10 Simple Ways to Use a Minimalist Bullet Journal for Productivity

Hi everyone, my name is Matt, and welcome to another Bullet Journal productivity video. I am so excited to have you here. What I'm doing in the video today is following up on my popular collaboration with Amy Landino on top 10 Bullet Journal tips, and sharing with you the top 10 things that I use a Bullet Journal for. There are so many things that you can use a Bullet Journal for, and one of the great things about a Bullet Journal is it can be whatever you make it to be. In fact, that was my 5th tip, is that make the Bullet Journal yours. However, there are a handful of things, let's say 10 uses, that are very popular and easy to implement and set up in your Bullet Journal. So that's what I'm going to show you today. Before we get started though, speaking of setting up a Bullet Journal, this coming Sunday, August 30th, 2020, I'm going to start a whole week of Bullet Journal setup videos. These are going to be 6 video lessons, 6 live Q&A and walkthroughs every single day, Sunday through Friday, showing you exactly how to set up your Bullet Journal, how to get it ready for, you know, whatever thing you want to use it for, whether it's habit trackers or time management or goal setups or anything that you want to do. Just a way to set up your Bullet Journal and be successful with it, taking out a lot of the stress, a lot of the, well, it doesn't, it doesn't look like this other YouTubers, or it doesn't look like these beautiful Bullet Journals I see on Instagram. None of that really matters when it comes to your Bullet Journal and the way that you set it up. So, go to bulletjournalsetup.com. That's where you're going to be able to join. There's going to be a community that you're a part of, a special group that I set up. Like I said, it's 6 lessons, 6 days, 6 templates, 6 live Q&As that you can attend. All the replays are going to be available to you as well. So, this is if you're just getting started with the Bullet Journal, or you want some more tips, you just want to be a part of the community in a deeper way. Go to bulletjournalsetup.com to join. Now, even if you're watching this after the fact and you missed kind of the live setup, you can still join, you can still be a part of the replays, and you'll automatically be added to, like, the live walkthrough setups that we'll do later in the year as well. Okay, now that you know about the Bullet Journal Setup Series, let's go ahead and jump into those top 10 uses for your Bullet Journal. Now, the first thing that I ever used a Bullet Journal for, and what I recommend people start with, is just using the Bullet Journal as a task manager. And the way that I did that initially was setting up the daily log and writing down, like, this is what I want to do today. And then it kind of shifted into being a little bit more of a master task list, where I just wrote down everything that I knew I needed to do for that week, things that got added to, you know, my plate, as it were. And then I could just, like, you know, migrate them into the day that I wanted to get them done, or that I knew that they were due. The second use— I'm not going to do the fingers all the time, so it'll be like, the eighth use. Not like that. But the second use for your Bullet Journal is really great as a daily highlight. Now, you could think of this as a daily journal prompt as well, but one of the ways that I teach people to get started with daily, like, journal writing is just to write down their highlight of the day, or an observation of the day. That way, you just get in the practice of thinking about what you enjoyed, or what you observed during the day. And so, using the Bullet Journal as a place to put your daily highlight is a really effective way., not just to pay attention to your world and to your life, but also to practice that journaling habit. The third use of a Bullet Journal is as a monthly calendar or a monthly layout. I do this really simply. It's just a simple grid of the day of the month, the day of the week associated with that, like, numerical day, and then writing down those primary events. So whether it's a birthday or maybe an important meeting that I might have, Those are the things that I write down on my monthly spread, and it just helps me give like a good month at a glance at things that I want to know are coming up. This is actually the first way that I recommend people usually putting together like an active future log. Just by doing it a month at a time initially, this will help you see the things that you have coming up, and you'll get in the practice of being like, okay, I need to start planning for that thing that's coming up later in the month or in the future. The fourth way that you can use your bullet journal is as a project planner. Now, not many people think of a bullet journal in this way, because it can be kind of hard to thread the different, like, ideas or concepts or tasks that you have for a project in kind of the daily, weekly, monthly spread of a bullet journal. Now, I have a whole entire video, and this is something we'll talk about in the setup series as well, of how to thread and reference ideas, concepts, tasks between your bullet journal, even multiple journals that you might be using. So that is something that you can do, but the way that I set up a project plan in my Bullet Journal is to first add it just basically as a collection. So I write down, say, like, Bullet Journal Setup Series Course and Live Videos. That would be a project that I would set up as a collection in my Bullet Journal. That way I can brainstorm there, I can list notes, I can put like, you know, the first like semblances of to-do lists, or remember to think about this., and then I'll thread it, I'll reference it back to the actual daily tasks that I have in my daily log. The 5th use of a Bullet Journal, and this one is a lot more popular, is to use it as a type of tracker. Now, there are any number of things that you can track in a Bullet Journal. Habits are very popular. I like to track my time as well. But what I do for my habit tracker in the Bullet Journal, again, just to keep it really simple, just to keep it really minimal so I can like make the mark and move on with my day, is that I'll put my habit tracker alongside the monthly schedule, the monthly layout. That way I have everything that goes across the like same line, the same row in the Bullet Journal. And the 4 main habits that I track are meditation, movement, reading, and journaling. But