Drowning in my BuJo

When I took on a management role some time ago I ran into my own limits in a big way. I was juggling way more than I could fit into my head, and I was trying to cope by taking notes. My note-taking was kind of ad-hoc though, so when I found out about Bullet Journaling, it seemed like a God-sent.

Here was a system which did everything I tried to achieve, but in a way more structured way and with years of evolution behind it.

Now, for those you that are now thinking of beautifully crafted artful books with tons of colours and illustrations: that’s not what I’m talking about.

Bullet Journaling was originally envisioned as a coping tool for the author’s ADHD, and the basic method is actually really Spartan and simple. It fit the way my brain works perfectly.

There is a post I’d like to write at some point about how I combined org-mode and Bullet Journaling into a symbiotic system, but this post is more about the mental aspects of dealing with a Bullet Journal.

A friend recently told me “If your to-do list has more than 3 items on it, you’re in trouble.”

I kind of scoffed at that, since my list tends to easily have a dozen items every day. There is a lot that I deal with, with client work, company internal work and work for the Joy of Coding conference.

It kind of stuck in my mind though, and in a way she was very much right. I got into the habit of writing stuff I should do “at some moment” into my BuJo and for a while that felt wonderful. I was actually remembering stuff, I could unburden my brain by writing it down and have my BuJo be my external memory.

What I underestimated was how much forgetting stuff kept me from burning myself out. Now that tasks no longer just slipped my mind, they kept piling up. I started to feel paralysed by the list of things waiting for me each day.

At first I tried doing more strict triage, making decisions if stuff really needed doing now or if I could postpone or cancel it. That helped a little, but in the end it wasn’t enough.

My new rule now is twofold:

• If I get in trouble for not doing something, it goes into my BuJo
• If I think something will be fun or useful to do, I’ll either remember it or I’ll forget. If I forget, it wasn’t so important after all.

Basically I was leaning too heavily on the BuJo, and though it can be a useful crutch it also started to hinder me. So, let’s see what the new regime does.