Let me start by saying this is not a good journaling method. This is the journaling method you use when all other methods have failed. It came out of my unique combination of perfectionism and a complete lack of focus or ability to maintain that perfectionism. The point of this method is to get past any perfectionism or poor organization and really just lean into the anti-perfectionism.
I’ve never been good at keeping Journals. Alot of times I look at the carefully laid out spaces of a page and just feel like I can’t add anything there. My handwriting is too big, or my todo list needs to be longer than the space provides.
So I decided to commit to this journaling method that is a combination of dot journaling and Amazon’s Chaotic Storage. Colloquial I refer to it as the serial killer journaling method, because of how dense the pages should be.
I’ll include a summary of bullet journalling at the bottom, but the meat of the Chaos Journalling technique is summarized in Principal Number 1:
The end of the journal is always open.
If you want to add a new todo list item, or remember to call your wife, or schedule the kids tuba lesson, or write a manifesto or learn to paint, want to doodle, or vent about your boss. It goes right in your journal, wherever you stopped last. Even if you go back and forth between professional and personal. Even if you end up writing your manifesto in between new meatball recipes you want to to learn and a tic tac toe game with your child.
The ludicrous of what this means is let’s say you’re making a grocery list. You get through half the list and a phone call comes in. During the phone call, the person on the other end of the phone wants you to take down an address. You write down the address and the note about it in the middle of your grocery list. Then, when you hang up the phone, you finish the grocery list.
Why?
Because you always want to feel like the journal is serving you not the other way around. You always want to feel like the tool is at your fingertips. Ever wished you could have a bookshelf full of a row of old journals to flip through? This is how! You’ll end up using a lot more journal pages as you should.
Now you get to the end of the day, or maybe midway through and you realize what you have is not an organized set of thoughts, but a chaotic mess of ideas. What do you do? Write it down again.
Maybe you make it better, maybe you summarize. Maybe you re-write your todo list in a different order, leaving out the things that you already completed. Marking things that are to be done today or tomorrow or next week. If this is horrifying, Remember you’re choosing this path because the neatly organized Franklin Covey day-at-a-glance journal failed for you. Note: This summarization step is by the way where the “phone call in the middle of the note taking” falls apart. Occassionally you may need to focus on taking some notes and want to write something really quick in the margins but I would make this the exception not the rule, As soon as you are done with the summary, it’s back to Chaos.
There are some other principals but I think this is the most important one. If this appeals to you, try it out and let me know what you think, I’d love to hear your thoughts, extensions, questions etc.
A ChatGPT Summarization of Bullet Journaling: (more at https://bulletjournal.com)
Bullet Journaling is a customizable and flexible organizational system designed to help you keep track of your daily tasks, events, and notes. The system was created by Ryder Carroll and involves the use of bullet points, or “bullets,” to indicate different types of information.
The following are the most common symbols used in Bullet Journaling:
- A dot (•) is used to represent a task that needs to be completed.
- An X is used to indicate that a task has been completed.
- A forward arrow (→) indicates that a task has been migrated to a later date.
- A backward arrow (←) indicates that a task has been migrated from a previous date.
- An open circle (○) represents an event.
- A dash (-) represents a note.
- An asterisk (*) is used to indicate priority or importance.
- An exclamation mark (!) is used to indicate urgency.
- A question mark (?) is used to indicate a task that requires further clarification or information.
Other symbols and icons can be used to represent different types of information, depending on the user’s preference and needs. Bullet Journaling is highly customizable, and users are encouraged to experiment with different symbols and layouts to find what works best for them.
