Bullet Journaling - how I got here

Yesterday, I wrote a new entry on my shopping list: get a new bullet journal from Thalia. While I wrote the entry carelessly, I wasn't immediately aware of the extent of it. It wasn't until the evening when I was reflecting on the day and writing down my goals for the following day, that it dawned on me. I kept a diary continuously. I filled the first 185 pages with four months of my life. This book contains my thoughts, feelings, and events that moved me, and many little stories about my family and my projects and plans. And I have not yet exploited the full potential of this treasure. I'm still experimenting and trying to find out what works for me. But how did I get to this point – I would like to take you on this journey!

My attempts to write a diary

Even as a teenager, I was fascinated by writing diaries. While sorting through old documents, I recently came across a college notebook. In fifth grade, around Christmas time, I wrote down what happened for about two weeks. Reading this was very moving and brought back old memories that had long since faded. A wonderful feeling. Unfortunately I stopped.

I made a second attempt about 20 years later when my son was born. I bought a beautiful book and formulated my thoughts as a running text in the most beautiful cursive (I can still read it today) - for about a week. After that, nothing more. I can only speculate as to why I stopped. The hustle and bustle surrounding my young family was probably too much.

The third attempt was not a direct diary, but the 6-minute success journal. I started this in January 2021 as a good year's resolution and actually kept it up until June - then the book was full and I didn't buy a new book. When I page through, all I see are to-do lists and checkmarks. Only the gratitude entries give a little insight into what was going on inside me during the days. I understand well why I didn't continue this form of diary.

My conclusion from the experiments

I can say that I don't like long texts in novel form. My writing becomes more and more illegible towards the end of long passages, and I am not comfortable with the time investment required. Furthermore, on the one hand, I was missing the connection to my daily tasks in the daily journal and, on the other hand, a place for long-term and large projects - not to mention a place for wishes, visions, and goals. But the sum of all these aspects is relevant to me. And so I continued searching.

The chance to find in Thalia

This summer, I was walking through a local bookstore named Thalia and found a book about bullet journaling in my hands. I suspected there was another method besides GTD (Get Things Done) and Personal Kanban that promised a lot but didn't help me. Luckily, I had the time to read the cover, and the contents piqued my curiosity. So, the book ended up on my books-to-read pile.

In August a few coincidences came together that made me take up the topic of journaling again. For one thing, the bullet journal was at the top of the reading pile. So I grabbed it and began delving into it during quiet moments over the weekend. Apparently the approach appealed to me. On the other hand, I had a month-long trip to China coming up in September that I really wanted to document. So I was actively looking.

At the same time, I read a Medium article that recommended writing notes in all caps. This forces me to be brief and to penetrate the topic because I write more slowly this way. However, the writing is much easier to read. And a written page just looks cool.

Knowing how to write (in upper case) and how to structure all the stuff (bullet journaling) were my optimal starting point.

The result

The coincidence made me excited to buy a blank book from Paperblanks. I ordered good pens for comfortable writing and just did it. This form of content creation was a good basis for my blog and podcast. It's becoming easier for me to be brave and write content. The crucial thing was the first step.