. make that the mini-goal. write the rest (maybe not even all of them!) into the maxi-goal list, below the mini-goal. so left page for brainstorming, right page for formulated goals.
-
adultris: for those who don’t know, here are some images of what this can look like. it’s basically “paper tetris,” where each piece represents a chore or activity, and whenever you Do The Thing you can draw the corresponding tetris piece onto the grid and thus fill up the whole page! i had so much fun with this! if people are interested i can make pictures of my own grids. but anyway:
- what i did: i actually always had two adultris at any given time: one for my monthly goals, one for daily-ish things. i’d only use the monthly goals one at the end of each month, reflecting on how i did with my monthly goals: if i finished all mini-goals, i’d get to add a tetris piece. for every additional maxi-goal, i’d get a tetris piece as well. the daily adultris was more lively, since i could potentially add to it every day. i put things there like “2+ hours of uni work” or “made a diary entry” or “walked at least 10 000 steps a day,” etc.
-
possible reasons for stopping:
- i stopped checking my bullet journal as regularly, so i didn’t fill out my adultris grids as regularly, so they get completed at a much slower rate, which is less fun.
- having a separate adultris for my monthly goals is additionally demotivating, because it’s just so slow-moving! i started this in march 2021, and it’s not even filled a fifth of the whole way.
- it demotivated me that i didn’t have at least one piece to place every day. this is partly due to me Not Doing The Things, and partly also because filling a whole adultris (even if it’s just one page; the grid of my last, abandoned one spans almost two full pages) takes a lot of time—time during which the definitions of my pieces might change / loose relevance. i always had each piece assigned with a certain thing, which seems to be standard practice. like, the square is “good productive day at work with minimum to no procrastination,” the L shape is “learned some japanese,” etc.
- somehow i’m less excited about the concept in general? not sure why, not sure if this is just a temporary slump, or if i’ve “grown out” of the idea in general. (i hope not! it used to be so fun and motivating for me!)
-
how i could perfect “adultris” to address these issues going forward:
- check my bullet journal again regularly, preferably every day.
- forget about the “monthly goals” adultris. maybe i could make a rule for the “regular”/only adultris like “add two pieces for completing the mini-goal, add three pieces for every additional maxi-goal,” or something like that.
- maybe make “no beeminder derailments yesterday” one possible task for placing a piece? (i’ve only had one derailment so far, and i don’t have a ridiculous number of beeminder goals yet, so this feels like an easy no-brainer that would give me the satisfaction of having at least one piece to place almost every single day!)
- probably let go of the idea that “one piece = one task”. this would give me flexibility with changing my priorities within the same tetris grid.
final thoughts
i guess i should reflect on the value of these things before i commit to restarting them again. why do i want to do this? what makes this a better system for me than [anything else]?
- i like to have some things on paper! i don’t use a digital calendar either, and my diary is handwritten as well. especially the adultris wouldn’t make sense in any other form.
- i used to have a routine of checking my three “books” each night: looking into my calendar to keep upcoming appointments in my mind / checking my bullet journal for tasks and for getting a little end-of-day-serotonin out of my adultris / writing in my diary. i didn’t always do all of these things every day. (i don’t actually aspire to write in my diary every day.) but i’d always have these three booklets close by, and i’d usually check and/or write in at least two each night. a nice routine, that i kind of want to go back to.
- my current online task set-up is a Big Mess, that i hopefully will fix sooner rather than later. having only a select few tasks to actively, consitently be in my sight → in my mind each month apart from daily routines is nice, because it automatically prioritises things.
what’s my ideal set-up? if i could set everything up perfectly with the snap of a finger, and have all software and paperware configured as is best for me in a second, what could that look like?
- i know that i wouldn’t want to have any task in two different task apps. currently, for example, i have a flossing beeminder goal, and a flossing daily on habitica.
- adultris wouldn’t count for this—if i wanted to use flossing as a possible adultris task while also having a flossing task online, that would be fine. adultris would just be an additional enforcement of select habits/one-time tasks.
- i’m unsure if monthly goals would be the same, or if they also shouldn’t be doubled. it might also depend on what kind of task they are? a “floss at least 10 times this month” goal seems very compatible with a virtual flossing task. but what about “finish first thing for uni application”? should one-off-tasks always be tracked online exclusively? would it be bad to have them online but then also as a monthly goal on paper, some months? i’m less keen on that idea, because that would basically mean a full-on doubling of the exact same thing in two places. (whereas the “x flosses per month” goal could be set more or less strictly than the beeminder goal, to test it out. or i could have a “x diary entries per month” monthly goal. i don’t plan to beemind diary entries ever, currently, so there’s absolutely things i’d want to be “rewarded” for when i do them (task checked off successfully!), but which i wouldn’t want to force myself to commit to on any regular basis.)
- aaaa this is all so much to contemplate. big sigh.
- to end this on a positive note, i recently migrated all my work-related tasks to todoist. so they’re not doubled anywhere. i’m not the most happy with todoist, but also i probably need to get to know it better before writing it off completely. (also writing it off completely would mean finding a better alternative, which would mean migrating all my tasks again, and that’s so tedious, there’s so many tasks; sigh.)
- okay, to end this on an actual postive note, here you have a cute picture of a mara! if you’ve made it this far, you absolutely deserve it!
:D
