Bullet Journaling allows you to organize your mind — and your life — while also expressing your individual style. Here, the original creator of bullet journaling and other experts talk about its many benefits and how you can get started.
Bullet Journaling is just one of many journaling methods that can improve your mental health, boost creativity, and even help you sleep better. But it differs from most types of journaling in that it specifically involves goal planning, organization, and, in many cases, wildly creative visual imagery.
This might be why it has inspired a niche community of devotees who have shared over 9 million posts (and counting!) on Instagram under the hashtag #BulletJournal.
A Brief History of Bullet Journaling
The Bullet Journal — also known as BuJo among fans — has a traceable history.
Brooklyn-based product designer Ryder Carroll was diagnosed with an attention-deficit disorder as a teenager, so he came up with tricks to get by in school, one of them being to carry around six different journals. Carroll found that journaling in short bursts throughout the day helped to relieve his anxiety. But it wasn’t until after college when he was taking night courses in web design that he developed the specific system now known as Bullet Journaling.
“Over the years, I started accumulating tools that worked, and eventually synthesized them into the method it has become today,” Carroll explains to DailyOM. “It’s an ongoing process.”
Interested in learning more? Check out A Year of Writing to Uncover the Authentic Self
The Goal of Bullet Journaling and How It Differs From Regular Journaling
If one had to sum up Bullet Journaling in a word, it would be intention.
“The goal of BuJo is to provide practitioners with tools they need to live a more purpose-driven life,” Carroll explains. “Yes, it will help you organize what you’re doing. More importantly, it will help you clarify why you’re doing what you’re doing. This thought process is critical to achieving results: Purpose is what makes results meaningful.”
The Bullet Journal system asks you to focus on your goals, both immediate and long-term, and why you want to achieve them.
“Whereas journaling can create awareness, BuJo also provides the tools needed to put that awareness into action,” Carroll says.
Bullet Journaling 101: A Quick Rundown on How to Get Started
Your Bullet Journaling Toolbox
If you’re a Bullet Journal beginner, all you need to get started is a blank notebook and a pen or pencil. Your laptop and cellphone are of no use here — the Bullet Journal method is all about analog.
Why? Carroll says using technology can lead to more distractions (research agrees) and using pen and paper allows for more customization, so you can really make the system your own.
Researchers Pam A. Mueller and Daniel M. Oppenheimer found that taking notes by hand is better for information processing than typing them out. In other words, handwriting something may improve your ability to remember it.
“The beauty of a Bullet Journal is that it's so versatile and unique to each individual.”
Last but not least, it’s just more fun.
4 Steps to Start a Bullet Journal
Bullet Journaling is like a marriage between chaotic mind-dumping and highly organized life planning. In an introduction to one of his Bullet Journaling courses, Carroll calls it a “mindfulness practice disguised as a productivity system.”
Step 1: It starts with an Index, where you record the page number of each of your logs.
Step 2: Then, you have a Future Log, which is a bird’s-eye view of your entire year.
Step 3: Next, you break the year down with the Monthly Log, where you track tasks that need to be done over the course of the month.
Step 4: Last, you have your Daily Logs, where you list the things you need to get done on a specific day.
Each log serves as much more than a simple to-do list. In addition to bulleted phrases of things you need to accomplish (marked by a dot), you can also include events you have coming up (denoted by a circle) and random notes (indicated by a dash). To mark something as a priority, you can add a star next to it.
Among these staple logs, you can sprinkle in other kinds of logs, depending on what you need. Examples of these miscellaneous logs include Collections (where you can group related thoughts) and trackers for things like mood, sleep, and food. As long as you remember to add the page number to your Index, the possibilities are endless.
Migrating Bullet Journal Tasks
With Bullet Journaling, not finishing a task that you’ve assigned yourself one day doesn’t mean that it will disappear into the void. Instead, through a process called Migration, you go back and review all of the tasks you’ve written down. Cross out all the tasks you’ve completed, and then take a closer look at the things you didn’t get around to doing.
