Update: The Bullet Journaling series is still one of the most popular essays on our website. If this is the first time you have viewed the series, I wanted to let you know that I still use the setup described. I’ve changed some of the names in the index; however, I run the system as outlined below and in parts 2 and 3. Thank you for reading. Today is September 27, 2023. I’ve also written a condensed version for publication on Medium; it can be found here.

Bullet Journaling using Todoist Part 3

First, let me apologize if you are here to read about hiking and climbing and found this strange blog. Second I apologize if you are lost in the hiking/climbing trip reports looking for thoughts on Bullet Journaling using Todoist. This is the only access I have to the internet, and I wanted to get some ideas out there that have benefited me regarding bullet journaling and Todoist.

I assume you know a little about Bullet Journaling and perhaps a little or a lot about Todoist. I don’t want to take a lot of time, but let me give a brief history of how I arrived at this point. I am, by nature, a “productivity student.” Ever since I went to college in the late 70s and needed money to live and eat, upon writing my father and asking for some cash, he sent me a book entitled “You can, if you think you can.” I’m pretty sure I sold the first book without reading it, but I soon fell in love with the “self help” concept. Granted, in the ’70s and ’80s, it was more vague concepts than practical. Nothing along the lines of - here’s how you do it step by step - but it was a start.

I was soon familiar with the Franklin Planner but favored Stephen Covey’s philosophy and methods. First Things First is still one of my favorite books. I soon grew tired of the weekly analysis from the top-down approach of Mission to planning the week. I had trouble remembering to take out the garbage on Thursday, and Mr. Covey had me planning to take over the world every week. Next came David Allen, who stood in relief at Mr. Covey’s top-down approach and Mr. Allen’s bottom-up approach. Clear the runway (small daily items) and give yourself the bandwidth to move up to higher altitudes. This resonated with me, and I have successfully kept Getting Things Done as my primary methodology at work.

Work has pretty solid, defined edges, and working with an astute Branch Manager; things move along very smoothly using Projects, next actions, and the other essential Context items of Mr. Allen’s approach. Where things always got messy for me is having the same defined edges in my personal life. Keeping a context-based list of @calls, @home, and @errand for personal items seems to last only a few days or weeks before the wheels would come off the wagon. I tried cards, mind mapping, copy-paste, and finally, Todoist. Todoist seemed to give me the best Band-Aid for keeping track of items, with the added bonus of being accessible from work. It was still just a Band-Aid, but Todoist allowed the process to move forward with its sync between different devices and being able to bounce between work and home computers. The one thing that constantly plagued me about the Getting Things Done methodology was being able to capture everything, and I mean everything so that it was out of my brain and into a trusted system.

A few months ago, as has been common over the past 15 years, an idea I wasn’t familiar with caught my eye. A book outlining how to start a Bullet Journal appeared in my Kindle Unlimited. I downloaded the book, scanned, read it, and quickly returned it after seeing all the fancy pages of paper and the artistic script and coloring for each day. But something stuck this weird concept of logs of tasks, symbols, and events, the idea of capturing notes in short phrases, almost like shorthand, and using that to “track the past, organize the present, and plan for the future” - Ryder Carroll.

I downloaded and skimmed a few more books, but I couldn’t bring myself to go back to paper. Just couldn’t do it. I Googled using Todoist for bullet journaling and found some strange hybrid ideas of people using a combination of paper and Todoist (some even written by Todoist employees). But I could find nothing outlining a bullet journal on Todoist. I looked seriously at Ryder Carroll’s new book, The Bullet Journal Method: Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future but couldn’t bring myself to pay the price of the book, especially after reading some reviews. I am, after all, a member of the cheaper Amazon Unlimited group. I finally downloaded The Minimalist Bullet Journal Method by April Wills. It’s small, easy to understand, free with my unlimited subscription, and although lacking in illustrations, it gives a straightforward method of creating a bullet journal.

I was bound and determined to use an electronic platform, and Todoist was still my preferred application. Somewhere during chapter 4 and “The Step-by-Step Guide to Bullet Journaling,” it dawned on me that by using Todoist - I didn’t need an Index. Todoist already provides an index on the left-hand side of the screen. Setting up the Future Log was as easy as adding a “Future Log” project and additional indented monthly logs underneath - April 2019, May 2019, etc. A separate daily log was created quickly, and adding tomorrow’s date - 2019-04-25 as a new project indented under the daily log kept the index nice and clean. I played around the dots “.” and dashes “-” using Todoist until I realized that a simple flag for @Task, @notes, and @events allows me to tag items much faster than trying to type in the “…” or the “—-” and have them large enough to make sense in the electronic format. I spent about an hour transitioning all my recent meetings to the Future Log and their respective months by utilizing the shortcut # hashtag followed by the name of the monthly log. I then needed to practice capturing information as it flowed into my day, making the appropriate @task or @note. Schedule an appointment. No problem, @event followed with the date and time. Some Bonus features? Todoist links with my Google Calendar, so I don’t need to update more than one application.

I’m going to end the written blog part here for those familiar with both Bullet Journal and Todoist; I’m going to come back and create a part 2 with exactly how I set Todoist up and how I am currently using it to collect things in my life. On the first day, I captured ten items, the second 32. I cleaned out my email and inbox on the third day, took a nap, read the Wall Street Journal, and captured 65 items. And I haven’t even begun to talk about forwarding emails direct to Todoist inbox, dragging and dropping PDFs, or starting a collection of inspiring memes. Good luck, and we’ll break it down further with part 2 for Bullet Journaling using Todoist.