Kate (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kate_nepveu) wrote2017-10-11 10:53 pm
kate_nepveu) wrote2017-10-11 10:53 pm
Entry tags:
DIY electronic bullet journal
I realized I've been using with a DIY electronic bullet journal since January and actually keeping up with it . . . consistently, the whole time? . . . so it's probably time to write it up.
tl;dr: I use Dynalist, a free webpage/app that allows you to generate collapsible outlines, to keep a to-do checklist and journal bullet points for every day. I like this because things that don't get done can just be dragged into a new day, and because bullet points for journaling lowers the mental energy required to keep up with it. This system is highly flexible, goes with me everywhere, and lets me keep almost everything in one place. (I use Google Calendar for things that need to be scheduled more than two weeks out.)
Setting the scene:
Prior to this, I had been using an absolute hodge-podge of things:
* Remember the Milk for recurring tasks and general to-dos;
* Google Calendar for appointments, and its reminders for time-sensitive things (when I started using RtM, Google did not have good recurring to-do tasks);
* Google Keep for the occasional very small note I needed to be able to find quickly; and
* Simplenote for longer notes, references, etc. (Which I do like very much and recommend. I just don't need it any more.)
I had also tried and failed several different journal-keeping options.
In addition, a couple of mental quirks I had discovered: once something was marked as overdue, it was much harder to make myself do it; relatedly, the whole "don't break the chain" method of habit-forming/productivity also doesn't work for me. Once I've missed a self-imposed deadline or broken the chain, my brain apparently decides, oh well, in for a penny in for a pound, let's really fail to meet those goals.
Then, in early January, I read Tobias Buckell's post on bullet journaling, which made it sound sensible and appealing. After a little more reading (I noted down this Buzzfeed post), I found a recommendation for Workflowy as an electronic bullet journal—necessary because I will not carry paper with me everywhere and I need to have access to my to-do list at all times—the examples were way more complicated than I needed, but did show that it could be very powerful and customizable.
I stopped using Workflowy at the end of July for two reasons: first, the mobile app was not good, it was way too easy to drag stuff around by accident, but hard to move it on purpose; second, it only lets you keep a single (infinitely long and collapsible) outline, which was cramping my reference-note-keeping-consolidation.
Hence: Dynalist. Which is free, and which has an Android app in beta which is much more functional, and which lets you have multiple documents. (It also has a Workflowy import.) The paid version is a smidge expensive ($8/month billed annually), but I haven't felt the need for it; I might, however, end up signing up anyway just to toss them some money. I use a pinned Chrome tab (like so) on desktop, because I didn't realize it had a Windows desktop app in beta until I just checked.
Here's how I've adapted the general bullet journal idea to a collapsible outline app:
I have a "bullet journal" document. At the bottom is a blank weekly template that starts like this and includes my weekly or daily recurring tasks:
("bus" is tracking what time the kids' school bus arrives, because we've had problems.) Lately, between the day and "To-do", I've been adding a highlighted big-picture motivational reminder, though I'm not sure how much it's actually catching my eye.
I have two weeks active in the bullet journal at any given time. First thing on Monday at work, I move the prior week under an "Archive" bullet point (not a separate document, because Dynalist will only full-text search within documents, not across them). [Edit: I don't remember when this changed, but as of 2019, it is incorrect, Dynalist will search across documents.] I then copy the blank template up under the current week, and fill in the dates and anything I know is upcoming based on looking at my work deadlines and my Google calendar. I also adjust the template to taste as time goes on: for instance, there was a #concussion entry under the Journal bullet for a while. (I rarely use hashtags otherwise—they serve the function of an index in a paper bullet journal, but mostly I find that searching removes my need for that. The current exception is tagging links to post here at some point as to-dos with #links.)
