Monday, February 12, 2018

My Bullet Journal presentation from the 2017 Moonlight & Magnolias -- part 6

Sorry, all, I'm late posting this part because I've been crafting like crazy for a friend's wedding that's in TWO WEEKS!!!! And because  I forgot to write it in my Bullet Journal. Oops!

Anyway, moving on. :)  This section of the presentation is about the beauty of the Bullet Journal -- literal and figurative.

If you're not familiar with the literal beauty of Bullet Journals, check out pictures of Habit Trackers and Mood Mandalas and other fun, colorful things at Instagram and Pinterest. You can also get a lot of inspiration from YouTube -- videos of how to do different types of lettering, for example. I find taking a few more seconds to write out the date and day in a style different from my own handwriting can jog me out of an unthinking rut and make me more aware of the day that's coming up.

There are also tons of decorations out there you can play with -- washi tape, stickers, stencils, rubber stamps. I'm not going to link Etsy here because you should only go looking there if you have at least two hours of spare time. It. Is. Addictive. :D  The literal beauty of bullet journals is never-ending.

For me, the figurative Beauty of the BuJo is the Migration. Remember back in part 1 of these posts, when I talked about how To-Do lists intimidate me? An unfinished task on a To-Do list either looms over me, squatting on the list, or it's there for so long that my eyes just stop seeing it completely and I forget about it.

In the last post, I explained that Migration is moving an unfinished task from the current day to the next day. For me, it makes the Daily Log a more dynamic version of a To-Do list, so even if the same task shows up again and again, it doesn't feel like it's squatting/looming, and because I write it again if I don't get it done, I don't stop seeing it, either.

"Isn't writing the same unfinished task over and over kind of a pain in the rear?" I hear you ask. The answer is, "Yes." And that's the point.

Migration makes you think about WHY a task is on your list. Why it didn't get done that day, and how it will get done tomorrow.

If it's a small task, something that will take only a few minutes, and yet I've migrated it more than twice, I'll throw up my hands and tell myself, "Just do it!" Then it's done and I can put an X over the dot.

If it's a big task not getting done, it might be a Project. You may need to break it into smaller tasks.

If it's a task that you keep migrating, then you need to ask: do I really need to do it? If the answer is "No,", cross it out. Declutter your life.

If the answer is "Yes," so you need to migrate the task yet again, you need to think about WHY you keep putting it off.

Migration is not just for getting things done (eventually), it's also to reflect on why you're doing what you're doing. Are the tasks you've set for yourself important? Are you making the best use of your time? Will this task enrich my life?

Migration also makes you schedule tasks realistically. You can't do 50,000 things in one day. If you schedule 50,000 things on a day, you're setting yourself up for failure.

A migrated task is marked with a right-arrow. There's also a use for a left-arrow: scheduling. That's when you can't get to a task on that day, and you know you won't get to it on the next day, so instead of Migrating it to the next day, you Schedule it for a future date in your Monthly Log or even your Future Log.

On one hand, Scheduling keeps your task "active". You won't lose it; you'll get to it someday.

On the other hand, for procrastinators like me, Scheduling means casting a task into the nebulous future instead of getting it done in the concrete present. It's part of the "schedule tasks realistically" idea. If you can't get something done on that day or in the next few days, it might be better to leave it on your Monthly or Future Log. It's okay to not get everything done at once. It would be unrealistic to expect to get everything done at once.

One of the biggest BuJo fails I had was with my Habit Trackers. I was calling them "Dailies" because it was a list of everything I wanted to do every day. ("Habit Trackers" are more about good habits you want to cultivate by doing certain tasks every day.) I had a Dailies list that took up an entire page. There were about 25 items on it, and day after day, I failed to get most of them done. I finally went through and took a guess at the number of minutes each task would take. Turns out I'd set myself tasks that would take, in total, about four hours every day to complete, and that wasn't including things like feeding and playing with the cats or spending some time with the spousal unit.

If I were a more disciplined person, maybe I could fit those four hours of tasks into my day, but I like having some free time, some down time. By not being realistic about what I would--and would--do, I set myself up for failure.

Now my Habit Trackers are the bare minimum, things I REALLY want to get into the habit of doing, things I know would make my life better, like getting to bed at a reasonable time, getting exercise, remembering to take my vitamins, etc. I don't always get them done, but getting to color in a pretty chart is a small incentive. :)

In the past few blogs, you've learned how to start your Bullet Journals with your Index and Future Log. You've created a Monthly Log for the current month, and I hope you're keeping up with Daily Logs. You now know how to migrate tasks you didn't get done, and you know about crossing off tasks if they're really not necessary/important/improving your life in some way.

In the next post, which will be the last post in this series, I'll give you a few tips and other ideas to keep in mind, and hopefully post some pictures so it will be more interesting than this one. :)




Monday, February 5, 2018

My Bullet Journal presentation from the 2017 Moonlight & Magnolias -- part 5

The Basics of the BuJo, continued, because I droned on too long about notebooks in the last post.


