Simple Bullet Journal Tips for Peak Productivity with CharliMarieTV!

Hey everyone! Part of my routine.

Part of filming.

Yeah. Everyone, welcome back. I have my friend Charlie Marie here with me. You may recognize her from a video that we did in the past, last time we were on our ConvertKit team retreat. So really excited to have Charlie just on my channel again. Thank you so much.

Yeah, nice to be here. I think I was in one of your very first videos.

You were, actually the first, which was here, not like 4 houses down. This is Matt, and this is my friend Charlie.

Hi!

Charlie has been a big inspiration to me when it comes to YouTube and has also helped me out a lot. And so almost a year ago exactly, I had 0 subscribers, and I have 2,500, which is amazing. So I'm really excited and grateful for everyone who's been watching. So one of the things— the thing that we're going to be talking about is the Bullet Journal, and we both have the same one.

Yep, twins.

Shout out, uh, Baron Fig. You guys do great. One of the things that I love about the Bullet Journal, and I know you've been keeping one for a while as well, is it's just, it's a way for me to get the ideas out of my head onto paper. And I think there's something, I think we both believe there's something special about the paper. And one of the things that I struggle with though, or like I'm always kind of looking at from a Bullet Journal, any kind of productivity system, does the thing that you're trying to use to keep track of your productivity are you actually able to execute on the task?

Like, are you all planning and no action?

Right. Yeah, you get like the greatest thing done, the greatest thing like out on paper, but then you don't execute on the tasks that you have. So what is, what is one of the ways that you try and go from idea to plan to execute?

So I think one little thing actually is in— and why I like writing things down in the Bullet Journal on paper is that I have a visual view of how many tasks I'm setting for myself each day. So like on an individual day level. In mine, if I hold it up, try and hold it up so you can see. Let's pick a good day.

I'm terrible at holding it up. I'm pretty sure I held it up backwards before. I'm always like holding it upside down.

So my bullet journal, I set every day with two lists. So on the left-hand side is my work tasks and on the right-hand side is my side project tasks. And so I'm putting both of those like under the same day, 'cause I have to do them both on the same day. But if I look at the list and I see there's too many things, there's too many lines here, you know, I know that's too much to get done. And so I should probably look to cut some of that back, 'cause otherwise I'm setting myself up for disappointment. And it takes a while to learn how much is too much, I think, when you're planning.

Definitely.

And using the Bullet Journal, I can literally flip through and see how many tasks I've done to get done on each day and it helps me, yeah, figure that out and know how to plan so that I can get it done.

Yeah, I think when you have a tangible, like, physical reminder like the Bullet Journal or any kind of, whatever kind of planner you use versus instead having an app that you use that is sometimes, even though everything is like literally is stored much better.

Technically, yeah.

It still can be like hard to kind of reach back and grab into it. 'Cause I do something, I do something very similar with mine. And like, here, here are all my days. A lot of you have seen this from past videos, but I have my top tasks on, on the left here. And, um, and then I go through, and I have noticed over the past couple of months of doing this, uh, pretty much every day, I really— out like, in terms of top tasks, I really can only do 3 or 4 core things each day outside of like the normal, like, yeah, day-to-day, like just fill the time tasks.

[Speaker] Something else that just made me think of that I do in mine, I plan out, I have this spread for each month. I have the months down the side, maybe Matt can insert a clip here. And then I split up each week and I put in the main things that I wanna do that week. Because I feel like that's one step up from the per day level and it helps me realize, okay, one day this week I've gotta fit this task in. So that's there for me to make sure that I, yeah, know that that's my focus and don't get too bogged down in the little things that I need to do each day. And that I have to remember to slot this thing in somewhere.

Yeah, I do that very similar with my weeks and months in that I'll say like, okay, I need to have 4 videos done this month. And I know you and I have talked about this, we've talked about this in our team at ConvertKit, the difference between like, the difference in the process of like, how do you have a, you have your goal, but then you have your system and your process that helps you get into that goal. And that's something that I really like about the Bullet Journal is that it does make it a little easier to say like, okay, my weekly goal is to have a— is to have this next video done overall for the month, 4 videos. But in order to do that, like sometime during the week I need to slot in like, this is what I'm going to film, this is when I'm gonna— if I'm gonna do B-roll separately depending on the time, and then edit, SEO, share.

