What I Learned From Bullet Journaling For An Entire Week

Bullet journaling is a scientifically proven productivity method to get ahead. In fact, it could be the one system you’re missing in your life if you want to smash your goals, tick off your to-dos, and plan your life in a stress-free way.

The problem is, most people don’t know how to use the bullet journaling method to get ahead. I’ve been using The Master Plan this week to see how the bullet journaling method can supercharge my to-dos and help me be more productive and this is what I learned…

1. Giving yourself objectives for every month makes you more productive

Confession time. I have never created a monthly plan like this before (in my life). I have always given myself top goals and to-dos for the month laid out my appointments and other things I need to do and then got stuck into it.

I took thirty minutes out to create a spread where I could track my top goals for every month of the year. This was a game-changer. I could start to visualize the year ahead and think about what I wanted to achieve. This meant that I could set myself some actionable goals for the future, set a deadline in say October and then work towards that every month.

2. Being realistic with your daily spread will help you get stuff done

Aside from the beautifully designed monthly layout, day-to-day I don’t have time to create some perfectly colored in spread, so I kept it simple. I wrote down the day and the date, created a box where I would time my activities, scribbled out my top to-dos with bullet points next to them and then at the bottom kept some space for notes. Whenever I achieved something or moved

It’s not realistic to think that your daily bullet journal spread is going to be beautiful unless you specifically use it as a beautiful art-type journal and take at least thirty minutes creating artwork to go inside it.

3. Creating a time log might be the best thing you ever do 

If you use the bullet journal correctly, it will change your life by cutting time out of your day. I created a box every day where I would write down where I was and which to-do I was working on at every hour. By doing this, I could really see where my hours went, what took the longest and therefore shift my day to make sure the tasks that took up the most amount of time were scheduled correctly.

I could then tackle the ‘hardest’ task first and make sure that I was ahead of my to-dos. Combine this method with rapid logging (read more about that technique here), and you’ve got a winning formula for a productive day.