I am a planner, and I love lists (and pens). I have had multiple ways of planning for work (and life) since I started working. I’ve been through the Franklin Planner (my first), Palm Pilot (and Trello, and Handsping), and many , many different paper planners, and productivity systems (including the granddaddy GTD). I thought bullet journaling would be fantastic for me when it came on the scene. I need to do a lot of my planning by hand and I love checking things off of a list.
If I’m writing by hand I’m thinking, it doesn’t happen in the same way when I plan on a computer.
The part of bullet journaling (and most planner systems) that ultimately made me jump ship, was the lifestyle-ness of it, the striving for perfection and taking all of the time to make pages pretty. Many planner and productivity systems also insist there is only one way to make them effective, which has never worked for me.
I admittedly will use planning as procrastination, just one more list or the perpetual hunt for the perfect system of thinking that works for my messy and creative way of thinking and working.
I took Felicity Ford’s Bullet Journaling course in July, and adored it. It is exactly what I need right now.
Felix’s course allows your to take or leave the bits that work for you, speaks directly to people that have creative jobs (or do any job creatively), reminds you to make time for yourself, and allows you to be as messy as you want. I am very messy. During quarantine this approach really soothed my nearly-frantic hunt for something to help me organize the work that was so hard to get done right now.
Just showing up for a (optional) weekly class helped slow my overly active and limping quarenbrain. Felix showing her not-at-all tidy, but still organized own journal helped immensely.
Then there is the playing, stamps, stickers, washi tape, pens, pencils all add fun and creativity to planning and keeping track of things without needing to artisanally curate pages.
From a work and productivity fan-girl point of view what I like about Felix’s approach is how modular it is. I can add or subtract projects, or styles of organizing on the fly.
I can try out a new productivity idea I read about this week, right now and keep using it or just abandon it without it affecting my regular planning and list-making. It’s allowed me to go from two planners, a notebook, and lots of loose paper and notecards to a single weekly planner, and a notebook. And that weekly planner may disappear by the end of the year.
Now if it would just do the work for me……
Felix has a new section of her Bullet Journaling Course starting in September.