Guide to Bullet Journaling

What is a Bullet Journal (BuJo)?

A journal that combines note taking, to do lists, ideas, and journal entries.

Official Guide

BuJo is a versitile format, and can prioritize any or none of these things. In fact, if you already have a journal, you can start doing BuJo right now, no need to buy a $40 overpriced notebook.

You already failed bullet journaling if you don't...

K.I.S.S.! If you're adding watashi tape or making all these cute little diagrams you're probably just a kidult or a dumb influencer. In that case please ignore the rest of this article and go back to browsing tiktok and instagram. Bullet journals are supposed to be decimated with quick thoughts, to do items, and personal reflection. If your life is a mess, hyperfocusing on making a tidy little notebook won't change the fact you have no control.

In fact, Bullet Journals are supposed to be an antifragile approach to journaling. If you lose a bullet journal you can instantly pick up where you left off. All the information an tasks in your life converge together in a complete picture of your life and experiences, allowing for new emergent ideas to generate. It is just as much as form of self improvement as it a way of restructring how you think about work. After doing BuJo, I found myself thinking of new projects and ideas throughout the day and figuring out new ways to improve my workflows. This is the opposite of a well organized binder or filing cabinet: where information is compartmentalized and hidden away (When is exactly the last time you took a look at your old school work? Its pratically useless now)

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Here a wall of shame of cringey bullet journals I found (guess the website before clicking)

• What a kidult thinks productivity is
• Tracking your 'happiness' is LAME and a waste of time
• Thats right! Fight the system!
• You could have spent all that time making tiny dots actually losing weight.
• What even is this? Again, nothing to do with journaling
• Wow so pretty and so useless

To summarize, you shouldn't spend more time organzing your journal more than you actually journal. These journals are over the top, and extremely inflexible(what if you have more than like 3 tasks for the last one?) and exist just to get attention on social media.

What is the best app for bullet journaling?

No apps. No software. Not even a txt file. Bullet journals should be done in paper. You should be able to bullet journal no matter if you have access to the internet or a computer. And be honest, you never found all these note-taking apps to be useful for daily use.

Bullet Journal Sections

Bullet journals organized in the following manner:

1. Table of contents: Usually 1-3 pages,
2. Table of contents: Usually 3-6 pages
3. Calendar start of month: 1 Page
4. Monthly collections: 1-3 pages (K.I.S.S.)
5. Daily entries
6. Weekly Reflections
7. Monlthy Reflection

1. Table of Contents (1-3 pages)

This section is optional, although it can make your journal easy to go through. Just keep it 1-3 pages and only state the page numbers of the start of each month, or pages you find particularly important. Remember, if you set yourself up to maticulously write down ToB for every week/day, it can become easily laborous and take away from the value of bullet journaling.

I find using a bookmark is good enough, and since bullet journals tend to be so compact, a ToB can be superflous.

A ToB might look like this on the first page of your notebook

January                     8
  Vacation ideas            12
Feburary                    25 
  Febuarary self reflection 34
March                       35
  March Workout plan        36

...
      

2. Set Long Term Goals (1 page)

Set your yearly or long term goals. What do you want to accomplish this year? How much weight do you want to lose? This section is allowed to be more generalized and less concrete, and its more used for personal reflections. When you reflect in your journal, you can always go back to this section to ensure you are tracking your goals properly.

Leave 1 page after your ToB for long term goals.

An example might be:

Long Term Goals
  1. Quit sugar
  2. Learn Unity and develop a game
3. Break ORM Bench 

3. Set Monthly Goals (1-3 pages)

At the beginning of the journal, or on a new page, create a list of goals for the month. The goals should be concrete and realistic. No "save money" or "exercise more". Say "spend $300 less this month" or "exercise 3 days a week". This will allow you to make more clear self reflection at the end of the month.

4. Calendar of Month (1 page)

On a single page, at the beginning of the month, setup a list of each day:

        April
1 T
2 W
3 Th
4 F 
5 S 
6 Su
7 M
...
      

At the end of each day, you will write a short summary of what you did/accomplished. This list is not what you plan to do. This page will help you to ensure you are on track with your goals.

Example:

            April

1 T - Studied 50 Japanese words
2 W - Bought Groceries
3 Th - Finished taxes
4 F - Studied CommonLisp 
5 S - 5K run
6 Su - Watched TV all day
7 M - Studied 10 Japanese words
...
        

This helps you put into perspective how your life is going and how productive you are being. If you do not update your BuJo for that day, you should at least write in the calendar view what you did.

You can also do regular journaling here. I often have journal entires combined with my daily task.

Somedays I don't have any tasks to write down, so I just write all the events I did that day. People often give up journaling because they do not make a habit out of it, so always try to put at least 1 thing down in your journal.

5. Collections (1-3 pages)

Collections are aggregations of information that is better served all together in a single page rather than across the entire journal. Examples might include:

1. List of books to read
2. Weightlifting progress
3. Habit Trackers
4. Sleep logs
5. Spending habits

An important note for collections: do not create any collections until the 2nd/3rd month of Bullet journling. If you find yourself repeating the same information over and over again, it might be better to put in a collection. I personally keep 1 collection every month of my exercising habits.

6. Daily Journal

Every day I record the most important events/accomplishments using these symbols:

• • Task
• ◦ Event
• - Note

Example:

--------
4/1/2025
◦ Woke up at 7am
◦ Did laundry
• Studied 10 Japanese words
• Send email to client discussing sale
- Austira might be a good vacation destination
- I could create a script to automate this workflow
--------
4/2/2025
◦ Made bed
◦ Woke up at 6am
...

      

When tasks are completed, X them off. If you cant complete a task that day, mark it with a >. Then the next day review your previous day tasks and migrate over only the ones you still need to do.

You can always add more symbols if necessary, but remember to keep it simple.