This is a follow-up from a previous entry, were I praise the Zettelkasten method. Since March last year I've been trying out a new method: the Bullet Journal system — or just "BuJo". I'll summarize what a BuJo is, and how I use it, but first I want to write about where the Zettelkasten method (that I used) fell short.
A quick recap: my method of Zettelkasten was to:
- Read with a pen: whenever I read something that activated my neurons I'd write down where I found it and on what page. I wrote with my own words (unless it was a quote, which was tagged as such).
- In a first pass, write my notes on paper: This just ended up as the most friction-less (and distraction-less) way to streamline my thoughts down to something concrete.
- In a second pass, data entry into
org-roam: I'd "handle" my notes by digitalizing them in Emacs, adding context if needed, and hyperlinking notes to eachother when they felt related in some way (usually in unexpected ways). Each Zettel (each note, that is) got its UUID.
That was pretty much the whole methodology. What I never managed to properly do was "look into the box:" by pulling notes out by random you would have new thoughts, seeing as you are now in a different state of mind compared to when it was written. In some semi-magic way your collection of notes would then reach a critical mass and you'd end up with tons of interesting thoughs from the cross-pollination of everything you've read. If the hyperlinks where graph-plotted you'd find clusters. A big cluster means that something of value could probably be written about a certain subject — and lo, more Zettels from this!
Sounds swell, but the pitfall was the damn data entry: it really took the wind out of my sail. Reading with a pen I've taken to heart; not being able to quickly write my thoughts down while reading now feels very weird. But just 30 minutes of data entry would drain all my energy — it was just so fucking boring. Having unhandled notes stacking up to multiple hundreds really sucked. I learned a ton, but for the sake of sanity I had to drop it.
Looking for an alternative, I read Ryder Caroll's book on the Bullet Journal method. It is not a superb book: more resources was put towards the typesetting rather than the meat and potatoes; there is a lot of fluff. But the BuJo method is also dead simple, and so very personalized, that you can't really write much about it, other than offering examples (perhaps a dull book is the only possible outcome?) All you can do is try it out, and eventually add your own spin to it when you feel comfortable. I did just that, and the way I journal is now magnitudes better than it was 16 months ago. In fact, I wasn't even journaling at all back when I only wrote Zettels, so I suppose it is my method of writing stuff down at all that has improved.
Anyway, here's my BuJo method:
- The first "spread" (left and right page) in a fresh notebook is an index: I write on what page certain topics are available.
- The next two spreads is my "future topic:" I write what tasks I want done during the coming months (or just some time in the future, if I can't pin it down to a month).
- The next spread is the current month: what do I want done before the end of the month?
- From here, it's just date-stamped thoughts and tasks as they pop-up. When a day is over I draw a solid line below the day's last line and write the next date (in ISO 8601 format, of course).
- Anything that I think deserves its own topic is given one. This can be a special list of tasks (things I want to buy, or infrastructure tasks I want to do), thoughts to a coming blog entry, or just scribbles. A notebook with dotted pages gives me many degrees of freedom.
With some helpful symbology tasks can be "tracked" and "migrated" to other months (if it is still relevant and I just didn't finish it). Tracked means a task is pending, in progress, done, delegated, planned, or cancelled.
A subset of symbols i use in my BuJos. After 16 months, these help interpreting a page at a glance. The last example is very flexible: replace the H with any letter to categorize stuff.
The journal is append-only (so I cross over errors rather than erase them), I only write down things once (unless it's a migration, but this friction serves a function: is this task still relevant; do I still care?). Very important: I perform no data entry. Writing my journal is not really fucking boring; it's actually really fucking refreshing.
This is almost orthogonal from the Zettelkasten method, but I have normalized my Zettels to distinct topics: I allocate some spreads and index them. I'm no longer able to link UUIDs together, but that wasn't a feature I was using a lot anyway.
The book's cover boasts with
Track the past. Order the present. Design the future.
But the method indeed offers what's written on the tin. During the last 16 months I've steamlined my life: I've dropped big tasks that I thought were important, I've found new hobbies, I have better grasp on my economy, etc. It has helped me to pick my battles and given me significant insight (16 months ago, I feel like I barely knew myself).
I've found that whenever I write down a task in my journal, it will eventually be done. So after jotting it down I can discard it from the top of my mind and think about something else.
Writing down stuff has helped my filter out what is really important in life, and the BuJo method is a very simple way of taking a first step to such a method. With small iterative improvements the change has an exponential nature. Two recent improvements of my own:
- Inspired by ratfactor, I have dedicated a spread to a physical calender. I can now plan a whole two months in advance. Now, after three weeks of using it, I have no idea how I managed to plan my days at all before. Did I just do things ad-hoc? At the start of a month, while migrating tasks from the previous month (and those planned for the current), I schedule on what day I'd like to perform things. This removes the analysis paralysis I'd otherwise have at the start of each month when there'd be tons of tasks to do.
- I backfill my index instead of pre-allocating spreads. In effect, I write down my stream of conciousness on the current page and then summarize it with a title in the index (if I want to find it later). Before this I had to figure a title out for the spreads before writing the stuff I actually wanted to write in that moment.
Summa summarum: I can only recommend trying BuJo out.
I lied about the data entry, kinda. I still think there is some untapped results from digitally indexing all my Zettels, so I've deployed a Paperless instance in my personal infrastructure. When a BuJo is full I scan it and put it on a shelf. The scanning part is still really fucking boring, but it's a fully mechanical process; I can watch a movie while I do it. I haven't gotten to the indexing part yet. If nothing comes of it I atleast have gained a proper 3-2-1 backup solution of my notes. If the physical copy is destroyed I can still look back at my state of mind from my late twenties and forward from the comfort of my retirement home, presuming this is something I continue with.
From time to time I play with the thoughts of AI/ML helping me out here, but there might not even be a needle to move. Some way to fuzzily search through scanned notebooks would be swell. But I find it very unlikely that I'd let a computer write my own notes. I'll have to see where my iterative methodology changes takes me.