Yeah, yeah, breaking that task down.

We, you know, we kind of pooh-poohed apps just a second ago, but are there any like apps or like digital systems that you use to integrate the two?

I do for our work tasks. We use Basecamp because I feel like the Bullet Journal is great for organizing your personal, like what you have to do. It is terrible for sharing with the team. Like, I'm not gonna take a picture of my Bullet Journal and send it to my team.

Here you go guys.

This is my task list for the week, you know. So we use Basecamp quite heavily, rely on it for that. We each make a to-do list in there each week. And I will generally then take items from that to-do list and put it in my own day in my bullet journal. But will always mark them off in Basecamp so my team knows what I've done. Because like I said, they're not looking at my bullet journal. They can't see my little crosses on the bullet points.

[Speaker] Of course we work at the same place, so using Basecamp also. Is there anything that you use in addition to that from a personal system? I've kind of on and off used Evernote Just 'cause it's so good at capturing so many different types of information and their search functionality is so great. But I've tested with some others. Are there any others that you've found useful?

Yeah, one thing that I don't use my bullet journal for that I know a lot of other people do who make content online is for content planning and like a content calendar. I move things around too much and I was ending up, I had to try it once, crossing things off, you know, putting it on another day. It just got messy. It wasn't how I wanted to work. So I have a spreadsheet that I use for my YouTube content. Yeah, just I have the days that I know I'm gonna upload and then I arrange my videos there. And I have a Trello board where I arrange my video ideas. So every time I get an idea of something to make, I put it on there in like a certain category. And when I need to fill my schedule, I can go to the Trello board and pick out something for the spreadsheet. That system could probably be more efficient, but for now it's working.

What I've, I've had a video before because I've been trying to think about like, how can I have a quick, concise system for capturing ideas in that way so that I can come back to them? And that's where like, um, I use, I've used Trello also, like I said, Evernote, and then, uh, like just a note-taking app called Bear. It's really like nice and lovely, but it's, it's more of just like a markdown, just kind of text editor. Yeah. Cause now I have at times, and bring it with me. A little tiny version of this.

Yeah, I've seen you carrying it. It's very cute.

Yeah, that's what I do it for. Just being able to like take that out and write a quick idea in. One of the last things about, about all this, we've talked about work and our side projects a lot. Do you find the bullet journal good for anything else in terms of a food spending tracker? Nice. Because I spend a lot of money on food.

Right.

Like a sad, maybe not sad, Yes, I have a great example here actually.

I started actually last year trying an expense tracker and things in my bullet journal. Didn't work out for me, so I didn't bother setting up a spread for it this year. One thing I am doing is a 2018 travel spread. I travel a lot, I work remote just like Matt does, and so I basically, I take advantage of that and I go work from a bunch of different places. But it's really hard to keep track of like what I've planned, what I haven't, what I've booked, what I haven't, and so this spread, is where I can write down my trip, write down what I need to have happen for it. Yeah, cross it off when it's done, all in one place, rather than like spreading it out between the weeks and days.

I think that's smart. Yeah, just have like a central hub that you can refer back to those things on. Charlie, thank you so much.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, and thanks for watching. Please make sure that you check out Charlie's channel. I'm going to link to it below and above.

We're going to film a video on there too.

Yes, yes, we are, right after this.

It's going to be about wasting time.

So. How to best do that.

Or not do it.

So make sure you check that out. It's gonna be linked, like I said, above, below. She's got an amazing channel. Can you tell us a little bit about your channel?

Yeah, I'm a designer here at ConvertKit, and I talk about design on YouTube as well. Lots of videos about design thinking, design processes, rather than the traditional tutorials, is sort of what I like to do. And lots about working remotely inside projects. Organisation, that sort of thing as well. So hopefully there'll be something over there that you like.

Awesome, thanks Charlie. Bye everyone.

Bye.