I will absolutely add things to the to-do list just so I can check them off immediately, because when I choose to show completed items (this is a toggle), it combines with the journal to tell me what I did all day. And if I don't complete something, I either drag it to the next day (thereby avoiding the brain thing about "overdue" items) or reassess: I have a "floating to-do" bullet point, under which go things that aren't tied to specific days, and things move in and out of there. (I briefly tried replicating the symbols that people use on paper, and it didn't work for me.)
I have also just started a "good job, self!" bullet point, which is an attempt at a habit/reward system: a list of few things I ought to do more often, and I put an "x" next to them every time I do one, and after a certain number of "x"s, I will buy myself a silly phone game or a piece of jewelry or whatnot. We'll see if this works. So my top-level bullet points in the bullet journal are:
* floating to-do
* good job, self!
* Week of October 9, 2017
* Week of October 16, 2017
* Archive
* Week of [template]
Because I collapse prior days of the week, and usually hide completed things, the first two top-level points are generally fairly within reach, especially on desktop.
If something repeats on a longer or more complicated schedule than the weekly template can handle, I put it into Google Calendar as a reminder. (I have things in there literally years from now, like passport renewals.) When they come up, if they're not time-critical, I move them into the bullet journal as a to-do.
You can turn things into headings to make them larger and give your document more structure, add colors, add numbers, zoom in and show just certain portions of the outline, and so forth. Dynalist also has extensive keyboard shortcuts.
Finally, I moved all of my reference notes out of Simplenote and Google Keep, and most of them went into Dynalist—like the list of graphic novels SteelyKid has read, so I don't get repeats from the library. (The things from Google Keep go into a "Quick reference" document, like what the taekwondo schedule is or how to work my car's remote starter. Most of the rest get their own documents, or go under "Misc reference.") A few things had to go into Google Docs instead, like CSS customizations, because those don't play well with outline format.
I've sometimes gotten a few days behind, but never more than a few, and I've always gone back and filled in at least a point or two about the day. And I started on January 9, so that's really pretty darn good. It hasn't been a magic (heh) bullet about getting things done, but it has reduced the amount of effort I put into keeping track of things, which leaves more energy for actually doing them. So on the whole, I'm pretty happy with it; and in case it sounds useful to you, here it is.
tl;dr: I use Dynalist, a free webpage/app that allows you to generate collapsible outlines, to keep a to-do checklist and journal bullet points for every day. I like this because things that don't get done can just be dragged into a new day, and because bullet points for journaling lowers the mental energy required to keep up with it. This system is highly flexible, goes with me everywhere, and lets me keep almost everything in one place. (I use Google Calendar for things that need to be scheduled more than two weeks out.)
Setting the scene:
Prior to this, I had been using an absolute hodge-podge of things:
* Remember the Milk for recurring tasks and general to-dos;
* Google Calendar for appointments, and its reminders for time-sensitive things (when I started using RtM, Google did not have good recurring to-do tasks);
* Google Keep for the occasional very small note I needed to be able to find quickly; and
* Simplenote for longer notes, references, etc. (Which I do like very much and recommend. I just don't need it any more.)
I had also tried and failed several different journal-keeping options.
In addition, a couple of mental quirks I had discovered: once something was marked as overdue, it was much harder to make myself do it; relatedly, the whole "don't break the chain" method of habit-forming/productivity also doesn't work for me. Once I've missed a self-imposed deadline or broken the chain, my brain apparently decides, oh well, in for a penny in for a pound, let's really fail to meet those goals.
Then, in early January, I read Tobias Buckell's post on bullet journaling, which made it sound sensible and appealing. After a little more reading (I noted down this Buzzfeed post), I found a recommendation for Workflowy as an electronic bullet journal—necessary because I will not carry paper with me everywhere and I need to have access to my to-do list at all times—the examples were way more complicated than I needed, but did show that it could be very powerful and customizable.
I stopped using Workflowy at the end of July for two reasons: first, the mobile app was not good, it was way too easy to drag stuff around by accident, but hard to move it on purpose; second, it only lets you keep a single (infinitely long and collapsible) outline, which was cramping my reference-note-keeping-consolidation.
