I've been doing bullet journaling for something like 9 or 10 months now. It really helps me stay organized and focused and track my habits. I'm establishing good routines of working on PaperDemon almost daily now. Anyone else into journaling and have tips to share?

I used to journal a lot but there wasn't really a method to the madness, just freewriting my feelings about events of the day mixed with school notes and drafts of poems. Why did you start?

I started so it would help me be more organized and also as an extension of my brain. i have all this stuff floating in my head and i need to write it down so that it doesn't clog my brain anymore. i have a personal one and also a work one.

for my personal one i've started recording my struggles and successes with overcoming my anxiety (it's been really bad the last few months). Writing it out feels like therapy. I can also track better over time how frequently it's a problem.

I'm also tracking habits as well such as exercise, working on PaperDemon, etc. I have a goal to spend at least 20 minutes a day on PaperDemon, either commenting on work, or working on developing the new version.

The bullet journal is also helping me set goals and make sure i don't take on too many things each day. I can easily plan to do a task in the future and not have to worry about it today. It's probably one of the best self improvement things I've learned.

Bullet journaling was one of those things I did before it even had a name. I've started doing it to help me develop a schedule based around the daily habits I already have instead of going against what I already do. To say the least, it has helped my productivity SO SO SO much.

Also it gives me an excuse to buy stickers again. :)

Oh I love stickers! I like these sticker packs:

http://amzn.to/2o6JEce

Also I'm into the washi tape. I like the really thin ones. Most of the washi tapes are too thick:

http://amzn.to/2p5rIwc

I agree I'm much more productive when I use bullet journal. I don't get everything on my list done but at least I am getting more done than i would have without it

...I DO like to write up Notepad docs with productivity contracts - if I get this many things done on my to-do list I can reward myself with this fun activity sort of thing - when I've got a major project in the works, but I usually don't keep the doc when the project is achieved. Is that sort of like bulolet-journalling?

That sounds more like a task list maybe?

What makes bullet journal unique is the planning over time without having a structured journal. So each page can be whatever it needs to be, rather than it being preprinted with a predetermined structure.

I came across another journaling system today:

https://bestself.co/products/self-journal

I haven't tried this but I will look at it more in detail and see if I can apply some of the ideas to my current journal method. 

On Apr 6, 2017, BogusRed said:

Oh I love stickers! I like these sticker packs:

http://amzn.to/2o6JEce

Also I'm into the washi tape. I like the really thin ones. Most of the washi tapes are too thick:

http://amzn.to/2p5rIwc

 

I agree I'm much more productive when I use bullet journal. I don't get everything on my list done but at least I am getting more done than i would have without it

That's a great deal on washi tape! I tend to get my stickers from a vendor on AliExpress since I have a weak spot for cute East Asian stationery. Seeing the price of those sticker books make me feel better about what I've spent.

I've been working on digitizing some old journals of mine, and found something cool I had half-forgotten. Apparently I used to incorporate sketchpages of stuff from dreams sometimes right after I woke up - quick sketches of places I'd been or creatures I met, the face of a boy who'd been telepathically linked with me, whatever. Then I could scribble some notes afterwards if I had the time. But I can pull back an awful lot of a dream just by looking at a sketch - like I see the outline of a staircase from ten years ago, and remember it was raining and the stairs were made of bluish white glass. I might want to bring that back.

woah that's neat. Dreams are cool. That's neat that you captured a log of them. I wish I had done that.