Ask yourself if any unfinished tasks are still worth your time. If not, forget about them. If you still need to take care of them, turn each entry’s dot into a right arrow and copy it into the next month’s log. This process is designed to keep you focused on the tasks that are worth your time, so you can stop feeling stressed and slammed, and start feeling accomplished.
Tips for Getting Creative With Your Bullet Journal
Research shows that drawing words may boost memory recall more than writing them out, because it combines both the physical act of drawing with a visual aspect. But there are other reasons why people often associate Bullet Journaling with artistic creativity.
“I primarily use my Bullet Journal as a creative outlet first and an organizational tool second,” says Louise, a content creator known as doodlelou.co on Instagram.
She began Bullet Journaling in 2018, and has since amassed over 33,000 Instagram followers who admire her minimal and playful BUJO entries.
“I find that being creative and adding personal decorative elements to each page encourages me to use my journal more,” she says.
If you want to start getting more creative with your Bullet Journal, Louise recommends starting simple and developing your own style as you go along.
“You should be using your Bullet Journal to suit your lifestyle and not trying to fit your life into a Bullet Journal,” she says. “There are some elements of Bullet Journaling that you won’t need or use and that’s okay. The beauty is that it’s so versatile and unique to each individual.”
BuJo fan Nikki Diminch tells DailyOM, “Bullet Journaling was the perfect option because it was just for me. I didn’t care if the images were beautiful or perfect, as long as they were functional and made me happy. I start each day with exercise, meditation, and journaling/planner-ing. I like being able to plan my life the way that most makes sense for what I do and love!”
One thing that Oppenheimer, who spoke to DailyOM for this article, advises to keep in mind is that focusing too much on the aesthetics of the Bullet Journal may be detrimental to remembering your tasks and achieving your goals.
“Graphics are often more memorable than text, so taking notes with pictures may be more memorable under the right contexts and also would be more visually interesting,” he says. “But it might also distract from the core message of the notes, so that could hurt memory.”
So, get as creative as you want with your Bullet Journal, but remember to keep the content of your logs in mind as well.
“Keep it simple, keep it relevant, and keep it personal,” Carroll says. “It’s an ongoing process of experimentation and reflection. It’s easy to get distracted and discouraged by what others are doing. Don’t worry about them, and have fun. Your practice is your playground.”
Potential Health Benefits of Bullet Journaling
Thousands of studies have already proven that regular journaling can have tons of benefits, including helping to improve your working memory, reducing symptoms of depression and anxiety, and even boosting your immune system. And while scientists have yet to publish any research on Bullet Journaling specifically, experts believe that the positive impacts of the practice may be very real.
In fact, Bullet Journaling may have a leg up on regular journaling when it comes to relaxing your mind. A study on sleep split participants into two groups: One group was asked to write a to-do list before bed, while the other was asked to write about things they had already done, more in the style of traditional journaling. Researchers found that those who wrote to-do lists fell asleep significantly faster than the other group. In addition, the more specific participants were in their to-do lists, the faster they were able to snooze, while the opposite trend was seen in those journaling about completed tasks.
Other research found that writing to-do lists and planning out how one is going to achieve their goals helped participants to reduce intrusive thoughts and distractions, allowing them to be more productive overall.
Bullet Journaling may also help to mitigate something called the Zeigarnik effect, a theory that says that our brains tend to dwell on unfinished tasks. “When things are left incomplete, we feel uncomfortable, and our attention remains drawn to it until we can find some kind of resolution,” says Dr. Roma Kumar, a New Delhi-based psychologist with over 30 years of experience and a founding partner of Emotionally.in, whom DailyOM spoke with for this story. “The Zeigarnik effect states that people tend to remember unfinished or incomplete tasks better than the completed tasks.”
Dr. Kumar says writing to-do lists makes your tasks seem more manageable, helps you stay focused, and gives you a sense of achievement when you complete them, motivating you to continue moving forward. “Bullet Journaling can be a useful aid to our well-being. It helps to create an outlet, identify our patterns, track habits, introspect, and reflect.”
