THE BULLET JOURNAL METHOD by Ryder Carroll

“The Bullet journal method” inspires each individual facilitate their own journey and take control of their life through reflection, awareness, purpose and being intentional. The book is full of inspiring quotes, thought exercises, and meaningful way to create the life you desire to live.

“The best way to predict the future is to create it”– Peter Drucker

This book builds on famous quotes from Peter Drucker, which essentially means that, one can create the desired future by taking intentional steps towards it. It is applicable to organizations as well as individuals who are in pursuit of designing their future. The book’s tagline: “Track the Past. Order the Present. Design the Future” says so much about what to expect from it. It is about taking a stock from your past, setting your present in order, to be able to create your future. This is way more than just a to-do list, this is a way of life. And using the Bullet Journal Method as a tool, you can pack way more productivity, meaning, intentionality, and life into your days.

The Preparation helps you prepare what you’ll need to know in order to be prepared for bullet journaling. The present that we live in is full of events happening randomly without us having any direct control of them. The start happens with questioning what is important for us, and why at all they are important. That sets all the essential things apart from the non-essentials. We call them “Noises”. Those essential things coming out from the sweet spot of “What” and “Why” form the core of Goals and objectives.

The next part explains about intentionality of pursuit. Intentionality comes out from being mindful of and being productive. Mindfulness is all about staying at the present & doing what needs to be done. Being productive is getting more out of your most valuable resources- Time and Energy.

The author concludes the chapter by briefly taking through the mental inventories. Mental inventories help decluttering the tasks among responsibilities, goals and wish list. Responsibilities are the tasks you need to work on, Goals are the tasks you should be working on, Wishlist are the tasks you want to work on.

The system helps you building a framework around you that takes care of journaling. It starts with defining the core concepts of tasks, events and notes. Tasks are the activities you need to do, events are the experiences you want to be part of, notes are the information you don’t want to forget. All three of these go into a log called Rapid logging. Rapid logging forms part of Daily Logging, which at next level goes into Monthly Logging. Anything that falls beyond the time horizon of Monthly log are part of Future logging. All these logs form the Index, so that you can navigate easily to what you need to access at any point of time. Each part of the framework is explained in detail with examples of what it can look like and how you can make it your own.

Then the book shifts gear a little, focusing on the Practice of Bullet Journaling. Pairing action with belief and through reflection, we can begin to see how this method will really add meaning to our lives, and help us set and reach goals that actually matter to our hearts. The author shares his approach to goals and working on things in sprints and how that can help us perpetuate our motivation. Through this section, seeing the difference between traditional goal-setting and working on things in sprints was a total “aha moment”.

In Conclusion, “The Bullet journal method” inspires each individual facilitate their own journey and take control of their life through reflection, awareness, purpose and being intentional. The book is full of inspiring quotes, thought exercises, and meaningful way to create the life you desire to live.

Want to get a copy for yourself? Order the hard copy or the Kindle version directly from Amazon