“Whether you avidly kept your journal, or have always wanted to explore its benefits, The Bullet Journal Method simplifies the power of pen on paper, it will transform your life more than you can imagine ”, writes Hal Elrod, author of The Miracle Morning. And Ryder Carroll, the inventor of the Bullet Journal, has indeed imagined a tool that is both very simple and very useful for getting organized. Its primary goal: to be able to focus on the right thing at the right time. His method, moreover, does not require a lot of material, since a simple notebook and a pen are enough!

“I have long believed that the Bullet Journal translation meant ‘bullet journal’, and therefore organizing my lists, with this system, was as effective as putting all my tasks under threat. revolver…”, writes Marie-Hélène on her blog. She was wrong: The Bullet Journal is a “bullet journal,” or bulleted lists. When Marie-Hélène discovered it, she realized that the system is so simple that she even wondered why she hadn’t invented it herself …

“To try is to adopt it”, sings Thomas Fersen in Puss in Boots, one of his famous songs… It could well be the case, with this Bullet Journal, and that you adopt it when you decide that you need a brand new organization, requiring neither wifi connection, nor having a charged laptop… All you have to do here is love the smell of paper, and the screeching of sharpened pencil, fountain pens or colored markers on the blank page … 

The best is to choose a small size, type A5 or A6, easier to carry in a bag than the A4 size. The main function of this notebook is to organize lists of tasks to be carried out, to follow them, and to check them off when everything is finished.

At a young age, Ryder Carroll, the inventor of the Bullet Journal, faced academic difficulties: for example, when he entered elementary school, his performance was poor, so that he spent most of his summers in specialized schools, and psychologists’ offices. He had even been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. But his inability to control his attention wasn’t due to the fact that he couldn’t concentrate: it was simply related to difficulty focusing on the right thing at the right time. In short, to be present.

Ryder Carroll then showed himself fascinated by order and discipline, qualities which seemed to him as beautiful as they seemed foreign to him. And so he set up, after much trial and error, a system that worked to help him organize himself. A system combining planning, diary, notebook, to-do lists… It then became for him a formidable tool, which helped him to tame his impatient mind. Many years later, at the company where he worked as a web designer, he showed his organizational system to a colleague. And he discovered that this “Bullet Journal” could be of use to many others …

Your Bullet Journal contains tasks – that is, everything you have to do – sometimes made up of sub-tasks. It also includes events, such as dates, birthdays, family meals, etc. Finally, you can also write notes there, which are ideas, or references to keep.

Everyone can then choose their own bullets (bullets): these visually organize the lists. These bullets are checkboxes, for example you can choose squares for tasks, circles for events, and even triangles or black dots, for anything related to ideas. And thus, appointments scheduled for the day, tasks to be accomplished and phone calls to be made will be perfectly visible! Once the tasks are done, you check them off.

The first page of the notebook is an index. It contains, with the title, such as the month concerned, the corresponding page number. Your Bullet Journal is therefore numbered. Each page on which the notes are grouped has a title.

You must also keep your calendar well, and reserve for each month two pages with the calendar of the current month: on the left is the number of the day (you will need a notebook with 31 lines), on the right the list of the most important things. important things to do during this month! Now it’s up to you to adapt these few basic concepts to your own needs …

See at a glance all of its tasks, the day’s events, and its notes: this organizational tool has proven its worth in the often toxic world of online communities. The Bullet improves your productivity, while ensuring conscientious work.

The example of Sandy, recounted by Ryder Carroll, is significant: extremely disorganized and frequently subject to forgetfulness, the adoption of the Bullet Journal was, for this mother of a family, the occasion both to manage to organize , but also to succeed in freeing up time for his own passions. Now, every morning, even before looking at her phone, she devotes herself for fifteen minutes to handwriting.

Lack of self-awareness is a disease linked to the digital age. In an age where we are more connected than ever, we can quickly, too, be led to lose ourselves. The Bullet Journal method offers a refuge from this overly technologically charged world, it allows you to focus on what is really worth it.

“The simple fact of asking yourself to write down your goals in life goes much further than a simple improvement of the organization, writes Ryder Carroll in The Bullet Journal Method. It can help reconnect with yourself, and with the things that really matter ”. No, life is not just a list of things to do, and it is necessary to preserve your dreams and goals, to cultivate your purpose …