just using that as a habit tracker really helps me like stay motivated to make sure that I'm doing those 4 things that I know make a real difference in my life. The 6th use of your Bullet Journal can be as a goal planner and a goal tracker. Kind of similar to a project planner, I'll give you that, but when you think about it specifically as a goal that you want to achieve. And I have a video about this called the QMWD Framework that I'll link to you up here and also is going to be a part of a future course on goal setting, so keep an eye out for that. But the way that you think through a goal with the QMWD framework, and you can set this up again as a collection in your Bullet Journal, is to think about what is the thing that I want to achieve, a big goal that I want to achieve at the end of the quarter, and then what do I have to do each month in order to achieve, in order to achieve that quarterly goal? What do I have to do each week to reach the milestone at the end of each month? And then what do I have to do every day to reach the weekly milestone? Kind of, kind of a big topic, more than I can talk about in this relatively short video. So make sure you check out the, like, complete goal-setting framework video here and in the description below. But that is a really good use of your bullet journal. Number 7, and one of my favorite uses for a bullet journal, and really for any kind of paper product, is to use it as a brainstorm session. These are ways that I think through new videos or courses or like articles that I want to write, of anything creative that I want to do usually starts as a brainstorm session on my Bullet Journal. And that could be mind mapping, it could be list making, it could be drawing a bunch of things, you know, back and forth together and like just connecting the dots for ideas that I have. And this always works best for me as a like thing that I can do, a use that I have for the Bullet Journal. The 8th use for your Bullet Journal, and kind of similar to the 2nd one, is to keep a gratitude log in your Bullet Journal. This could be an entire collection by itself. I like to just write down something that I'm grateful for in the daily log, just as a single line. Could just be something new that I'm thinking about, could be something that I've been grateful for, uh, for a really long time, but maybe don't, like, take the time to truly, like, write it down and like even contact that person. But using it as a way that as you're looking back through your daily logs, you're thinking, I was really grateful for that today. And, you know, again, similar to number 2, oh, this was a highlight of the day, this was a thing that I was grateful for. Having those two like entries in your daily log can really tie together your day and make it very memorable and something that like as you're looking back, you're like, oh my gosh, I remember that, that was so, that was so special, or like that was such a, you know, pivotal time in my my life. The 9th way to use your bullet journal is to use it as a future log as well. And I have to say, I have struggled a lot with future logs in the past because things seem to happen, like, that kind of change them up. And, you know, 2020— if you're watching this, you're like in the future— 2020 was like the worst year to have a future log because I actually tried to do it at the beginning. There's like, all right, whole year, here's what we're gonna do, it's gonna be great. And then all of those things got crossed off one by one. Weddings, trips, all those, you know, bunch of stuff that I was planning on just got crossed off. One of the things that I do for a future log, and this is, you know, just a bigger thing about the bullet journal as well, is if you have to cross stuff off, it's not, you know, it's okay, don't worry about that. But it does help me get a look ahead. Usually I'll do a future log with about 6 months in advance. Because— and the reason I do 6 instead of 12 usually is because I don't usually keep the same bullet journal for more than 6 months. I fill it up and I move on. But that allows me, just like I said in the monthly layout, it allows me to see what's coming and just keep in my mind the things that I need to be prepared for. Speaking of which, the 10th and final way that I get a lot of use out of my bullet journal is by using it as an up next Project Planner, you know, idea collection. And what I do with this is it is a collection, so I have it, you know, set aside at, you know, a later place in my bullet journal. And I just kind of keep a running project list in there of things that I know are coming up next. Now, the way that I think through projects is very tightly associated with Tiago Forte's PARA framework. So if you haven't heard of that before, check out the link to the blog post in the description below. But that's where I have, like, these are the things that are coming up next. It's like a combination of, here are my projects, here are some tasks, here's the future log. It's kind of a, it's a combination and a juxtaposition, if I'm using that word properly, of all three of those things. So it's a way, it's a place, it's a collection where they all come together in my, like, this is my up next projects or tasks. Thank you so much for watching this video. I'd love to hear in the comments what you like to use your bullet journal for. Do you already use some of these things that I brought up? Are there other ones that you use it for? One of the great things about not just the YouTube community, but the Bullet Journal community in general, is that I love how everyone shares different ideas, concepts, and strategies. So don't be afraid to share yours. We love hearing from you. Let us know the ways that you use your Bullet Journal in the comments below. The best answer, again, wins a Baron Fig Confidant notebook. So just let me know and make sure to like and subscribe at this video and this channel. Also, make sure that if you're interested in being a part of the Bullet Journal Setup Series starting this August 30th, Sunday— I believe that's a Sunday. Yes, yes it is. Make sure you click the link in the description below and you will get all the details you need on how to be a part of this first, like, community live series that we're going to be doing. We'll do a couple more towards the end of the year, but this is our first, like, really fun one that we're going to be doing. So thank you so much for watching, thank you for joining, and I'll see you in the next video. Thanks, bye!