Hence: Dynalist. Which is free, and which has an Android app in beta which is much more functional, and which lets you have multiple documents. (It also has a Workflowy import.) The paid version is a smidge expensive ($8/month billed annually), but I haven't felt the need for it; I might, however, end up signing up anyway just to toss them some money. I use a pinned Chrome tab (like so) on desktop, because I didn't realize it had a Windows desktop app in beta until I just checked.
Here's how I've adapted the general bullet journal idea to a collapsible outline app:
I have a "bullet journal" document. At the bottom is a blank weekly template that starts like this and includes my weekly or daily recurring tasks:
* Week of
* Monday,
* To-do [this has checkboxes]
* post office
*
* Journal [this is just bullets]
* bus
* ("bus" is tracking what time the kids' school bus arrives, because we've had problems.) Lately, between the day and "To-do", I've been adding a highlighted big-picture motivational reminder, though I'm not sure how much it's actually catching my eye.
I have two weeks active in the bullet journal at any given time. First thing on Monday at work, I move the prior week under an "Archive" bullet point (not a separate document, because Dynalist will only full-text search within documents, not across them). [Edit: I don't remember when this changed, but as of 2019, it is incorrect, Dynalist will search across documents.] I then copy the blank template up under the current week, and fill in the dates and anything I know is upcoming based on looking at my work deadlines and my Google calendar. I also adjust the template to taste as time goes on: for instance, there was a #concussion entry under the Journal bullet for a while. (I rarely use hashtags otherwise—they serve the function of an index in a paper bullet journal, but mostly I find that searching removes my need for that. The current exception is tagging links to post here at some point as to-dos with #links.)
I will absolutely add things to the to-do list just so I can check them off immediately, because when I choose to show completed items (this is a toggle), it combines with the journal to tell me what I did all day. And if I don't complete something, I either drag it to the next day (thereby avoiding the brain thing about "overdue" items) or reassess: I have a "floating to-do" bullet point, under which go things that aren't tied to specific days, and things move in and out of there. (I briefly tried replicating the symbols that people use on paper, and it didn't work for me.)
I have also just started a "good job, self!" bullet point, which is an attempt at a habit/reward system: a list of few things I ought to do more often, and I put an "x" next to them every time I do one, and after a certain number of "x"s, I will buy myself a silly phone game or a piece of jewelry or whatnot. We'll see if this works. So my top-level bullet points in the bullet journal are:
* floating to-do
* good job, self!
* Week of October 9, 2017
* Week of October 16, 2017
* Archive
* Week of [template]
Because I collapse prior days of the week, and usually hide completed things, the first two top-level points are generally fairly within reach, especially on desktop.
If something repeats on a longer or more complicated schedule than the weekly template can handle, I put it into Google Calendar as a reminder. (I have things in there literally years from now, like passport renewals.) When they come up, if they're not time-critical, I move them into the bullet journal as a to-do.
You can turn things into headings to make them larger and give your document more structure, add colors, add numbers, zoom in and show just certain portions of the outline, and so forth. Dynalist also has extensive keyboard shortcuts.
Finally, I moved all of my reference notes out of Simplenote and Google Keep, and most of them went into Dynalist—like the list of graphic novels SteelyKid has read, so I don't get repeats from the library. (The things from Google Keep go into a "Quick reference" document, like what the taekwondo schedule is or how to work my car's remote starter. Most of the rest get their own documents, or go under "Misc reference.") A few things had to go into Google Docs instead, like CSS customizations, because those don't play well with outline format.
I've sometimes gotten a few days behind, but never more than a few, and I've always gone back and filled in at least a point or two about the day. And I started on January 9, so that's really pretty darn good. It hasn't been a magic (heh) bullet about getting things done, but it has reduced the amount of effort I put into keeping track of things, which leaves more energy for actually doing them. So on the whole, I'm pretty happy with it; and in case it sounds useful to you, here it is.