Last post we started our journals by labelling the first two pages as the Index, then taking the next few pages for the Future Log (six months or longer), then we started a Monthly Log for February. We also touched briefly on Daily Logs.

Daily Logs are the heart of the BuJo. I mentioned Tasks (dot), Notes (dash), and Events (circle). What I didn't get to was Rapid Logging.

Rapid Logging just means writing short sentences. Ideally, what you write for each Task, Note, or Event will fit on a line. Ryder, the creator of the Bullet Journal, has a interesting idea behind Rapid Logging: besides getting your thoughts down quickly, each rapid-logged line has the same emotional weight.

So on a single day, you might have "grocery shop", which is a task, "Austin moon towers" which is a note about something interesting you heard about, and "signed divorce papers", which is an event. Each of those items should fit on one line as you Rapid Log them.

You probably have some feelings about the "signed divorce papers" event. Instead of fitting it all on that line, go ahead and find a blank space in your journal to write out your feelings about signing divorce papers. Or about Austin moon towers. Or even about grocery shopping. Most of us probably don't have very strong feelings about grocery shopping, but for someone who used to be on food stamps, each trip to the grocery store might be a sort of triumph or a reminder of how far they've come.

A section of writing that's longer than a rapid-logged line is called a Narrative.

When I first started a BuJo, I thought I had to put the narrative on a separate page, but then I saw an example online where the person just put a line right on that day's Daily Log, dividing the Narrative from the rest of the Daily Log, and another line at the end of the Narrative, so she could pick back up with the Daily Log. It made a lot of sense and was even kind of artistic. Mine are not artistic, but I still like the idea, so now I just slap my Narratives down right in the daily log, letting it go onto the next page if necessary (I just note at the top of the page that the day is continuing).

A line with Ns, marking the end of a Narrative section in a Daily Log
Of course, you can always put a Narrative on a separate page, or put all Narratives in a group. Customize!

To mark Narratives, I use an N as a Signifier, which is a mark that helps a particular task/note/event stand out on the page.

My Narrative about the eclipse
When I write about our cats, I use a C. 

Cs next to Cat events/tasks/notes, and joined-up Cs for a Narrative about cats

I note Narratives and Cat Narratives in the Index, and then when I flip to the page later, I can easily find the Narrative by looking for the Signifier, usually on the left side of the page. Check out the official Bullet Journal site for examples of Signifiers.

Now you know how to Rapid Log your Tasks, Notes, and Events, and how/where to put your Narratives when you feel the need to write more than just a quick rapid-logged line.

The two other main BuJo basics are Migration and Collections.

Migration is moving a task from one day to the next day. It's used when you don't get a task done on the day it was scheduled. You write the task on the next day's Log, then you mark the task on today's log with a right-arrow instead of an X, indicating that the task has been migrated instead of completed. There's a purpose to migration, which I'll talk about in the next blog post.

Collections are to literally collect all the random stuff from your Daily Logs. I don't really use Collections because when I first started my BuJo, I didn't understand them. I tend to rely on my index to find grouped items, because I'll have a line for them and list the page numbers they show up on, like Cats, Knitting, and English Country Dance.

But when I was preparing to give this presentation last fall, I read a good blog post at the official Bullet Journal site, and now I understand how Collections are supposed to work: you collect information in specific categories by writing that information on pages labeled for those categories. For example, I could go through and put all my Cat information on a page labelled "Cats". Then I could glance at that page and find the names of all the foster cats/kittens we've had, find out when I last gave our cats Revolution, see how much the last Chewy order was. The way I find that information now is to look at my Cats index line, go to the pages I wrote Cat stuff, and look for the "C" signifier on the page. It takes more time than if I had a single Collections page for "Cats Revolutioned", for example. (Dang it! That reminds me, I need to Revolution the outside cat!)

The pros of Collections are having all that info in one place. The cons are having to write all that information in one place. I can find information fairly quickly by keeping my index up to date, which doesn't always happen. Anyway, you might try both collecting and indexing, and seeing which method works best for you. It might end up being a combination of the two, with some categories suiting Collections better than others.

One more thing to wrap up BuJo Basics: some BuJo hacks for writing.

I use a W as a signifier for Writing. So if I have a story idea or get some craft or publishing info to look up later, or someone recommends a book, I mark those notes with a W. I have an Index line for Writing, so every time I mark something with a W, I index it. I also have an index line for my WIP(s), which I can cross-reference in the index with the W signifiers if I want.

This next point is not so much a hack as a suggestion. As writers, we should take some time every day to pay attention to things that happen to us or to other people. We should write a few lines of Narrative in our Bullet Journals, because after all, they are journals.

As romance writers, we should especially be paying attention to feelings. We should write a few lines about how certain tasks, thoughts, or events make us feel, because romance is all about the feels.

Let me know if I've thoroughly confused you yet. Next post will be next Sunday, because I got a lot of stuff to do this week. :) Happy journaling!