A Digital Bullet Journal for a Paperless Lifestyle

A bullet journal, also known as a BuJo, is a simple personal organisation system designed by Ryder Carroll. A BuJo helps you keep track of your activities, organise, and hopefully maximise the productivity of your life. In short, it is my life saviour.

Bullet Journaling

The BuJo community

My Instagram search result for #bulletjournal

When Carroll first designed the bullet journal, he kept it simple. A notebook, nothing too fancy, small enough you can fit into a bag without too much hassle. Simple bullet point lists. But, over time, as his community of bullet journal users grows, so does the design.

A simple search on Pinterest or Instagram would leave you overwhelmed with pretty, aesthetic, and even partly complicated designs of bullet journal spreads. The BuJo is not only an organisation system anymore, it is a creative outlet, a community of artists who share the same passion.

My first feeble attempt

I was intimidated to join the BuJo community. My handwriting is decent, and so is my drawing. But they are nothing compared to the immaculate spreads I saw on social media. My first attempt at a BuJo looked ugly compared to others, even though I tried my best to design it.

Eventually, the intimidation got on my nerves. I abandoned my bullet journal, despite having benefited a lot from its original purpose - a personal organisation.

Google Calendar

This was around the same time I switched to being paperless. My backpack consisted of only my laptop, iPad, and chargers. Bringing an extra notebook and pens did not make sense to me anymore. But, I still needed a way to organise my life.

Google Calendar was a sufficient substitute. I colour-code my events, set up notifications, and try out the time blocking method. It is… decent. The Google Calendar helps me organise my life to a certain extent. But something is still missing.

I miss the freedom I had with a bullet journal. Despite being intimidated by the creativity of many bullet journal users, I still enjoyed its freedom for organisation and creativity. Tried as I did, I could not replicate this exact thrill with Google Calendar.

Notion

After much hesitation and many failed attempts to find a bullet journal app that fits my requirement, I bit the bullet and used Notion. Still, it took me three rounds of installing and uninstalling to finally use the app.

My Pinterest search for Notion

Like with the BuJo, I was intimidated by the sheer force of the Notion community. How are people so good at it? How do they make their Notion pages so pretty and so complicated? Why, for the love of all things holy, do I need formulas to set up my habit tracker? Why can’t I just use Notion’s built-in setting? I thought it was supposed to be simple.

The Art of Not Giving a Fuck

A lightbulb moment. It is supposed to be simple. And most of all, it should work for me, not them. I realised I wasted months stressing about my BuJo spreads and subsequently my Notion pages for nothing!

BuJo and Notion are first and for most a personal organisation system. They must first work for me. Yes, the added flowers, plugins, and whatnot are so aesthetically pleasing to gaze at. But I do not need them. Maybe a photo to make it less plain. But it is up to me.

My digital BuJo

With this revelation, which in itself should have been obvious from the beginning, I design my digital bullet journal with the help of Notion and Google Calendar. It is nowhere near the level of any famous YouTuber or Instagramer. But, for the first time, I do not care about them anymore.

It works, finally. I have a decent-looking digital bullet journal, where I have my shit together. I combine my paperless lifestyle and my need for organisation in one app which I can access from everywhere. And it feels freaking powerful.

So, what can you learn from this rambling of mine? I am not advertising Notion. It works for me, finally, but it might not be the right one for you. Same with BuJo. (Although, if you do need help setting up a simple digital BuJo with Notion, I will gladly help you).

No, what you can learn from this is to not compare yourself with others on social media. Most social media content is heavily filtered anyway. Focus on yourself: what you need, which app/platform is best suited for you, and just do it.